Jonah Lehrer
Jonah Lehrer is an editor at large for Seed Magazine. His first book, Proust Was A Neuroscientist, will be published by Houghton-Mifflin in 2007.
cortex
Posts by this author
December 22, 2008
Brian Knutson, a very clever neuroeconomist at Stanford, sheds light on some of the cognitive biases currently holding back the economy over at Edge.org. From the perspective of the brain, uncertainty is hell:
The brain responds to uncertain future outcomes in a specific region, and ambiguity (not…
December 19, 2008
Over at the Daily Beast, Alexandra Penney describes what it feels like to lose all of your money to a Wall Street Ponzi scheme:
Last Thursday at around 5 p.m., I had just checked on a rising cheese soufflé in my oven when my best friend called.
"Heard Madoff's been arrested," she said. "I hope it'…
December 19, 2008
Last week, Nature published an editorial arguing for the mainstream acceptance of "cognitive enhancing drugs":
Today, on university campuses around the world, students are striking deals to buy and sell prescription drugs such as Adderall and Ritalin -- not to get high, but to get higher grades, to…
December 16, 2008
When people ask for me tangible examples of how art and science can work together to discover new things - that's a theme of my first book - the first thing I mention is food. In recent years, chefs like Ferran Adria, Heston Blumenthal and Grant Achatz have demonstrated the possibilities of…
December 15, 2008
I find the epic Ponzi scheme of Bernard Madoff morbidly fascinating. He managed to lose 50 billion dollars, which can't be easy:
A busy stock-trading operation occupied the 19th floor, and the computers and paperwork of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities filled the 18th floor.
But the 17th…
December 14, 2008
Deborah Solomon and the Times Magazine were kind enough to ask me a few questions about my new book, How We Decide. You can read the interview here. And yes, I'm jumping in the photo.
December 11, 2008
In the latest New Yorker, Malcolm Gladwell has a thought-provoking article on the difficulty of figuring out what sort of person is best suited for a particular job. He begins by discussing the challenge of choosing college quarterbacks, a topic that I've written about a few times before (and cover…
December 10, 2008
Sine-Wave speech is a wonderful example of the importance of patterns when it comes to our sense of sound. When people first hear a sentence that's been artificially degraded, the sentence sounds like a sequence of "simultaneous whistles, or science fiction sounds." However, when people are first…
December 10, 2008
The pathetic behavior of the Illinois governor - his brazen attempt to sell a Senate seat - raises the larger question of power and corruption, and whether having a position of power reliably leads to unethical behavior. (My first thought, upon hearing that Blagojevich had been recorded by the Feds…
December 8, 2008
While researching this story, I came across a fascinating (and controversial) take on the "depression epidemic" called The Loss of Sadness: How Psychiatry Transformed Normal Sorrow into Depressive Disorder. It took a few months, but I've got a new interview with the authors up at Scientific…
December 5, 2008
Yawn. Just seeing that word made you more likely to open your mouth in a big inhalation, contort your face and stretch out your arms. In other words, yawning is a contagious experience.
Now it turns out that happiness is like a yawn: it easily spreads between people in social networks. Nicholas…
December 4, 2008
Nicholas Kristof has an important column on the link between iodized salt and IQ in developing countries:
Almost one-third of the world's people don't get enough iodine from food and water. The result in extreme cases is large goiters that swell their necks, or other obvious impairments such as…
December 3, 2008
If you're in the New Haven area, I'll be talking about the neuroscience behind Proust, umami and Girl Talk at Yale tomorrow at 5 PM. The talk is free and open to the public.
December 2, 2008
What would it be like to have an immaculate memory, so that every detail of life was instantly inscribed in the brain? It's actually unbearable. Here's Der Spiegel:
Price can rattle off, without hesitation, what she saw and heard on almost any given date. She remembers many early childhood…
December 2, 2008
Vaughan Bell, of Mindhacks fame, wrote a really interesting article on "post-bereavement ghosts" over at Mind Matters. I had no idea that such hallucinations were so ubiquitous:
Mourning seems to be a time when hallucinations are particularly common, to the point where feeling the presence of the…
December 1, 2008
Now that the broken windows theory of crime has been experimentally validated - disorderly streets really do make people more likely to steal - Jason Kottke wonders if the theory also applies to online spaces:
Much of the tone of discourse online is governed by the level of moderation and to what…
December 1, 2008
Cerebrum just published an interesting article on the ethical implications of using drugs to treat drug addiction. In particular, the scientists examine the benefits of naltrexone, an opioid receptor antagonist. (This means that the drug blocks receptors that normally bind opiates, like heroin.…
December 1, 2008
It's the best show on the radio* and it's all about science. If you're not listening to Radio Lab, then you're missing something quite special. The new season has just begun with a fantastic episode on "Choice," and I'm not saying it's fantastic just because it occasionally features my stammering…
November 26, 2008
Speaking of decisions, I've got to make a rather difficult one today: beer for the Thanksgiving table. I was inspired by a totally wonderful Burkhard Bilger article in the New Yorker on the rise of "extreme beer" and the sheer difficulty of being able to afford a wine that fits the varied…
November 25, 2008
The next few months are going to be full of news and riffs on my next book, How We Decide, which comes out in February. As a result, I'm trying to pace myself and limit the shameless self-promotion, at least for now. But sometimes one just can't resist! So here are some nice early reviews. Kirkus…
November 25, 2008
Lincoln Center recently featured a stage adaptation of Virginia Woolf's The Waves. Here's what Ben Brantley had to say in the Times:
Life unfolds in a series of exquisite contradictions in "Waves," a remarkable, genre-defying work from the National Theater of Great Britain that raises the bar for…
November 24, 2008
I have a feeling that this holiday season there will be even more drinking than usual, as people self-medicate with booze. Worried about your 401(k)? Have some egg nog. The good news is that there's a new studyshowing, once again, that expensive wine doesn't necessarily taste better, at least for…
November 21, 2008
I know I've written about the virtues of art-science interactions, but I never imagined that the AAAS would sponsor a "dance your dissertation" competition, and that one of the winners would feature an interpretative dance inspired by the "cerebral activation patterns induced by the inflection of…
November 21, 2008
This American Life recently featured an astonishing series of recordings from Hard Times, the radio series created by Studs Terkel. It featured a variety of American voices, from the short order cook in Arkansas to the migrant worker in Texas to the wealthy elite of Manhattan, talking about what it…
November 20, 2008
I'm a contributor to Very Short List: Science, the latest offshoot of the VSL brand. (David Dobbs is another contributor.) For those who don't know, VSL is a very short email on something interesting sent daily to your inbox. We recently featured this paper in the Science channel:
We've always…
November 19, 2008
It's one of those modern taboos: pregnant women must abstain from alcohol. Even a sip of wine in a restaurant can lead to menacing glances from passerby, as they imagine a fetus drunk on Chardonnay. According to a new study, however, the taboo has it backwards: women who drink lightly while…
November 17, 2008
A nice summary of "humaniquness," or the cognitive talents that make homo sapiens such an unprecedented species:
[Marc] Hauser describes animals as having "laser-beam" intelligence, in which each cognitive capacity is locked into a specific function. Humans, by contrast, have "floodlight"…
November 14, 2008
It's one of the more annoying side-effects of the financial collapse: instant updates of the Dow Jones Industrial Average are suddenly everywhere, popping up in the corner of cable news shows, in between weather reports on the radio, highlighted on websites, etc. It's a bizarre form of financial…
November 14, 2008
A quick programming note: I'll be in Baltimore this Sunday (11/16), giving a talk at the Walters Art Museum. The event starts at 2PM.
November 13, 2008
Tyler Cowen weighs in on the latest twist in the bailout plan, which involves funneling money to credit card companies. Tyler asks if the Feds should really be in the business of encouraging more credit card borrowing. (I've actually been enjoying getting fewer credit card offers in the mail.) His…