Brain Chemistry and Neuroscience
Most of Linden's undergraduate work was performed at University of California, Berkeley; his graduate work took place at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. He also worked briefly at Hoffmann-La Roche, in Nutley, New Jersey after receiving his doctorate. The aspect of his work that appeals to "lay people" is becoming increasingly popular, which has led to appearances around the country in which he discusses quirky facts about brain chemistry, and grants interviews on neuroscience. At a recent talk for freshmen at a liberal arts college, he proclaimed I had no idea my book would become required reading for 500 freshmen. I'm so sorry; I feel like those guys who worked on the Manhattan Project.
Newsweek ran an extensive summary of The Accidental Mind in 2007 by Sharon Begley that summarized his conclusions:
To, the brain is a 'cobbled-together mess.' Impressive in function, sure. But in its design the brain is 'quirky, inefficient and bizarre ... a weird agglomeration of ad hoc solutions that have accumulated throughout millions of years of evolutionary history.' ... More than another salvo in the battle over whether biological structures are the products of supernatural design or biological evolution ... research on our brain's primitive foundation is cracking such puzzles as why we cannot tickle ourselves, why we are driven to spin narratives even in our dreams, and why reptilian traits persist in our gray matter.In the spring of 2007 the online magazine Slate ran a roundup of interviews with the nation's top popularizers of brain science in which Linden declared, somewhat facetiously:
One area of social cognition wherein humans really excel is knowing the precise direction of another's gaze. In practical terms, this means that if you're at a conference and you try to surreptitiously flick your eyes to a colleague's name badge (or her breasts), you'll get busted every time. This knowledge should prevent me from trying to get away with these behaviors, but it doesn't."Read more about this topic: David Linden
Famous quotes containing the words brain and/or chemistry:
“I don’t know but a book in a man’s brain is better off than a book bound in calf—at any rate it is safer from criticism. And taking a book off the brain, is akin to the ticklish & dangerous business of taking an old painting off a panel—you have to scrape off the whole brain in order to get at it with due safety—& even then, the painting may not be worth the trouble.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“Science with its retorts would have put me to sleep; it was the opportunity to be ignorant that I improved. It suggested to me that there was something to be seen if one had eyes. It made a believer of me more than before. I believed that the woods were not tenantless, but choke-full of honest spirits as good as myself any day,—not an empty chamber, in which chemistry was left to work alone, but an inhabited house,—and for a few moments I enjoyed fellowship with them.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)