Science for Policy Book

This occupies the ground between a publication for the benefit of general public knowledge - as a duty and justification of research funding - and a summary review for a high-minded circle of readers who appreciate, are perhaps even hedonic over robust cognitive scientific methods moderately diluted from the lab.

Prior understanding of experimental methods, behaviourism, positive/negative reinforcement, controls etc, and a familiarity with sub-cortical neuroanatomy would perhaps help the reader extract the most from the nuances of meaning within each essay... The essays as a whole are striking in the fact that amongst the cutting-edge language and processes of discovery the science still remains in its infancy and is dependent on inferences from brain-relative course-grained technology (e.g. MRI, PET scanning) capturing fleeting hotspot activity such as regional cortical blood flow. Locating the spots, loops, excitatory/inhibitory chemistry of pleasure in the brain seems almost absurdly myopic when compared with the complexity of being human (with qualia), but it seems that this broad-based reductionist routine is an essential condition that science must meet for itself.