Mar 15 2018
Most of us have experienced moments of exquisite pleasure when fitting that last piece into a jigsaw puzzle, or writing that last number in a Sudoku grid. From a biological point of view, what brings us pleasure is usually related to what keeps us alive and enables us to reproduce. But the enjoyment received via …
Aug 30 2016
When I was 13, I once dreamt that a beautiful woman was sensuously stroking the palm of my hand, as a family of fridges hummed in the background. In reality, a huge, buzzing wasp had landed on my right hand. It idly walked around for a bit, and then stung me. After the shock had …
Apr 14 2016
Computer Consciousness? Last month I gave a public talk at the Salon Club in London about computer consciousness, as part of a lively evening of talks exploring on the ways that artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly encroaching on our lives. One key question that served as a foundation for the evening’s discussion was the main …
Jul 10 2015
Introduction I work from home a lot and about 20 months ago I converted my home office to one where I could stand or walk as I worked at the computer. For both health and productivity, it’s the best ergonomic decision I’ve made by quite a margin. And in this post I’d like to share …
Jan 15 2013
This is just a short post to flag up a really fascinating, and I’m sure highly entertaining, event happening in the UK at the end of January and beginning of February. The London Science Museum is hosting a small festival about those intriguing, terrifying, yet strangely popular cultural icons, the zombies. But it being the …
Sep 04 2012
My book, THE RAVENOUS BRAIN, officially comes out today (in the US at least – 13th Sep in the UK/Europe in hardback, but the Kindle edition is available everywhere now, I think). While I’m writing, I thought I’d take the opportunity to update you on some of the events surrounding the launch. The book has …
Aug 01 2012
Jonah Lehrer is one of the hottest science writers around. But this week, in a dramatic fall from grace, he resigned from his staff position at the New Yorker, and his publisher has removed his latest book, Imagine, from sale. The catalyst for these dramatic events is the fact that he fabricated quotes from Bob …
Jul 20 2012
Go to the nearest window and stare for a moment at an object outside – maybe a car if one is nearby. Now that you’re back, it’s an easy task to recall the color of the car, isn’t it? But how much of the surrounding objects were you aware of? We all feel that …
Jul 17 2012
This is the second part of my report on the recent consciousness science conference (ASSC) in Brighton, UK. After the first day, where I attended workshops on the science of hypnosis and magic, the four day conference began in earnest. Fascinating piecemeal new details about consciousness were revealed at regular intervals throughout the conference. For …
Jul 12 2012
Over the previous week I attended the annual conference for the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness (ASSC), which last year was based at the exotic location of Kyoto in Japan, but this time was hosted by my own department in Brighton, in the UK. Academic conferences are an intense week that I always …
