Now on ScienceBlogs: And so, driven on ceaselessly toward new shores
Jonah Lehrer is a contributing editor at Wired. He's also written for The New Yorker, Seed, Nature, the Boston Globe and is a contributor to Radio Lab. He's the author of Proust Was A Neuroscientist. His new book is How We Decide.
October 31, 2007
Our eighth graders might not understand basic scientific concepts, but America is still a beacon for the "stars" of science, at least according to a new analysis by two social scientists at UCLA: America has 62 percent of the world's...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 10:15 AM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Over at Mind Hacks, Vaughan has generously allowed me to answer a few of his excellent questions. Check it out. Q: You seem to mostly focus on past artists but jokingly mentioned in a recent interview that maybe your next...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 9:59 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
It really is one of the great culinary techniques, and yet it's almost never used. I'm talking about salt roasting, and Russ Parsons has put together a lovely introduction to the subject. Basically, you bury a piece of protein in...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 9:52 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
October 30, 2007
Ever wanted to fly through a neocortical column? Yeah, me too. The bad news is that, until I manage to shrink myself to the micron level, such a flight is probably impossible. This computer simulated video is probably the closest...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 2:42 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
I've always wondered about why manual transmissions generally get better mileage than automatics. The answer is surprisingly simple: humans are better shifters. According to the Environmental Protection Agency's fuel economy ratings, cars with manual transmissions typically beat their automatic peers...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 10:13 AM • 14 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
The Cartesian wall separating the mind and body has been so thoroughly deconstructed that it's newsworthy when a bodily condition is not affected by our mental state. After all, recent studies have shown that everything from chronic back pain to...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 9:57 AM • 7 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
October 29, 2007
I linked to an interesting new paper in Frontiers in Neuroscience last week, but I thought it was worth talking a bit more about the journal itself. It's a brand new publication, which attempts to completely transform the peer review...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 11:19 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
A note to readers: For the next few weeks, this blog is going on a book tour. So if you're averse to self-promotion and blatant shows of immodesty (I promise to also link to the negative reviews!), or just aren't...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 10:45 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
October 25, 2007
Category: Neuroscience
An intriguing new hypothesis that seeks to explain all of the diverse psychological symptoms associated with autism. Here's the abstract: While significant advances have been made in identifying the neuronal structures and cells affected, a unifying theory that could explain...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 5:06 AM • 13 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
October 24, 2007
Forgive the light posting. I've been traveling. I'm now in Switzerland, reporting a story that I'm sure we'll be talking about later. But for now, I'd like to share a few thoughts on being an American abroad. The first thought...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 5:57 AM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Highly Allochthonous 11.05.2009
Eruptions 11.05.2009
Not Exactly Rocket Science 11.05.2009
Corpus Callosum 11.05.2009
Starts With a Bang 11.04.2009
