Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: limbic system

  • Can the neuroaesthetics response unleash a path to psychosis?

    C. Ann ConnCovington, Louisiana, United States How does the brain perceive beauty and what is the biology of transcendent artistic appreciation? Is this epiphanic reaction hijacked during delusional thinking and psychosis? Perhaps the emerging field of neuroaesthetics can offer clues. After I witnessed the transformation and fall of my two sons, Austin and Colin, into…

  • The basest of the senses: medical unease with the sense of smell

    Rebecca ShulmanPhiladelphia, Pennsylvania, United States “…the primitive organ of smell, the basest of the senses” – Patrick Suskind, Perfume For the past two centuries, the medical profession has had a deeply-held but wholly unconscious ambivalence about the sense of smell, including the myriad ways in which it can become disordered. The same ambivalence does not…