Jonah Lehrer: The Surprising Benefits of Daydreaming
The New Yorker - SVA Theatre 1
Nicholson Baker received a National Book Critics Circle Award for his book "Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper," part of which first appeared in The New Yorker. He has also written eight novels, most recently "The Anthologist," and the nonfiction books "U and I: A True Story" and "Human Smoke." His fiction, essays, and reporting have appeared in The New Yorker since 1981. "Painkiller Deathstreak," his article on video games, appeared in the August 9th issue.Jaron Lanier is a computer scientist at Microsoft Research. He helped pioneer the field of virtual reality, in the nineteen-eighties, and has contributed to such diverse pursuits as surgical simulation and the study of brain evolution. In 2009, he received the Virtual Reality Career Award from I.E.E.E., the world's principal engineering society. This year, he was included in Time's list of the hundred most influential people in the world. His book, "You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto," came out in January.Jonah Lehrer is an author and journalist who writes often about neuroscience and psychology. He has published two books, "Proust Was a Neuroscientist," about the connections between science and the humanities, and "How We Decide," about the brain and decision-making. He has written for The New Yorker about the science of insight and about the psychology of delayed gratification.Elizabeth Phelps is the Silver Professor of Psychology and Neural Science at New York University. Her laboratory studies how the human brain processes emotion, particularly as it relates to learning, memory, and decision-making. She is the recipient of the James S. McDonnell Foundation's 21st Century Scientist Award and a fellowship from the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Society for Experimental Psychology.Daniel Zalewski is the features editor of The New Yorker and has contributed Profiles of Rem Koolhaas, Werner Herzog, and Ian McEwan.
