Proust was a Neuroscientist

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Text Publishing Company, Feb 28, 2011 - Science - 256 pages
Is science the only path to knowledge? In this sparkling and provocative book Jonah Lehrer, author of The Decisive Moment, explains that when it comes to understanding the brain, art got there first. Taking a group of celebrated writers, painters and composers, Lehrer shows us how artists have discovered truths about the human mind - real, tangible truths - that science is only now rediscovering. We learn, for example, how Proust first revealed the fallibiilty of memory; how George Eliot understood the brain's malleable nature; how the French chef Escoffier intuited umami (the fifth taste); how Cezanne worked out the subtleties of vision; and how Virginia Woolf pierced the mystereis of consciousness. It's a riveting tale of art trumping science, again and again.

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About the author (2011)

Jonah Lehreris a Contributing Editor at Wired and the author of How We Decide, Proust Was a Neuroscientist, and Imagine: How Creativity Works. Jonah is also a frequent contributor to The New Yorker, Radiolab, and the Wall Street Journal.

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