New Books in Neuroscience

Explores the profound power of music to influence brain function and well-being.

IPA 2026 Distinguished Favorite in the Music Category

Why does music influence how we feel so deeply--and what are the scientific mechanisms behind this phenomenon? In Music Between Your Ears: How Musical Engagement Powers the Human Brain (JHU Press, 2025) Dr. Samuel Markind explores the intriguing relationship between music and brain function. Using evolutionary theory, he illuminates the pivotal role that music plays in human survival and procreation. From communication and caregiving to social bonding and partner selection, music has molded the human species and continues to shape our lives in remarkable ways.

This book combines insights from neuroscience and psychology with helpful drawings and vivid examples to present compelling evidence for music's life-enhancing potential. Dr. Markind highlights the brain's instinctive capacity for music: from newborns' natural affinity for rhythm and melody to the effect that music has on brain development throughout the lifespan. Music also helps people learn at any age and in any condition, so it can improve speech, movement, and memory in both healthy individuals and those suffering from illness or injury. Dr. Markind encourages readers to engage actively with music. Whether through singing, dancing, or instrument playing, the benefits of active participation are profound and accessible to everyone, regardless of musical background. This book, filled with straightforward and practical suggestions, is an inspiring guide for anyone seeking to enrich their life through music.

Music Between Your Ears shows how the act of engaging with music can profoundly impact your mental, physical, and emotional well-being. And the benefits of music go far beyond entertainment--they're essential to the very fabric of what makes us human.

Samuel Markind's website here.
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How Deeply Human Is Language? Chomsky, the Brain, and the AI Fantasy (MIT Press, 2026) is Yosef Grodzinsky’s exploration of the criticality of the linguistic theories to the design of LLMs. The book dwells on the significance of the marriage between computational and theoretical fields, specifically “engineering and science” on the development of unique Language Learning Models. Yosef maintains that leveraging linguistic theories for the development of Gen AI chatbots and training of Language Learning Models will help the growing Gen-AI revolution. In the book, LLMs are evaluated from the neurolinguistic perspective, comparing how the human brain works with different LLMs’ reactions to prompts, highlighting how a collaboration between the core linguists and the experts in the technology-related fields could make a change.

Yosef Grodzinzky’s positions in the book is grounded in contemporary linguistics, founded and inspired by Noam Chomsky, the father of the “mentalist” linguistic perspective to language acquisition. In the book, the author employs the historical approach to tell different significant stories to communicate multiple messages of success of interdisciplinary practices. While the main idea is to explore the centrality of linguistic science to other fields with specific emphasis on Engineering and sister’s technological fields, the book dwelled on specific pitfalls of the linguistics and way forward to promote novel interdisciplinary productions.

Mariam Olugbodi is a university teacher and a writer, she is the author of the monograph titled: “Stylistic Features in the 2011 and 2012 Final Matches Commentaries in the UEFA Champions League”, published by Grin Verlag. Mariam’s greatest dream is seeing a world where knowledge is accessible to all. She does this through her volunteering roles on open knowledge platforms as a host and an editor. As part of her effort to maintain inclusion and diversity in knowledge transmission, she volunteers as a teacher in crises contexts. Learn more and connect with Mariam through her social links here. | LinkedIn| here. |ORCID| and here. |Meta|
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When it comes to consciousness, William James is well-known for his descriptions of it rather than his theory of it and its relation to the body. In Consciousness is Motor: William James on Mind and Action (Oxford UP, 2025), Alexander Klein elaborates James’ theory of the evolutionary function of consciousness and how conscious states are always linked to the body and always trigger bodily motion (from physiological changes to purposive behavior). Klein, who is Canada Research Chair and Professor of Philosophy at McMaster University, describes the vivisection experiments with headless frogs that led theorists to deny that consciousness was necessary for purposive action or to affirm that consciousness depended on the whole nervous system, not just the brain. James instead proposed an essential link between consciousness and purposive action in which the latter required an ability to entertain “absent” (future) sensations. Klein’s book situates James in relation to contemporary debates regarding the functional role of consciousness, the search for neural correlates of and behavioral markers of consciousness, and the embodiment of mind.
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What makes us who we are?Through the stories of seven of his patients, acclaimed Oxford University neurologist Masud Husain shows us how our brains create, change and can even restore our identity. Husain introduces us to a man who ran out of words, a woman who lost all inhibitions and another who believed she was having an affair with the man who was really her husband.These compelling human dramas reveal how our identities are created by different functions within the brain. It will ignite new ideas about who we really are – and why we act in the ways we do.
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A compelling insight into how our imagination works, based on the latest scientific research.

People often think of imagination as something used only in creative endeavours. In fact, we use imagination constantly as we reminisce, anticipate, plan, daydream, read, create imagined worlds. The truth is we live in the here and now much less than we tend to think. Imagination isn't the exception in our daily lives; it's our default setting. Yet only now are we beginning to understand exactly how it works.From hallucination to sleepwalking, from REM sleep to delusions, neurologist Adam Zeman brilliantly guides us through the latest scientific studies in the world of the imagination. In The Shape of Things Unseen: A New Science of Imagination (Bloomsbury, 2025), he draws on research in neuroscience, the study of human origins and child development to show how the human brain is above all else a creative, imaginative organ – and that we have evolved to share what we imagine.Our brains behave in strikingly similar ways when we observe, remember, imagine or act. Imagine looking at a cube and your eye will trace the contours of the cube as if you were actually seeing it. Yet it turns out that people differ hugely in their imaginative experience. Some people lack sensory imagery altogether – they would be unable to picture their family if asked to – but still lead fulfilling, even highly creative, lives.From how we visualise to how we understand the minds of others, from the benefits of play to mental disorders, The Shape of Things Unseen dazzles and delights. It is an essential guide to the latest discoveries about the workings of the human mind.
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