ABSTRACT

In Greek mythology, Narcissus, son of the river god Cephissus and the water nymph Liriope, was a beautiful youth, beloved by the nymph Echo, whom he cruelly repulsed. For this offence, Aphrodite, goddess of love, punished him by making him pathologically enamoured of his own image as reflected in a pool of water. His continuing and fruitless attempts to approach his beautiful self-image led to his despair and death. Are we not all just a little tempted by a similar fascination, an urge to understand, see even, something of the workings of our own minds, maybe to be glimpsed through a study of that latest of scientific endeavours, passions one might almost say, cognitive neuroscience? It can be no accident that the prefix ‘neuro-’ nowadays appears before so many other existing disciplines – neuroethics, neurophilosophy, neuroeconomics, neuroforensics … Can all these disciplines be better comprehended and mastered through the lens of brain mechanisms?