Jonah Lehrer

New scientific research suggests that the mind of a baby is a humming, buzzing, supercharged learning machine.

Three writers discuss themes as varied as consumer electronics, neuroscience and Twitter.

Who hasn't had a New Year's resolution fail? The Takeaway's science contributor Jonah Lehrer joins the show to tell us why our brain actually prevents us from changing everything at once.

The science behind keeping resolutions -- why our brain might actually prevent us from being successful in following through.

Feeling a little sheepish because you got your sister socks, and she got you a new purple iPod? Evolution can be blamed for the guilt. Jonah Lehrer gives us the dirt on why we feel the need to give as much as we receive.

This past summer, a woman was given a life sentence for murder after prosecutors strapped her to memory-scanning electrodes and ran a test called Brain Electrical Oscillations Signature, or BEOS. Could this be coming to America anytime soon?

The Mars rover, Opportunity, has minor damage to its right front wheel and can only travel about 110 yards per day. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory says the rover may never even reach its destination. But there are enticing possibilities if it does.

A growing body of scientific work has studied how what we perceive ?- or think we perceive ?- can have less to do with reality than we think. In light of recent findings, Jonah Lehrer, editor-at-large for Seed magazine and author of 'Proust was a Neuroscientist,' says it's time to radically rethink notions like 'you get what you pay for.'

A growing number of scientists question the use of brain scanning technology as a tool to decode the inner workings of the mind.

Function MRI, or fMRI, promises to map and discover new patterns of brain activity that were previously inaccessible. But are scientists so caught up in the possibilities of modern neuroscience that they are missing something? Guest: Jonah Lehrer, author of 'Proust Was a Neuroscientist'