Customer Reviews

Neuropsychology of Art: Neurological, Cognitive and Evolutionary Perspectives (Brain, Behaviour and Cognition)

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Intrigued by the promise of its title, I zipped over to my local university library as soon as this book came in. Alas, this is not only the last word on the topic, it is not even an adequate summary of recent work.

The author is a neuroscientist herself, but the usual penetrating and synthesizing insight of such specialists seems lacking here. In her chapters on musical art and brain damage, I miss the central focus of this kind of study: the scientist learns about brain function from those who have lost a specific piece of it. Zaidel refers to some interesting studies and historical anecdotes (musicians who sustained this or that kind of brain damage), but I the reader do not learn what I want to from the discussions. I learn details, but the stories and studies do not cumulate in a big picture. Of course modern brain research is still developing, yet other researchers give me more of a sense that they can intuit a big picture beyond what they can clearly see.

Also in the music section, Zaidel's end-of-section paragraph of summary does not include major insights derived from Isabelle Peretz, one of the foremost neuroscientists of music, though Zaidel cites a couple of Peretz' publications in her bibliographies. Peretz gives a significantly better explanation of currently understood brain processing of musical phenomena than Zaidel does, but you wouldn't know from this book. It's not a bad book, just not a great one.