Publication of Body, Brain, Behavior: Three Views and a Conversation

Body, Brain, Behavior: Three Views and a Conversation, co-authored by Joy Hirsch, Professor of Neuroscience at UCL Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering, Tamas Horvath, Professor of Neuroscience at the Yale School of Medicine, and Zoltán Molnár, a Professor of Developmental Neuroscience at the University of Oxford, has an unusual multi-faceted focus which expands current views of neuroscience by illustrating the integration of the authors different disciplines; endocrine physiology, social neuroscience, and developmental neuroscience. Each of the three researchers shares a traditional chapter on their area of expertise, however what makes this book unique is the interconnecting chapters which includes transcripts of weekly conversations between the authors spanning the two years of the COVID-19 pandemic.    

Initially intended to help them shape their individual chapters, the conversations ended up helping each of the authors understand the others’ perspectives and to see where their disciplines and areas of research intersect. They decided to include the conversations in the hopes that they would be as illuminating for readers as they were for themselves.

Professor Hirsch commented that:

"The "unplugged" conversations build original bridges that connect "orphan topics" hidden in each of our disciplines. As the conversations demonstrate, we had a lot of fun. Nonetheless, we learned a great deal from each other and the book presents a fresh view of the underappreciated mechanisms of interdisciplinary science. 

I had not thought of conversations and dialogue between scientists as a mechanism for creative thinking prior to this experience. However, the book illustrates the intimate intertwining of scientific thought and the scientists who do the thinking and presents unconventional connections between the outer boundaries of neuroscience and some novel insights that are unleashed by untethered dialogue.”