This article relies on references to primary sources or sources affiliated with the subject, rather than references from independent authors and third-party publications. Please add citations from reliable sources. (February 2011)

Neuroscience Research Australia (also known as NeuRA) is an independent medical research institute based in Sydney, Australia. Previously called the Prince of Wales Medical Research Institute, the institute relaunched as Neuroscience Research Australia on 1 June 2010.^[1],^[2] NeuRA is accredited by the National Health and Medical Research Council.^[3]

Neuroscience Research Australia is made up of approximately 260 researchers specialising in research on the brain and nervous system in health and disease.

The current executive director is Professor Peter R Schofield^[4].

Research activity[link]

NeuRA’s research activity is organised into five themes:

• Ageing and neurodegeneration: Alzheimer’s disease, frontotemporal dementia and other types of dementia, Parkinson's disease, Motor Neurone Disease, ageing research in indigenous populations, stroke rehabilitation

• Brain function and imaging: brain mapping for research and clinical use, on-site MRI scanning

• Neural injury: spinal cord injury, assessment and prevention of road trauma in children

• Mental illness: schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, depression and autism

• Sensation, movement, balance and falls: human movement, fatigue, sleep apnoea, balance and vision, neural control of muscles, falls in older adults, chronic pain

NeuRA also houses research centres, including the Brain Bank^[5] and Genetic Repositories Australia^[6].

History[link]

NeuRA was established in 1991 by Professor Ian McCloskey, Professor David Burke, Professor Simon Gandevia and Professor Erica Potter with the support of the Eastern Sydney Area Health Service (now South Eastern Sydney and Illawarra Area Health Service) and the University of New South Wales.

In 1993 the institute was established as an independent, not-for-profit company^[7] and researchers moved into buildings on the site of the old Randwick Chest Hospital, next to the Prince of Wales Hospital in Randwick. It was officially opened on 8 November 1993 by the Commonwealth Minister for Health Graham Richardson and the NSW Minister for Health Ron Phillips.

On 15 November 2000, the Premier of New South Wales, Bob Carr, officially opened the new sections of the institute.

In June 2009 the Minister for Science and Medical Research Jodi McKay opened the Prince Henry Wing extension.

In March 2010, the NSW government gave planning approval to the concept and project plans for a Neuroscience Research Precinct to be built on the existing site.^[8] Building works began on the first phase of the project in March 2010.

Future expansion[link]

The completed Neuroscience Research Precinct will provide six stories of laboratory and clinical research space, providing 25,000m2 of floor space and housing up to 700 researchers^[9].

References[link]

External links[link]

• Neuroscience Research Australia website

Jonah Lehrer talking at Pop!Tech, 2009

Jonah Lehrer (born June 25, 1981) is an American author and journalist who writes on the topics of psychology, neuroscience, and the relationship between science and the humanities. He has published three books. Simon Ings has written, "Lehrer fancies himself – and not without reason – as a sort of one-man third culture, healing the rift between sciences and humanities by communicating and contrasting their values in a way that renders them comprehensible to partisans of either camp."^[1]

Life[link]

Lehrer graduated from Columbia University in 2003 with a major in neuroscience; while an undergraduate, he examined the biological process of memory in Professor Eric Kandel's Lab.^[2] He was also editor of the Columbia Review for two years.^[2] He then studied 20th century literature and philosophy at Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar.^[3] He is a contributing editor at Wired, Scientific American Mind, National Public Radio's Radiolab, and has written for The New Yorker, Nature, Seed, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and The Boston Globe.^[4] Jonah Lehrer is also featured in brief informational sessions on the television show "Brink", on the science channel. He currently writes the "Head Case" column for The Wall Street Journal.

Books[link]

Jonah Lehrer is the author of three books: Proust Was a Neuroscientist (2007), How We Decide (2009), and Imagine: How Creativity Works (2012).

Proust Was a Neuroscientist was Lehrer's debut book; it is a collection of biographical essays on creative figures such as Paul Cezanne, Walt Whitman, Auguste Escoffier, and Marcel Proust.^[5] Lehrer argues for an intimate relationship with science and the humanities, and he holds that many discoveries of neuroscience are actually rediscoveries of insights made much earlier by various artists.^[1]

In How We Decide, Lehrer argues there are two main parts of the brain involved in decision-making, the rational and the emotional.^[6] His thesis has been called into question based on current understanding of neuroscience.^[7] On 5 February 2009, he appeared on The Colbert Report to discuss the book.^[8] Lehrer appeared a second time on 17 April 2012 to promote his newest book "Imagine: How Creativity works".

See also[link]

• Multiple discovery

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Jonah Lehrer

• Lehrer's website: "about/contact:Jonah Lehrer". http://www.jonahlehrer.com/about. 
• The Frontal Cortex Wired.com blog
• The Frontal Cortex (Archive)
• "Authors@google:Jonah Lehrer". June 11, 2008. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0InoDh5Nuc.  Videorecording of Jonah Lehrer's lecture at Google's Cambridge, MA office. Lehrer discusses his book Proust Was a Neuroscientist (2007).
• "Jonah Lehrer, Proust, and the Brain," 2008 interview by Andrea Hiott, Pulse Magazine Berlin
• 2012 radio interview (53 minutes) at The Bat Segundo Show

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David Eagleman
David Eagleman speaking at the UP Conference, 2011
Born	April 1971 Albuquerque, New Mexico, U.S.
Nationality	American
Fields	Neuroscience, Writing
Institutions	Baylor College of Medicine, Rice University
Alma mater	Rice University, Baylor College of Medicine, Salk Institute
Known for	Time perception, synesthesia, neurolaw, Books: Sum, Incognito
Notable awards	Guggenheim Fellowship

David Eagleman (born April 1971) is a neuroscientist at Baylor College of Medicine, where he directs the Laboratory for Perception and Action and the Initiative on Neuroscience and Law. He is best known for his work on time perception,^[1] synesthesia,^[2] and neurolaw.^[3] He is a Guggenheim Fellow, a council member in the World Economic Forum, and a New York Times bestselling author published in 27 languages.^[4][5][6][7]

Biography[link]

David Eagleman was born April 1971 in New Mexico to a physician father and biology teacher mother. An early experience of falling from a roof raised his interest in understanding the neural basis of time perception.^[8][9] He attended the Albuquerque Academy for high school. As an undergraduate at Rice University, he majored in British and American literature. He spent his junior year abroad at Oxford University and graduated from Rice in 1993.^[10] He earned his Ph.D. in Neuroscience at Baylor College of Medicine in 1998, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship at the Salk Institute.

Eagleman directs a neuroscience research laboratory at Baylor College of Medicine. He serves on the editorial boards of the scientific journals PLoS One and Journal of Vision. Eagleman sits on boards of several arts organizations and is the youngest member of the Board of Directors of the Long Now Foundation. He is a Guggenheim Fellow,^[11] a Next Generation Texas Fellow,^[12] a Fellow of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, a council member on the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Brain & Cognitive Sciences, and was recently voted one of Houston's Most Stylish men.^[13] Italy's Style magazine named Eagleman one of the "Brainiest, Brightest Idea Guys for 2012" and featured him on the cover.^[14]

Eagleman has been profiled in such magazines as the New Yorker,^[1] Texas Monthly, and Texas Observer,^[15] and on such television programs as The Colbert Report^[16] and Nova Science Now.^[17] Stewart Brand wrote that "David Eagleman may be the best combination of scientist and fiction-writer alive."^[18]

Scientific Specializations[link]

Time perception[link]

Eagleman's scientific work combines psychophysical, behavioral, and computational approaches to address the relationship between the timing of perception and the timing of neural signals.^[19][20][21] Areas for which he is known include temporal encoding, time warping, manipulations of the perception of causality, and time perception in high-adrenaline situations. In one experiment, he dropped himself and other volunteers from a 150 foot tower to measure time perception as they fell.^[22][23] He writes that his long-range goal is "to understand how neural signals processed by different brain regions come together for a temporally unified picture of the world."^[24]

Synesthesia[link]

Synesthesia is an unusual perceptual condition in which stimulation to one sense triggers an involuntary sensation in other senses. Eagleman is the developer of The Synesthesia Battery, a free online test by which people can determine whether they are synesthetic. By this technique he has tested and analyzed thousands of synesthetes,^[25] and has written a book on synesthesia with Richard Cytowic, entitled Wednesday is Indigo Blue: Discovering the Brain of Synesthesia.^[2] Eagleman has proposed that sensory processing disorder, a common characteristic of autism, may be a form of synesthesia ^[26]

Visual illusions[link]

Eagleman has published extensively on what visual illusions tell us about neurobiology, concentrating especially on the flash lag illusion and wagon wheel effect.

Neuroscience and the Law[link]

Neurolaw is an emerging field that determines how modern brain science should affect the way we make laws, punish criminals, and invent new methods for rehabilitation.^[3][27][28] Eagleman is the founder and director of Baylor College of Medicine's Initiative on Neuroscience and Law.^[29]

Writing[link]

Sum[link]

Eagleman's work of literary fiction, Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives, is an international bestseller published in 27 languages. The Observer wrote that "Sum has the unaccountable, jaw-dropping quality of genius,"^[6] The Wall Street Journal called Sum "inventive and imaginative"^[30] and the Los Angeles Times hailed the book as "teeming, writhing with imagination".^[7] In the New York Times Book Review, Alexander McCall Smith described Sum as a "delightful, thought-provoking little collection belonging to that category of strange, unclassifiable books that will haunt the reader long after the last page has been turned. It is full of tangential insights into the human condition and poetic thought experiments... It is also full of touching moments and glorious wit of the sort one only hopes will be in copious supply on the other side."^[5] Sum was chosen by Time Magazine for their 2009 Summer Reading list,^[31] and selected as Book of the Week by both The Guardian^[32] and The Week.^[33] In September 2009, Sum was ranked by Amazon as the #2 bestselling book in the United Kingdom.^[34][35] Sum was named a Book of the Year by Barnes and Noble, The Chicago Tribune, The Guardian, and The Scotsman.

Why the Net Matters[link]

In 2010 Eagleman published Why the Net Matters (Canongate Books), in which he argued that the advent of the internet mitigates some of the traditional existential threats to civilizations.^[36] In keeping with the book's theme of the dematerialization of physical goods, he chose to publish the manuscript as an app for the iPad rather than a physical book. The New York Times Magazine described Why the Net Matters as a "superbook", referring to "books with so much functionality that they’re sold as apps.".^[37] Stewart Brand described Why the Net Matters as a "breakthrough work". The project was longlisted for the 2011 Publishing Innovation Award by Digital Book World.^[38] Eagleman's talk on the topic, entitled "Six Easy Ways to Avert the Collapse of Civilization", was voted the #8 Technology talk of 2010 by Fora.tv.

Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain[link]

Eagleman's science book Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain is a New York Times bestseller^[4] and was named a Best Book of 2011 by Amazon,^[39] the Boston Globe,^[40] and the Houston Chronicle.^[41] Incognito was reviewed as "appealing and persuasive" by the Wall Street Journal^[42] and "a shining example of lucid and easy-to-grasp science writing" by The Independent.^[43] A starred review from Kirkus described it as "a book that will leave you looking at yourself--and the world--differently."^[44]

Other writing[link]

Eagleman writes for The New York Times,^[45] Discover Magazine,^[46] Slate Magazine,^[47] The Atlantic,^[3] Wired,^[48], The Week,^[49] and New Scientist.^[50] Discussing both science and literature, Eagleman appears regularly on National Public Radio in America,^{[51][52][53][54][55]} England^{[56][57][58][59]} and Australia.^[60][61][62] As opposed to committing to strict atheism or to a particular religious position, Eagleman refers to himself as a Possibilian.^{[63][64][65][66]}

Books by David Eagleman[link]

• Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives, Pantheon Books, February 2009. (Fiction)
• Wednesday is Indigo Blue: Discovering the Brain of Synesthesia, co-authored with Richard Cytowic, March 2009, MIT Press.
• Why the Net Matters: How the Internet will save Civilization, Canongate Books, 2010.
• Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain, Pantheon Books, 2011
• LiveWired: How the Brain Reconfigures Itself, Oxford University Press, 2012 (upcoming)
• Cognitive Neuroscience: A Principles Based Approach, textbook co-authored with Jonathan Downar, Oxford University Press, 2013 (upcoming)

External links[link]

• David Eagleman's neuroscience laboratory website
• David Eagleman's author website
• The Synesthesia Battery, an online resource for synesthesia.
• The Eagleman prize in mathematics and physics
• Video: David Eagleman speaking at PopTech
• Video: David Eagleman on "Six Easy Steps to Avert the Collapse of Civilization", Lecture at the Long Now Foundation, San Francisco, CA.
• Video: David Eagleman on "The Brain and the Law", Lecture at the Royal Society for the Arts (RSA), London, UK.
• Eagleman on the cover of Italy's Style magazine
• Video: David Eagleman on "Synesthesia: Hearing colors, tasting sounds", Lecture at the University of Sydney, Australia.
• Why I am a possibilian, David Eagleman, New Scientist, Sept 27, 2010.
• Ten Unsolved Mysteries of the Brain, David Eagleman, cover article in Discover Magazine, August 2007.

References[link]