Had kind of an epiphany while reading one of this week's articles;  previously, I had been thinking of literature as something which was about human minds, which made it worthy of study in this class.  Of course, this literature is also a product of human minds, which I fully realized today.  Literature is worthy of study in a neurobiological context because it is a unique behavior produced by the human nervous system - no other animal writes prose.  It's interesting to think about the cognitive mechanisms that interact to produce such a complex institution - writing is a fairly recent development, so it's unlikely that it is an adaptive trait itself.  Maybe a small realization, but I find the subject much more interesting from that perspective.

The 'neuro-turn' piece was rather buzzwordy, but from what I could gather the authors think that the arts and humanities, along with popular culture, are beginning to turn more toward neurological explanations for things.  It also doesn't seem like they're happy about it.  I can see where they're coming from, but I think such a transition is only natural.  Yes, neuroscience is still in it's infancy with regard to what we can explain about the brain, but our knowledge of the mind will only increase with time.  Soon, I think neurobiology and it's implications may be the best way to explain nearly anything that humans do, including the arts and humanities.  After all, these things are products of the human mind (as explained above).