Sometimes we need to remove the romanticism from the love subject, not that it makes it any easier when love-related things don’t go the way one would want them to, but at least the next time you feel like you’re in love, and start suffering from its effects, you will also know what is really going on in your brain. Science is awesome!
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Michael Shermer says the human tendency to believe strange things — from alien abductions to dowsing rods — boils down to two of the brain’s most basic, hard-wired survival skills. He explains what they are, and how they get us into trouble.
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When Jonah Lehrer was in town to talk about his latest book, “How We Decide”, Calacademy snagged the opportunity to interview him for “Science in Action”.
He took the Visualization Studio through a tour of the brain as we make decisions whether in the cereal aisle or piloting a plane. Then the artists went to work, creating the brain visuals.
• http://www.calacademy.org/
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Jonah Lehrer is a Contributing Editor at Wired and the author of “How We Decide” and “Proust Was a Neuroscientist”. Lehrer graduated from Columbia University and studied at Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar.
He has written for The New Yorker, Nature, Seed, The Washington Post and The Boston Globe. Lehrer is also a Contributing Editor at Scientific American Mind and National Public Radio’s Radio Lab.
• http://www.jonahlehrer.com/
• http://scienceblogs.com/cortex/
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Since 1853, the California Academy of Sciences has been dedicated to exploring, explaining, and protecting the natural world. It is the only place in the world to combine an aquarium, natural history museum, and planetarium all under one living roof.