Armstrong’s book is a testament to the value of the arts and the humanities since their processes and productions generate ideas that are literally the physical (neurobiological) stuff of which we are made.

(Gregory F. Tague ASEBL Journal)

How Literature Plays with the Brain: The Neuroscience of Reading and Art is a highly informative and carefully argued book. We recommend a close reading of it.

(Linguistic and Philosophical Investigations)

Armstrong explores the ways that neuroscience and literary theory can be mutually illuminating about the processes of reading and about the aesthetics of literary response. He makes explicit some of the most vital, yet heretofore overlooked, connections between the aims of literary criticism and cognitive neuroscience. There are wonderful insights in How Literature Plays with the Brain, and it is clearly the work of a strong critic who is well educated on both sides of the science-humanities divide.

(G. Gabrielle Starr, New York University)