I’ve been enjoying Helen Mort’s blog ‘Poetry on the Brain’ recently. She also seems to be working on a two-way conversation between literature and cognitive science. As well as reflections on poems, she tackles scholarship on the subject. I was pleased to be reminded of Jonah Lehrer’s Proust Was a Neuroscientist (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2007). I feel like I want to distance myself from the more partisan and territorial qualities in this book’s treatment of cases where artists have reached insights (into memory, for example, or perception) before scientists. But maybe only a little.
      Helen Mort’s blog will give you plenty to read while ‘What Literature Knows About Your Brain’ takes a break until the new year.