The Tell-Tale Brain: The Neuroscience of Being Human

The question of what it means to be human is something we’ve explored before, and something humanity has grappled with for eons. Now, a compelling new answer may be before us.

V.S. Ramachandran is one of the most influential neuroscientists of our time, whose work has not only made seminal contributions to the understanding of autism, phantom limbs and synesthesia, among other fascinating phenomena, but has also helped introduce neuroscience to popular culture. The fact that he is better-known as Rama — you know, like Prince or Madonna or Che — is a fitting reflection of his cultural cachet.

Today, Rama releases his highly anticipated new book: The Tell-Tale Brain: A Neuroscientist’s Quest for What Makes Us Human — an ambitious exploration of everything from the origins of language to our relationship with art to the very mental foundation of civilization.

As heady as our progress [in the sciences of the mind] has been, we need to stay completely honest with ourselves and acknowledge that we have only discovered a tiny fraction of what there is to know about the human brain. But the modest amount that we have discovered makes for a story more exciting than any Sherlock Holmes novel. I feel certain that as progress continues through the coming decades, the conceptual twists and technological turns we are in for are going to be at least as mind bending, at last as intuition shaking, and as simultaneously humbling and exalting to the human spirit as the conceptual revolutions that upended physics a century ago. The adage that fact is stranger than fiction seems to be especially true for the workings of the brain.” ~ V. S. Ramachandran

You can sample Rama’s remarkable quest to illuminate the brain with his excellent 2007 TED talk:

Both empirically rooted in specific patient cases and philosophically speculative in an intelligent, grounded way, with a healthy dose of humor thrown in for good measure, The Tell-Tale Brain is an absolute masterpiece of cognitive science and a living manifesto for the study of the brain.

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The Great Mystery of Photography: How to Photograph a Black Dog

For the past decade, editor Eric Kessels has been sifting through the world’s amateur analog photography, culling fascinating collections of found photos around eccentric and esoteric themes. in almost every picture #9: black dog documents one family’s attempt to solve one of the grand mysteries of photography: How to photograph a black dog. The couple, befallen by their beloved pet’s complete blackness and the technical insufficiencies of their very vintage camera, try over and over again to capture endearing portraits of the pooch, only to find his likeness hovering between brooding silhouette and nondescript black blob.

The collection unfolds across seasons and years, in almost comedic fashion, as the family carries on the seemingly hopeless quest, revealing at once a tender personal story and a timecapsulre of a photography era long gone.

Before the digital age, before cameras that could solve any problem from red-eye to world hunger, there was the 20th century, a time when photographers actually had to take photos themselves. Among other things, this included finding sufficient light for your subject.” ~ Christian Bunyan

And, finally, in a dramatically overexposed shot, we see the dog’s elusive face.

in almost every picture #9: black dog is the latest in a fantastic series of found photography books by Kessels, exploring everything from Japan’s infamous flat-headed Oolong rabbit, one of the earliest internet memes, to missing persons portraits.

via Lensculture

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Street Sketchbook: The Creative Process of Top Graffiti Artists

It’s no secret we have a soft spot for street art books. So we’re all over Street Sketchbook: Journeys — a rare peek inside the sketchbooks of 26 of the world’s hottest new artists.

From Brazil’s iconic favelas to Tokyo’s backalleys, it reveals both globe-trotting adventures and rich internal landscapes in 227 large-format pages and lush double-spreads of pure creative genius.

Street Sketchbook: Journeys is the sequel to Tristan Manco’s 2007 gem, Street Sketchbook: Inside the Journals of International Street and Graffiti Artists.

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