When I read the news, usually it's breakthroughs in science that stop me and excite and amaze me the most, especially when it's an announcement of some discovery at the border between science and culture. Any discovery that sheds light on how the human mind works, I'm captivated.

So I loved the recent news that brain researchers in London and at Vanderbilt University have used an MRI brain scanner to track what people are actually thinking. The scientists haven't managed to read particular thoughts – not yet. But they can now track neurons more specifically than ever before, enough to be able to detect what the brain-scanned people were seeing when things were flashed in front of them before the people were aware they were seeing it. And the researchers have even been able, "under certain circumstances," according to the New York Times, "to read people's states of mind."

Then just a few days later came another neuro-science bulletin that amazed and delighted me even more. This study, at the University of California , tested four stroke victims. The strokes had injured one particular small area on the left sides of the victims' brains -- but otherwise left their minds in perfect operating condition.

And as a result, they were able to intelligently discuss and understand everything…except metaphors.

This metaphor study was as low-tech as the mind-reading one was sci-fi-sophisticated. The researchers simply read 20 metaphorical statements and proverbs to the stroke victims. Like "The grass is always greener on the other side" and "A rolling stone gathers no moss."

And with almost every metaphor they were read, the patients could respond with only very, very literal interpretations. For instance, they thought that "All that glitters is not gold" meant that we have to beware of unscrupulous jewelry salesmen. One of the researchers' lines was "George Bush isn't exactly a rocket scientist, is he?" And the patients replied that the statement simply meant that President Bush is a politician, and isn't involved in aeronautical design at all.

Which is sweet and sad – and amazing that this one particular bit of the brain, a bit of tissue just above and behind the left ear is the part of our hard wiring that lets us understand Shakespeare, to fully comprehend poetry, literature, and art -- .that let's all of us intellectually reach for the stars.

And as a matter of fact, "reaching for the stars" was one of the sayings that the patients in the study simply didn't get.

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