©
Elsevier
Communication between the brain and the rest of the body’s tissues, and the impact on our behaviour has always been a vast and intensely complex area of research. Consequently, researchers usually focus on a particular aspect of neuroscience, such as a single region of the brain, its impact on specific bodily functions, or how it controls certain types of behaviours. An ambitious new book from three world-leading scientists brings together three very different perspectives to address the fundamental relationship between the body, brain and behaviour. In doing so, they shed new light on the inner workings of the nervous system in a way no major publication has attempted to do in the field of neuroscience.
“Body, Brain, Behavior: Three Views and a Conversation” is positioned at the frontier of neuroscience. It is written by DPAG’s Professor Zoltán Molnár, a developmental neuroscientist, and two Yale School of Medicine Professors, Dr Tamas Horvath, an endocrine physiologist, and Dr Joy Hirsch, a social neuroscientist. The book has a particular emphasis on the relationship between the brain and its development and evolution, peripheral organs, and other brains in communication. This unusual multi-faceted focus expands current views of neuroscience by illustrating the integration of these disciplines through a novel method of conversations between the three authors.
The book is a culmination of two years of weekly recorded interdisciplinary conversations held online during the COVID-19 pandemic as each researcher penned a representative chapter of their sub-discipline. Professor Molnár said: “Our fields of investigation are so diverse we might not normally meet, let alone have a conversation, and yet, that is what the book is about. We did not know how it would turn out until the very end. This book is a kind of experiment that explores the use of conversation as a conduit for scientific thought and development.”