The quest to understand the relationship between the human brain's anatomy, self-awareness, and behavior has led to the development of a field known as cognitive neuroscience. The increasing ...popularization of neuroscience has inspired a sub-genre of literature which addresses the complexities of self-consciousness. The novelists of this study--Tom Robbins, Kurt Vonnegut, Don DeLillo, William Hjortsberg, and Joseph McElroy--provide a neurologically-based cultural analysis in sophisticated literary forms. They are largely concerned with the increasingly apparent schism between the previously-dominant psychoanalytic approach to human behavior and the emerging, primarily biological study of the mind. Their novels--neurotexts--demonstrate an awareness of the brain's biological processes and reject many psychology-based behavioral theories. Neurotexts establish direct links between neuroscience and character behaviors, motivations, and relationships, attributing actions to the interaction of anatomical, biological, and environmental conditions. Neuroscience can be used to explain unusual narrative structures or structural relationships within their novels. The authors of neurotexts have argued that neurology-based theories address the complexity of human behavior more thoroughly than Freudian models. Tom Robbins attacks psychoanalysis in Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (1976), explaining human behavior with twentieth-century interpretations of Darwin's theory of natural selection. In Galapagos (1985), Kurt Vonnegut attributes behavior to cerebral evolution and individual responses to environmental conditions. Don DeLillo's Ratner's Star (1976) and White Noise (1984) are novels whose forms and plots are built upon the conflicts between different sets of cerebral structures in the brain. Rather than using psychoanalytic theories to explain his characters' behaviors, DeLillo attributes behavior to differences between the left and right hemispheres' information processing tendencies; he also contrasts the responses of the hypothalamic, limbic, and hemispheric structures to environmental stimuli. William Hjortsberg rejects Freud's legacy in Gray Matters (1971), explaining the relationship of human behavior to environmental influences and anatomical development. Hjortsberg also applies these theories while discussing the formation of societies and social interaction. In Plus (1976), Joseph McElroy demonstrates the connections between physiological growth and increased cognitive capabilities in an isolated environment, relying upon neuroanatomy to explain human consciousness.
