Bookmarks Festival 2014

So, this past weekend (9/6) Noell and I went to Winston-Salem to check out the 2014 Bookmarks Festival. This is our second visit (I posted on last year's event here), and this year's events were housed in some shiny new buildings and very nice auditoriums. What drew us this time around was the presentation by Sam Kean, who talked about his newest book, The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons, which presents stories of individuals suffering brain damage and what they can tell science about how the brain works. Kean is an insightful and witty writer, the perfect sort to present science to a popular audience. I was about 3/4 of the way through the book when we saw him speak (I've since finished it, and it was great). Some interesting points:

• Kean said that what originally interested him in the topic was skepticism: he simply didn't believe some of the stories he had heard about. For example, neurologists reported that some people simply could not recognize plants, while others had no idea how to deal with animals. It turns out, however, that there are in fact particular areas of the brain that deal with different types of things, and damage to these areas can compromise our ability to recognize those objects, and only those objects. 
• The main irony is that, in order to study how the brain actually works, neurologists, because it is in many cases unethical to operate on healthy brains (although this was not always the case), often had to wait for an accident or disease to knock out particular areas to determine their function. One example from the book is the case of S.M. (initials are used in the medical literature to protect patients' identities), who suffers (she is alive and well and living in Iowa) from a rare condition that leaves her with a non-functioning amygdala. This part of the brain, among other things, helps to process our fear response. Neurologists have been studying S.M. for many years now (with her informed consent), and she is not afraid of snakes, death threats, assaults, or robberies. (Actually, a recent paper suggests that she did experience the fear of suffocation, which suggests that while the amygdala controls our response to external fears, other pathways must process fear associated with internal threats like suffocation or heart attacks.)
• Noell asked a question about amnesia and whether or not Kean ran across any examples of people who completely lost track of their own identity. He responded, in an echo of one of the book's major points, that it seems as if someone's identity or sense of self is an extremely difficult, if not impossible, aspect of the mind to wipe out completely. 
• Kean also talked about his writing style, which is story-focused. He said that people seem to learn best when issues are presented as stories: a beginning, a middle, and an end, all populated with characters. Perhaps this can be a lesson for those of us trying to teach science.   

After lunch at one of the many food trucks, we went to see Karen Abbott talk about her new book Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy: Four Women Undercover in the Civil War. Abbott is a former journalist who contributes to the Smithsonian Magazine's history blog. The book is the story of four women, two from the North and two from the South, who lied, slept, seduced, and killed their way into spy networks. One of the most interesting points that Abbott made was that these (and other) women were able to exploit 19th century notions of femininity to conceal messages and contraband. Hoop skirts, for example, which most males would never search, were regularly used to smuggle items like guns. I have not yet read the book, but after her presentation I will definitely add it to my "to-read" list on Goodreads.

References:

Kean, S (2014). The tale of the dueling neurosurgeons: the history of the human brain as revealed by true stories of trauma, madness, and recovery. Little, Brown and Company, New York.

Abbott, K (2014). Liar, temptress, soldier, spy: four women undercover in the Civil War. Harper, New York.