Jonah Lehrer's Blog, page 26

Empathy

John Stewart had some fun the other night mocking conservative politicians and talking heads for criticizing Obama's desire for an "empathetic" Supreme Court justice, who will make legal decisions, in part, by "identifying with people's hopes and struggles."

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First of all, I can't imagine this is good politics - do voters really want a party that brags of their c

The Blooming Self/Yo Yo Ma

The NY Times has a kind review of the Bruce Adolphe/Yo Yo Ma/Antonio Damasio performance that I was lucky enough to hear in person. (I also got to ask the collaborators a few questions afterwards, as moderator.)

Most composers would shy away from depicting the evolution of consciousness. Well, maybe not Mahler, who grappled with the afterlife in his "Resurrection" Symphony. Mr. Adolphe, who had already written two works based on Mr. Damasio's writings, plunged right in.

The result was "Self Co

Mental Exhaustion

Evan Lerner has a quite interesting article on seedmagazine.com about physical performance and exhaustion. That painful lactic acid throb? It's mostly in your head:

The finish line is in sight, but you're not going to make it. Your lungs are burning and deeply in oxygen debt. The muscle fibers in your legs have converted most of the carbohydrate supply in your body into lactic acid. This was a fine plan for generating the extra energy needed to keep you moving in the absence of adequate oxygen,

Self Comes to Mind

There's no way in hell I deserve to be on the stage at this incredible event, but I'm so honored to be included:

Yo-Yo Ma performs the world premiere of Self Comes to Mind, a musical composition by Bruce Adolphe, composer in residence at the Brain and Creativity Institute and resident lecturer of The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, based on an evocative exploration of the evolution of human consciousness written especially for this collaboration by neuroscientist Antonio Damasio, Direc

Medieval Metaphors

Over at Mind Hacks, Vaughan finds a fascinating review of recent books on the history of the senses. He highlights a short section of medieval theories of perception, which hypothesized that the eyes actively sent out "rays" that illuminated what we saw. (This view of visual sensation is what made the "evil eye" possible - people were infecting you with their sight.)

In 1492, learned debates also influenced how the world was perceived. As medical historians Nancy Siraisi and James T. McIlwain,

Cognitive Enhancement

Margaret Talbot has a thorough and thought-provoking article in the New Yorker on the potential pitfalls of "neuroenhancing drugs". At this point, enhancement essentially consists of taking uppers (Adderall, Ritalin, Provigil, etc.) to improve concentration and focus. These drugs might have fancy new brand names, but the underlying concept is as old as caffeine and nicotine, which work by tweaking our neurons (often through the activation of excitatory neurotransmitters or, as in the case of cof

Bilingual Babies

Here's a fascinating new study demonstrating that it's good to get exposed to multiple languages even as a preverbal infant:

Children exposed to bilingual input typically learn 2 languages without obvious difficulties. However, it is unclear how preverbal infants cope with the inconsistent input and how bilingualism affects early development. In 3 eye-tracking studies we show that 7-month-old infants, raised with 2 languages from birth, display improved cognitive control abilities compared with

What is it like to be a baby?

My latest article for the Boston Globe Ideas section is now online. This piece was inspired by my brand new beautiful nephew, Jude Lehrer - may this blog post increase your Google presence!

What is it like to be a baby? For centuries, this question would have seemed absurd: behind that adorable facade was a mostly empty head. A baby, after all, is missing most of the capabilities that define the human mind, such as language and the ability to reason. Rene Descartes argued that the young child w

Confabulations

Just when you thought people couldn't get any sillier or more confused, psychologists uncover yet another innate foible. This one is called "choice blindness," and it refers to the ways in which people are utterly blind to their own choices and preferences. We think we want X, but then we're given Y, and so we invent all sorts of eloquent reasons why Y is actually a much better alternative and how we wanted Y all along. (What sort of fool would choose X?)

Lars Hall and Peter Johansson explain:

Traffic

I've always been fascinated by traffic. (I grew up in LA, so I had plenty of time to indulge my interest.) City streets are a complex system in which seemingly insignificant changes - a broken street light, a stalled car, a poorly designed highway merge - can have dramatic consequences. In this sense, it's a useful metaphor for all sorts of intricate systems, from gene regulation to neural networks.

Perhaps the single greatest mystery of my childhood was this: Why do freeways get clogged when t