A six-part PBS series

David is the author and presenter of this international 6 hour series and the companion book. He poses a simple question from a neuroscientist's point of view: what does it mean to be human?

Brain and Behavior: A Cognitive Neuroscience Perspective

A comprehensive textbook highlighting the principles, discoveries, and remaining mysteries of modern cognitive neuroscience.

David Eagleman's SUM

This work of fiction is an international bestseller published in 27 languages. It has been turned into musical performances at the Sydney Opera House and the Royal Opera House in London. Learn more about it.

Neurolaw

David is founder and co-director of the Center for Science and Law, which studies how new discoveries in neuroscience can navigate the way we make laws, punish criminals, and develop rehabilitation.

Synesthesia

A person with synesthesia might feel the flavor of food on her fingertips, sense the letter J as shimmering magenta or the number 5 as emerald green, hear and taste her husband's voice as buttery golden brown. Learn more.

Eagleman - photo by Brian Goldman David Eagleman is a neuroscientist and a New York Times bestselling author. He heads the Center for Science and Law, a national non-profit institute, and serves as an adjunct professor at Stanford University. He is best known for his work on sensory substitution, time perception, brain plasticity, synesthesia, and neurolaw.

He is the writer and presenter of the international PBS series, The Brain with David Eagleman, and the author of the companion book, The Brain: The Story of You.

Beyond his 100+ academic publications, he has published many popular books. His bestselling book Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain, explores the neuroscience "under the hood" of the conscious mind: all the aspects of neural function to which we have no awareness or access. His work of fiction, SUM, is an international bestseller published in 28 languages and turned into two operas. Why the Net Matters examines what the advent of the internet means on the timescale of civilizations. The award-winning Wednesday is Indigo Blue explores the neurological condition of synesthesia, in which the senses are blended. The Runaway Species, co-authored with music composer Anthony Brandt, explores the neuroscience and behavior behind human creativity.

Eagleman is a TED speaker, a Guggenheim Fellow, a winner of the McGovern Award for Excellence in Biomedical Communication, a Next Generation Texas Fellow, Vice-Chair on the World Economic Forum's Global Agenda Council on Neuroscience & Behaviour, a research fellow in the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, Chief Scientific Advisor for the Mind Science Foundation, and a board member of The Long Now Foundation. He has served as an academic editor for several scientific journals. He was named Science Educator of the Year by the Society for Neuroscience, and was featured as one of the Brightest Idea Guys by Italy's Style magazine. He is founder of the company BrainCheck and the cofounder of the company NeoSensory. He was the scientific advisor for the television drama Perception, and has been profiled on the Colbert Report, NOVA Science Now, the New Yorker, CNN's Next List, and many other venues. He appears regularly on radio and television to discuss literature and science.

Synesthesia book wins the Montaigne Medal

Wednesday is Indigo Blue: Discovering the Brain of Synesthesia has been awarded the Montaigne Medal, Eric Hoffer Award for Books.

Why the Net Matters on BBC Today

Listen to an interview on BBC's Today Programme regarding the new iPad book Why the Net Matters.

Science Educator Award

David has won the Science Educator Award from the Society of Neuroscience.

New Scientist interview on the V.E.S.T.

Your reality need not be constrained by your biology. Read the interview here.

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From the Eagleman Blog

A note about head shape in mummies

Not too long ago, I scanned a 3,000 mummy. What can (and can't) be concluded based on his perspicuously elongated skull shape, known as dolicocephy (e

Six Easy Steps to Avert the Collapse of Civilization

Watch a talk I gave at the Long Now Foundation about my hopes that the advent of the internet will mitigate threats that brought down previo

Love Italo Calvino? Me too. Listen to a BBC Radio documentary.

I hosted a BBC radio documentary to explore the imagination of one of Italy's foremost writers, Italo Calvino.

Scanning a 3,000 year old mummy

I performed a CT scan on an Egyptian mummy, and found beautiful objects inside.

Can we produce our brains on other media?

Can we reproduce our brains on other media (say, on computers, or out of beer cans and tennis balls)?

My favorite New Yorker cartoon. Ever.

I'm a sucker for time jokes.

Profile in The New Yorker

I had the pleasure of being profiled by my favorite magazine, The New Yorker. Read the article here.

Ten books I love

I have been asked in the past to list ten books that have "inspired, moved, and enlightened" me. Here's my list:

Is Time Real?

What does it mean for time to be real? Is time the ultimate stage on which all events play?

The Brain and the Now

I recently spoke at the Long Now Foundation's 20th anniversary event.

A new map of the human brain

New paper in Nature describes the most highly detailed map of the human cortex so far.

The Mystery of Expertise

To the extent that consciousness is useful, it is useful in small quantities, and for very particular kinds of tasks. It's easy to understand why you

Learn more about the Science

Antiphospholipid Syndrome

Far to the left-field of my normal research, I'm pursuing a new hypothesis: whether there is a connection between people who get envenomated by the asp caterpillar, and the acquisition of antiphospholipid syndrome (APS)

Time perception

To understand the neural mechanisms of time perception, David's lab combines psychophysical, behavioral, and computational approaches to address the relationship between the timing of perception and the underlying neural signals.

Neurolaw

David is founder and co-director of the Center for Science and Law, which studies how new discoveries in neuroscience can navigate the way we make laws, punish criminals, and develop rehabilitation.

Synesthesia

In synesthesia, information between the senses is blended. Letters might trigger the experience of colors, or sounds the experience of taste, or many other combinations. My laboratory has tested and verified over 20,000 synesthetes, and we are working to understand how it sheds light on consciousness, from the genetics to the neural networks.

Sensory Substitution

Can sensory data be fed through unusual sensory channels? And can the brain learn to extract the meaning of such information streams? Yes and yes. Sensory substitution is a non-invasive technique for circumventing the loss of one sense by feeding its information through another channel.

Deep brain recording in humans

Deep brain stimulation (DBS) targets deep nuclei in the brain to help with Parkinsons Disease or tremor. During surgery, we have a window to measure the responses of single neurons in the human brain. While the recording electrodes are in place, we present sights and sounds to a patient while the responses of the neurons are recorded. Find out more.

Other Projects

Other projects in our lab include the use of real-time feedback neuroimaging to break drug addiction, intervention programs in high-violence neighborhoods, word aversion, illusory motion reversal, the flash lag effect, a theory of cerebellar glomeruli, extracellular calcium as a neurotransmitter, and dopamine and human decision-making. Click to learn more.