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
August 2, 2006
A fascinating study on the psychological effects of war just came out in JAMA. Researchers measured the cognitive abilities of soldiers after serving in Iraq. What they found is consistent with our current models of stress, which predict that chronic stress (of the sort found in Baghdad) will…
August 1, 2006
Bruce Reed observes in Slate today that hot states tend to vote Republican. Does this mean that global warming will inevitably increase the spread of red states? Do sweltering summers cause conservative politics?
21 of the 27 states with an average temperature over the last half century of more…
August 1, 2006
The wonder of a good novel is the way it uncovers universals through particulars. Having just read Allegra Goodman's Intuition, I was struck by the way her descriptions of a fictional molecular biology lab seemed to describe every molecular biology lab. Or is it just that every lab really looks the…
August 1, 2006
After reading articles like this (or this or this or this), I can't help but wonder what's happening to the brains of Iraqis, Palestinians, Israelis and Lebanese. After all, neuroscience now knows that chronic stress is toxic. When your brain is constantly suffused with stress hormones (usually…
July 31, 2006
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 time for the next day's race. So why do bicylists…
July 29, 2006
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 started, some of Italy's best soccer players,…
July 27, 2006
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 culture and electrophysiology and…
July 26, 2006
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 for them. Their I.Q.'s averaged 77, putting them near…
July 26, 2006
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), Small Gray Matters offers a persuasive defense of this…
July 25, 2006
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. Most post-docs and grad-students I knew worked 60…
July 24, 2006
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 is well deserved - mirror neurons remain a mysterious bunch of…
July 22, 2006
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 do next year? I think one important argument…
July 20, 2006
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. Two-one-thousand: The world tunnels, the trees blur. Three-one-thousand:…
July 20, 2006
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, growing in culture.
July 19, 2006
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]
July 19, 2006
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 what you think.
July 19, 2006
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, usually associated with safety, or power and control. While many early…
July 18, 2006
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 a new EPA report. In fact, this is lower than the average fuel economy of new cars in 1987…
July 18, 2006
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 similar cap in the Antarctic, is portrayed as one…
July 18, 2006
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 inequality - women have lower average…
July 17, 2006
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 wave currently stifling most of the country. Of course, the science…
July 15, 2006
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 apple pie: Everybody likes it. At last count, over 450…
July 14, 2006
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 star of Gore's An Inconvenient Truth.
The three researchers -- Edward J. Wegman of…
July 14, 2006
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 Slims advertisements are accurate. Smoking…
July 13, 2006
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.
July 13, 2006
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. I alluded to Joan Roughgarden's…
July 12, 2006
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 even close. An 0.7 percent increase in economic output would lead to increased tax…
July 12, 2006
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 deserves a brief comment. As I wrote in Seed earlier this year,…
July 11, 2006
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…