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Jonah Lehrer is a contributing editor at Wired. He's also written for The New Yorker, Seed, Nature, and the New York Times and is a contributor to Radiolab. He's the author of Proust Was A Neuroscientist. His new book is How We Decide.
January 27, 2010
For the most part, self-control is seen as an individual trait, a measure of personal discipline. If you lack self-control, then it's your own fault, a character flaw built into the brain. However, according to a new study by Michelle...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 1:14 PM • 16 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 26, 2010
Cable news is not good for the soul. People make fun of Jersey Shore, but at least those randy kids don't reinforce our deep-seated political biases. A new paper by Shawn Powers of USC and Mohammed el-Nawawy of Queens University...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 11:49 AM • 39 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 25, 2010
The Economist reviews an interesting new study that investigates the immorality of power: In their first study, Dr Lammers and Dr Galinsky asked 61 university students to write about a moment in their past when they were in a position...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 12:48 PM • 21 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 20, 2010
There's an interesting new paper on how the brain makes sense of music by constructing detailed models in real time. The act of listening, it turns out, is really an act of neural prediction. Here are the scientists, from the...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 8:54 AM • 47 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 18, 2010
Time Magazine has an interesting profile of Magnus Carlsen, the youngest chess player to achieve a number one world ranking: Genius can appear anywhere, but the origins of Carlsen's talent are particularly mysterious. He hails from Norway -- a "small,...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 12:20 PM • 346 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 14, 2010
There's a new and very timely paper out this week that looks at the cortical mechanics of charitable giving. While it's been known for a few years that giving away money activates the dopamine reward pathway - that's why doing...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 12:12 PM • 17 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 13, 2010
The news out of Haiti this morning is hellish; the Earth slips and thousands die. The early reports have the same feel as the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, in that every bulletin brings more awful news. I already find myself...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 11:51 AM • 12 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 12, 2010
In a recent New Yorker, John Cassidy spends time with a number of influential economists at the University of Chicago, home to the Chicago School and its emphasis on the productive efficiency of free markets. Obviously, the financial maelstrom of...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 12:38 PM • 19 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 11, 2010
The paperback of How We Decide is now shipping from your favorite online retailers and should be in local bookstores. To celebrate the occasion, I thought I'd repost an interview I conducted with myself when the hardcover was published last...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 11:55 AM • 10 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
January 7, 2010
I've written before about the importance of daydreaming and the so-called default, or resting state network, which seems to underlie some important features of human cognition. Instead of being shackled to our immediate surroundings and sensations, the daydreaming mind is...
Posted by Jonah Lehrer at 11:29 AM • 62 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
