Jonah Lehrer Proust was a Neuroscientist
Book Review
It deals, in turn, with writers, a chef, a painter, a poet and a pianist, dissecting their artistic achievements and simultaneous neurological discoveries.
Virginia Woolf, a novelist known for her stream of con-
sciousness work Mrs. Dalloway, was constantly afflicted by psychological disor ders. Thus, she became obsessed with introspection, spending her time between afflictions writing her thoughts on the mind and self.
She discovered that there is a "self" which binds the actions, the impulses, the myriad thoughts to a conscious purpose.
As Lehrer describes, this abstraction is lately being accepted by a growing number of neuroscientists who cannot as yet get past the ultimate question of how the brain creates the mind.
Another case study, Paul Cézanne, faithfully reproduced life as it appears before interpretation by the visual cortex decades ahead of neurological studies on the topic.
Auguste Escoffier, chef extraordinaire, realized the existence of a fifth taste (apart from traditional sour, sweet, salty and bitter) now dubbed "umami" by neuroscientists, which is derived from reduced meat stock. He never stopped extolling the virtue and necessity of this taste and based nearly all of his recipes upon it.
The impetus for this book and the most fascinating case study is that of author Marcel Proust.
In his sprawling masterpiece of introspection, In Search of Lost Time, Proust came to the conclusion of the mutability of memory and the emotional connotations of smell and taste long before neuroscientists proved them experimentally. His recollections begin with the tasting of a French cookie, a madeleine, which throws his mind into an acute state of nostalgia, flooding him with recollections of his childhood.
What follows is a profound exercise in memory where Proust describes semi-autobiographical experiences. He discovers, though, that his memories are neither quite accurate nor truthful representations of the past and that they change, ever so slightly, with every remembrance.
Virginia Woolf, a novelist known for her stream of con-
sciousness work Mrs. Dalloway, was constantly afflicted by psychological disor ders. Thus, she became obsessed with introspection, spending her time between afflictions writing her thoughts on the mind and self.
She discovered that there is a "self" which binds the actions, the impulses, the myriad thoughts to a conscious purpose.
As Lehrer describes, this abstraction is lately being accepted by a growing number of neuroscientists who cannot as yet get past the ultimate question of how the brain creates the mind.
Another case study, Paul Cézanne, faithfully reproduced life as it appears before interpretation by the visual cortex decades ahead of neurological studies on the topic.
Auguste Escoffier, chef extraordinaire, realized the existence of a fifth taste (apart from traditional sour, sweet, salty and bitter) now dubbed "umami" by neuroscientists, which is derived from reduced meat stock. He never stopped extolling the virtue and necessity of this taste and based nearly all of his recipes upon it.
The impetus for this book and the most fascinating case study is that of author Marcel Proust.
In his sprawling masterpiece of introspection, In Search of Lost Time, Proust came to the conclusion of the mutability of memory and the emotional connotations of smell and taste long before neuroscientists proved them experimentally. His recollections begin with the tasting of a French cookie, a madeleine, which throws his mind into an acute state of nostalgia, flooding him with recollections of his childhood.
What follows is a profound exercise in memory where Proust describes semi-autobiographical experiences. He discovers, though, that his memories are neither quite accurate nor truthful representations of the past and that they change, ever so slightly, with every remembrance.
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