Diego Basch

I had enjoyed Jonah Lehrer’s How We Decide so I decided to read his previous book, Proust Was a Neuroscientist.

This book is a collection of anecdotes about several artists who intuitively anticipated recent discoveries about how the brain works. The author admits to not being a scientist, but he does make an effort to try to understand the current state of neuroscience, and link ideas from artists such as Stravinsky or Cézanne to modern experiments and academic papers. These links seem a little arbitrary and far-fetched at times, but this doesn’t detract from the book. Of course Proust was not a neuroscientist, and obviously the title is not to be taken literally.

What Lehrer tries to do is to build a bridge between what he feels are two separate worlds: art and science. This is an ambitious task, and the reader may disagree with the premise. Regardless, he succeeds at covering an array of topics such as the formation of memories and their relation to smell and taste, the perception of the self, language and vision. If you are a scientist in the fields of biology or medicine you will probably be familiar with most of this research, as some of it is not cutting edge (for example, the linguistic and cognitive research of Noam Chomsky and Steven Pinker). Still, Lehrer is a very good writer and every chapter is enjoyable. I particularly liked the story of the French chef Auguste Escoffier and his pursuit of deliciousness, which ties into the discovery of monosodium glutamate (MSG) by Kikunae Ikeda in Japan.

If you are the kind of person who enjoys food for thought (almost literally in this case), I would imagine that you’d like this book too. After reading it I checked the reviews on Amazon and was surprised to see many negative reviews by people who point out factual errors, or criticize Lehrer because of his young age and purported lack of experience. Just like wine with an expensive label, I’m sure this book would have more favorable reviews if it had been written by a white-haired academician. It is clear that Lehrer is genuinely curious and obsessed with understanding the human brain, and I personally look forward to reading his next book on the subject.