I am great fan, Ted, to the point where I rarely comment on your posts because I usually have nothing to add. However, this one is so disturbing in its misinformation and judgment that I felt compelled to comment. To be clear, I have an academic background in art history and mathematics, and I believe that the arts are critical for personal well-being and that of the body politic.
The statement made in the interview that "We humans are over 60% water and water amplifies sound" is utterly, completely, false. When a sound wave emanates from a guitar string, drum or a human vocal cord, it does so with a certain level of energy, no more, no less. It can be amplified by adding electric energy, such as with a guitar amplifier, but it cannot be amplified by passing through another substance. Ask a Navy sonar specialist about this and he will tell you that water is a better conductor of sound than air, but as for amplification in water, well, that would defy the laws of physics. That statement alone calls into question the credibility of the interviewees.
As for the dichotomy between the arts and science, tell it to Leonardo, Piero della Francesca or the American Peale brothers. The arts and science have always been closely connected and to claim otherwise has more to do with a shallow and very recently modern sensibility than it does with reality or the sweep of history.
The title of the book, "Your Brain on Art", has an ugly antecedent. It comes from an ad first broadcasted in 1987, back in the days of the Reagan administration. The ad was simple and brutal and totally lacking in any aesthetic sensibility. An off-camera person would crack two eggs into a hot frying pan while a voice over said "this is your brain on drugs". That was it. In certain media markets, they would repeat it twice to get it up to a 60 second ad length. The use of that metaphor in the title shows a kind of cluelessness and is antithetical to the case that they are trying to make. Implicitly, they are indicating a link between the arts and illegal drugs; certainly lacking in scientific, social and aesthetic judgment. I wouldn't read this book based on the title alone.
As for the positive neurological impacts of the arts, well, Hostess Twinkies also have positive neurological impacts. Reduction of the arts to mere cranial chemical processes is dangerous, particularly at a time when our society is so desperately in need of shared aesthetic experiences.
