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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.
May 30, 2008
I just wanted to thank everyone who came out to Water Taxi Beach last night to hear me, Dan Ariely and the Radio Lab team talk about the irrational brain. I had a great time. I hope you did, too....
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 2:17 PM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Before I became a writer, I assumed that some people (Nabakov, Updike, Bellow, etc.) were natural writers. They were born speaking in pithy prose, with taut sentences and interesting verb choice. But then, after reading all the usual Bellow masterpieces,...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 11:58 AM • 10 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Every science goes through several distinct phases. First, there is the dissection phase. The subject is broken apart into its simplest possible elements. (As Plato put it, "nature is cut at the joints, like a good butcher.") For neuroscience, this...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 11:48 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
May 27, 2008
In the past year, I've spent a small fortune at the dentist. Between wisdom teeth removal, a few routine cleanings and the replacement of an old cavity, my tab has come to several thousand dollars. (Needless to say, I don't...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 5:38 PM • 12 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
At first glance, "mindfulness" meditation practices seem completely counterintuitive. If people are suffering from pain, shouldn't they learn ways to not focus on their pain? Isn't it better to block out the negative sensations? (Repression isn't always such a bad...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 2:18 PM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
The body control on this guy is utterly insane: While there have been some interesting studies of dance and the brain, most of this research focuses on the learning of motor movements. (Not surprisingly, expert dancers exhibit increased activity in...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 9:59 AM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Last Sunday, I had an article in the Boston Globe Ideas section on the underlying causes of home field advantage. The Celtics are an extreme example of a sporting phenomenon known as home-field advantage: teams playing on their home field,...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 9:50 AM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
May 21, 2008
Joan Acocella has an interesting article on the science of hangovers: Hangovers also have an emotional component. Kingsley Amis, who was, in his own words, one of the foremost drunks of his time, and who wrote three books on drinking,...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 12:52 PM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Iceland, apparently, is the happiest country on earth: Highest birth rate in Europe + highest divorce rate + highest percentage of women working outside the home = the best country in the world in which to live. There has to...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 12:33 PM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
There are lots of ways to combine science and art. Some of them are more problematic than others: One of the strangest exhibits at the opening of "Design and the Elastic Mind," the very strange show at the Museum of...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 11:17 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
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