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Last Monday, Dr.Hasse Walum gave a talk titled "Genetic and Hormonal Influences on Pair Bonding Related Behavior in Humans" at the Center for Translational Social Neuroscience at Emory . I hadn't heard of Walum's work before I saw the e-mail announcement for his talk, but a little googling got me interested. Here's the most titillating version of his findings: Walum found the gene that makes men cheat. Okay, that is most definitely  not  what he found, and I got the sense from talking with him briefly that he would be the first one to tell you that. So why am I misrepresenting his results? Dr. Hasse Walum: hard-hitting Wired reporter  David Ewing Duncan compares him to Kurt Cobain, but my science and rock star senses detect a David Bowie influence I want to make some points about how science interacts with the media. Like I said, it was reading news reports that made me want to go hear Walum talk. As a graduate student, in his first published study, Walum reported...

Via amazon.com The Addicted Brain. The Female Brain. The Male Brain. Chemobrain. Buddha’s Brain. The Winner’s Brain. The Republican Brain . These days, it seems that everybody’s brain is being scanned and their behavior analyzed. In fact, these are all titles of books published in the past decade that communicate the latest findings in neuroscience and psychology research to lay audiences. As a budding neuroscientist, I am excited that science, and neuroscience in particular, has now flooded into popular American culture. Evidence of its expanding domain is everywhere: in magazines ( Scientific American ’s “ MIND ”), blogs ( Neuroskeptic ), radio programs (NPR’s “ Radiolab ”), podcasts ( Nature ’s “ Neuropod ”) and books. For further examination of the reasons for this cultural shift, see the discussion of the phenomenon in the new book “ Brain Culture: Neuroscience and Popular Media ,” by Davi Johnson Thorton, Southwestern University's Assistant Professor of Communication Studies....