David Eagleman: Time, Perception and Synesthesia

David Eagleman is an American neuroscientist and writer 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, synesthesia, and neuro-law. After a close brush with death as a child, Eagleman began to question his assumptions about time and the brain. His experience, of time slowing down during a life threatening accident, left him feeling like Alice falling down the rabbit hole and went on to inform his life’s work.

His most recent book, the New York Times bestseller Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain, explores the neuroscience “under the hood” of the conscious mind–in other words, all the aspects of neural function to which we have no awareness or access.

Eagleman is founder of the company BrainCheck , the scientific advisor for the television drama Perception, and has been profiled on the Colbert Report, NOVA Science Now, the New Yorker, CNN’s Next List, and many other venues. He appears regularly on radio and television to discuss literature and science and you can catch his TEDx talk, “The Future of Reality.”