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, shows us that celebrated artists discovered truths-real, tangible truths- about the mind, anticipating the findings of neuroscience.

We learn how Proust first revealed the fallibility of memory, how George Eliot understood the brain's malleable nature, how the French chef Escoffier intuited umami (the fifth taste), how Cézanne worked out the subtleties of vision, and how Virginia Woolf pierced the mysteries of consciousness. It's a riveting account of the importance of art in the quest to understand the human brain.

'A slim, brainy book about the brain, modernist art and literature.' Entertainment Weekly

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About the author (2011)

Jonah Lehrer is editor-at-large for Seed Magazine and a contributing editor at NPR’S Radio Lab. He has written articles for Nature, New Scientist and the MIT Technology Review. He graduated from Columbia University in 2003 with a degree in neuroscience, and spent two years studying 20th Century Literature and Theology at Oxford University on a Rhodes Scholarship. His first book, Proust was a Neuroscientist, was published in the in 2007, with the follow-up The Decisive Moment being released in 2009. Lehrer also writes a highly regarded science blog, The Frontal Cortex.

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