Jonah Lehrer is an editor at large for Seed Magazine. His first book is Proust Was A Neuroscientist. Buy it here.
July 31, 2006
Category: Culture
I'm still puzzled over why Floyd Landis might have taken testosterone. After all, bicyclists are supposed to be svelte, and injecting yourself with a little hormone the night after a tough ride probably wouldn't lead to increased muscle recovery in...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 11:05 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
July 29, 2006
Category: Neuroscience
Well, sort of. A well-timed insult by Materazzi also helped. But the WSJ reports today that several members of the Italian team used neurofeedback earlier this year to help hone their powers of concentration: In February, months before the tournament...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 12:15 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
July 27, 2006
Category: Culture
After my last post on the frustrating inefficiencies of experimental failure, I recieved an interesting comment: I discovered in the late stages of graduate school that my extremely long hours (upwards of 80/week) were extraordinarily unproductive. I was doing cell...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 10:38 AM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
July 26, 2006
Category: Neuroscience
The NY Times Magazine described an interesting study that I'd never heard about before: A study of French youngsters adopted between the ages of 4 and 6 shows the continuing interplay of nature and nurture. Those children had little going...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 12:55 PM • 8 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Neuroscience
Small Gray Matters has an insightful post on the recent mirror neuron debate here at Scienceblogs. While I think a dose of skepticism is always helpful (especially when big mysteries like "empathy" and "theory of mind" are being tossed around),...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 10:59 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
July 25, 2006
Category: My So-Called Life
Scienceblogs is abuzz with discussion over the difficulty of melding family life and an academic career in science. Having worked for several years as a tech in an ambitious neuroscience lab, I'm amazed that post-docs even contemplate a family life....
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 10:38 AM • 9 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
July 24, 2006
Category: Neuroscience
Mixing Memory tosses a helpful bucket of cold water on the mirror neuron frenzy. The post focuses on the hypothesis that mirror neurons were a crucial ingredient in the development of human language. While I think much of the skepticism...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 12:25 PM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
July 22, 2006
Category: Culture
So we lost the stem cell battle this year. Moral self-righteousness once again defeated pragmatic common sense. Of course, important political progress was made: Congress supported science, and Bush was forced to veto a popular bill. So what should we...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 12:32 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
July 20, 2006
Category: Culture
The new Tesla has officially been unveiled. Wired has already taken it for a test drive: He releases the brake and my head snaps back. One-one-thousand: I get a floating feeling, like going over the falls in a roller coaster....
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 10:20 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture
The Wellcome Trust just announced the winners of the 2006 Biomedical Image Awards. The pictures are absolutely stunning: Here is a goblet cell, which line the inside of the intestine and respiratory system. And here is a cerebellar granule cell,...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 8:18 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
July 19, 2006
Category: Culture
I can't believe this man is a senator. Listen to his speech on stem cells yesterday in the Senate: it's scary. [Hat tip: Mimms]...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 1:38 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
My new Seed article is now online. I wanted to use the neuroscience of learning to draw some connections between a lot of different things, from mirror neurons to Algebra teachers to Toyota factories. Take a look, and tell me...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 10:53 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture
In response to my blog yesterday about America's continued love affair with horsepower and V8 engines, I recieved an excellent comment. It's worth a read: If you ask people why they drive 4WD SUVs you get a number of answers,...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 10:45 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
July 18, 2006
Category: Culture
So dumb that we're still buying SUV's. Despite the fact that gas is now almost $3 a gallon, the average fuel economy of new 2006 models was virtually flat with a year ago at 21 miles per gallon, according to...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 11:10 AM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture
We should all move to Greenland. From the WSJ: Greenland represents one of the largely unrecognized paradoxes of global warming. In former Vice President Al Gore's recent film "An Inconvenient Truth," the melting of Greenland's ice cap, along with a...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 10:53 AM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture
Judge Richard Posner has stepped into the tedious debate over innate cognitive differences between men and women. While I'm usually a fan of Posner's contrarian streak, he indulges here in some terrible evolutionary psychology. He manages to justify a blatant...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 10:14 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
July 17, 2006
Category: Culture
Well, not really. But there has definitely been a shift in public perception since last summer. As I was watching my local news this morning, the anchor alluded to global warming as a way of "explaining" the record setting heat...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 10:55 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
July 15, 2006
Category: Culture
First of all, anyone who argues that homosexuality isn't "natural," and that being gay is just a strange human perversion, is clearly wrong. As I wrote in my article on Joan Roughgarden: Having homosexual sex is the biological equivalent of...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 8:42 AM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
July 14, 2006
Category: Culture
The WSJ editorial page - a very suspect source - opines on a new statistical study which seems to cast doubt on the hockey stick model of global warming. This model began with Michael Mann's 1999 paper, and is the...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 11:31 AM • 7 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture
A new paper in The International Journal of Obesity explores several of the ignored factors that contribute to the obesity epidemic. Sure, corn syrup and lethargy are bad, but other suspects include: 1) The decrease in smoking. Apparently, the Virginia...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 10:32 AM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
July 13, 2006
Category: Culture
If the hype is accurate, then I'm skipping the hybrid and going straight for the Tesla...Imagine an electric car that accelerates like a Corvette and can get 250 miles per charge....
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 1:19 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture
I'm not so sure, but two prominent scientists, both of whom are transgendered, allege that scientists regularly discriminate and "ostracize" ambitious female scientists. This is the latest twist of the Larry Summers Debate, which has grown a wee bit tiresome....
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 10:23 AM • 8 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
July 12, 2006
Category: Culture
Not if you read the fine print. According to an analysis by the Treasury Department, Bush's tax cuts may raise total national output of goods and services by 0.7%. But is that enough to pay for the tax cuts? Not...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 8:50 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Neuroscience
Jake over at Pure Pedantry links to a recently published article which shows that the adult neocortex has roughly the same number of neurons (but more glial cells) than the neocortex of a newborn. This is an interesting study and...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 8:36 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
July 11, 2006
Category: Neuroscience
Sometimes science experiments smack of the obvious. When researchers at Johns Hopkins gave 36 people with deep religious convictions hallucingenic mushrooms (active ingredient psilocybin) they experienced a deep, and lingering, sense of spirituality.Furthermore, as every day tripper knows, about a...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 8:35 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
July 10, 2006
Category: Culture
They have lots of bugs....
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 5:52 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture
There's currently a glut of good books on happiness. If you don't have the time to wade through them all, Jennifer Senior of New York Magazine has a helpful summary of the latest developments in positive psychology....
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 12:57 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture
I've always wondered why evangelicals obsess over evolution and not quantum physics. If their intent is to undermine materialist science, the surreal conclusions of modern physicists - multiple universes, 11 stringy dimensions, the invisible weight of dark matter - strike...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 11:23 AM • 7 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
July 8, 2006
Category: Neuroscience
These bonobos can even invent metaphors...The secret, at least according to Sue Savage-Rumbaugh, head scientist at the Great Ape Trust near Des Moines, is to expose primates to language when they are still infants. Of course, this isn't the first...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 2:26 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
July 7, 2006
Category: Culture
It's pretty damn funny. I especially like the part where Ali G connects being bilingual with bisexuality. Chomsky doesn't even flinch. [Courtesy Andrew Sullivan]...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 4:30 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture
Just read it. Common sense wrapped in lucid prose is a powerful tool....
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 12:14 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture
Sharon Begley has another wonderful column today in the WSJ. She focuses on the so called "violence gene" as an example of the hopelessly complicated relationship between genetics and real life. In the late 1980s, a number of men in...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 12:03 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture
Money also can't buy you happiness. It's been reported before, but it's always worth repeating: the rich aren't happier than the rest of us. In the last issue of Science, a team of researchers (including Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman), reported...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 11:40 AM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
July 6, 2006
Category: Culture
Over at The Corner, Jonah Goldberg alleges that if global warming were an entirely natural phenomenon - as opposed to a man-made problem caused by greenhouse gases - then "the reluctance on the part of some on the right to...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 10:59 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Culture
Much ink has been spilled about the recent paper in Science documenting empathy in mice. The experiment was rather simple. The scientists noticed that mice given a painful injection displayed increased writhing behavior (a reflexive response to pain) in the...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 10:30 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
July 5, 2006
Category: Neuroscience
This charming article, on Shamu, positive reinforcement, and the malleability of men, has been one of the NY Times' most emailed articles for the last 10 days. (Is that some kind of record?) The basic message is very straightforward: The...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 8:03 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
July 3, 2006
Category: Neuroscience
This week's question is "What are some unsung successes that have occurred as a result of using science to guide policy?" That's a tough question. I'm going to go with mental health. Until relatively recently (i.e., the 1960's), our mental...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 10:50 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Neuroscience
The NY Times Magazine had an interesting article on deja vu and memory. It's about a group of cognitive psychologists who are using patients afflicted with a continual sense of deja vu (sounds a little hellish to me) in order...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 10:15 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
