How can you collect data reflecting the changes in cognitive function that appear when someone has a concussion? BrainCheck combines neuroscience with a mobile platform to gauge changes from baseline.
Why do groups of people inflict violence on unarmed neighbors? (Germany, Rwanda, Darfur, Nanking....). Here's the neuroscience point of view.
Why don't we do what we know we should? Here's a talk I gave at Stanford Medical School telling why, and what to do about it.
The days of thinking of time as a river—evenly flowing, always advancing—are over. Time perception, just like vision, is a construction of the brain.
Well before we understand how brains work, we may find ourselves able to digitally copy the brain's structure and able to download the conscious mind into a computer. What are the possibilities and challenges?
Interested in the intersection of the brain and the legal system? Watch a talk I delivered at the Royal Society for the Arts in London, entitled "The Brain and the Law".
Read a Q&A with David in New Scientist to find out his ideas and advice to young scientists.
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 would not want to be consciously aware of the intricacies of your muscle movement, but this can be less intuitive when applied to your perceptions, thoughts, and beliefs, which are also final products of the activity of billions of nerve cells.
Interested in issues of memory and the brain? Watch a clip of David on the History Channel.
From the Blog
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Why I am a Possibilian
Our ignorance of the cosmos is too vast to commit to atheism, and yet we know too much to commit to a particular religion. A third position, agnosticism, is often an uninteresting stance in which a person simply questions whether his traditional religious story is true or not true. I call myself a possibilian. Find out why.
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Synesthesia lecture at the University of Sydney
Interested in synesthesia? Watch a lecture I gave at the University of Sydney in Australia.
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Why public dissemination of science matters
Communicating science to the public can take time away from a busy research career. So why should scientists do it? I offer a manifesto of six reasons in the Journal of Neuroscience.
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Schwarzenegger on Incognito
What a wonderful shot of caffeine it was to find my childhood hero lauding my book in the New York Times.
In other news...
The secret life of the lab
Want to know more about the inner workings of a neuroscience lab? Watch a video profile of David and his students on NOVA Science Now.
SUM at the Royal Opera House
SUM has been turned into an opera at the Royal Opera House in London (Composer: Max Richter, Director: Wayne McGregor). The London Evening Standard hails the opera as "immersive, meditative and sweetly fascinating". Read about the background of the collaboration in Wired.
Book of the Week
Sum was selected as Book of the Week by both The Guardian newspaper and The Week newsmagazine.
