| David Eagleman | |
|---|---|
| Born | April 1971 Albuquerque, New Mexico, U.S. |
| Nationality | American |
| Fields | Neuroscience, Writing |
| Institutions | Baylor College of Medicine, Rice University |
| Alma mater | Rice University, Baylor College of Medicine, Salk Institute |
| Known for | Time perception, synesthesia, neurolaw, Books: Sum, Incognito |
| Notable awards | Guggenheim Fellow |
David Eagleman (born April 1971) is a neuroscientist at Baylor College of Medicine, where he directs the Laboratory for Perception and Action and the Initiative on Neuroscience and Law. He is best known for his work on time perception,[1] synesthesia,[2] and neurolaw.[3] He is also a Guggenheim Fellow and a New York Times bestselling author published in 27 languages.[4][5][6][7]
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David Eagleman was born April 1971 in New Mexico to a physician father and biology teacher mother. An early experience of falling from a roof raised his interest in understanding the neural basis of time perception.[8][9] He attended the Albuquerque Academy for high school. As an undergraduate at Rice University, he majored in British and American Literature. He spent his junior year abroad at Oxford University and graduated from Rice in 1993.[10] He earned his Ph.D. in Neuroscience at Baylor College of Medicine in 1998, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship at the Salk Institute. He directs a neuroscience research laboratory at Baylor College of Medicine. He serves on the editorial boards of the scientific journals PLoS One and Journal of Vision. Eagleman sits on boards of several arts organizations and is the youngest member of the Board of Directors of the Long Now Foundation. He is a Guggenheim Fellow,[11] a Next Generation Texas Fellow,[12] a Fellow of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, a council member on the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Brain & Cognitive Sciences, and was recently voted one of Houston's Most Stylish men.[13] Italy's Style magazine named Eagleman one of the "Brainiest, Brightest Idea Guys for 2012" and featured him on the cover.[14]
Eagleman's science and writing have been profiled in such magazines as the New Yorker,[1] Texas Monthly, and Texas Observer,[15] and on such television programs as The Colbert Report[16] and Nova Science Now.[17]
Eagleman's scientific work combines psychophysical, behavioral, and computational approaches to address the relationship between the timing of perception and the timing of neural signals.[18][19][20] Areas for which he is known include temporal encoding, time warping, manipulations of the perception of causality, and time perception in high-adrenaline situations. In one experiment, he dropped himself and other volunteers from a 150 foot tower to measure time perception as they fell.[21][22] He writes that his long-range goal is "to understand how neural signals processed by different brain regions come together for a temporally unified picture of the world."[23]
Synesthesia is an unusual perceptual condition in which stimulation to one sense triggers an involuntary sensation in other senses. Eagleman is the developer of The Synesthesia Battery, a free online test by which people can determine whether they are synesthetic. By this technique he has tested and analyzed thousands of synesthetes,[24] and has written a book on synesthesia with Richard Cytowic, entitled Wednesday is Indigo Blue: Discovering the Brain of Synesthesia.[2]
Eagleman has published extensively on what visual illusions tell us about neurobiology, concentrating especially on the flash lag illusion and wagon wheel effect.
Neurolaw is an emerging field that determines how modern brain science should affect the way we make laws, punish criminals, and invent new methods for rehabilitation.[3][25][26] Eagleman is the founder and director of Baylor College of Medicine's Initiative on Neuroscience and Law.[27]
Eagleman's work of literary fiction, Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives, is an international bestseller published in 27 languages. The Observer wrote that "Sum has the unaccountable, jaw-dropping quality of genius,"[6] The Wall Street Journal called Sum "inventive and imaginative"[28] and the Los Angeles Times hailed the book as "teeming, writhing with imagination".[7] In the New York Times Book Review, Alexander McCall Smith described Sum as a "delightful, thought-provoking little collection belonging to that category of strange, unclassifiable books that will haunt the reader long after the last page has been turned. It is full of tangential insights into the human condition and poetic thought experiments... It is also full of touching moments and glorious wit of the sort one only hopes will be in copious supply on the other side."[5] Sum was chosen by Time Magazine for their 2009 Summer Reading list,[29] and selected as Book of the Week by both The Guardian[30] and The Week.[31] In September 2009, Sum was ranked by Amazon as the #2 bestselling book in the United Kingdom.[32][33] Sum was named a Book of the Year by Barnes and Noble, The Chicago Tribune, The Guardian, and The Scotsman.
In 2010 Eagleman published Why the Net Matters (Canongate Books), in which he argued that the advent of the internet mitigates some of the traditional existential threats to civilizations.[34] In keeping with the book's theme of the dematerialization of physical goods, he chose to publish the manuscript as an app for the iPad rather than a physical book. The New York Times Magazine described Why the Net Matters as a "superbook", referring to "books with so much functionality that they’re sold as apps.".[35] Stewart Brand described Why the Net Matters as a "breakthrough work". The project was longlisted for the 2011 Publishing Innovation Award by Digital Book World.[36] Eagleman's talk on the topic, entitled "Six Easy Ways to Avert the Collapse of Civilization", was voted the #8 Technology talk of 2010 by Fora.tv.
Eagleman's science book Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain is a New York Times bestseller[4] and was named a Best Book of 2011 by Amazon,[37] the Boston Globe,[38] and the Houston Chronicle.[39] Incognito was reviewed as "appealing and persuasive" by the Wall Street Journal[40] and "a shining example of lucid and easy-to-grasp science writing" by The Independent.[41] A starred review from Kirkus described it as "a book that will leave you looking at yourself--and the world--differently."[42]
Eagleman has written for The New York Times,[43] Discover Magazine,[44] Slate Magazine,[45] The Atlantic,[3] Wired,[46], The Week,[47] and New Scientist.[48] Discussing both science and literature, Eagleman appears regularly on National Public Radio in America,[49][50][51][52][53] England[54][55][56][57] and Australia.[58][59][60] As opposed to committing to strict atheism or to a particular religious position, Eagleman refers to himself as a Possibilian.[61][62][63][64]