Proust was a neuroscientist – Jonah Lehrer

The premise of this captivating, quirkily-titled book is that there is an intersection between science and other disciplines, and many recent scientific discoveries were borne out of intuitions from the arts, literature and music even before neuroscience was born.

The book is helpfully arranged in chapters; not all of them are equally easy to understand but the fact that each of them deals with a different topic means that this is one of those types of books where it is almost a crime not to pick a favourite.  My three personal recommendations are the chapters on Walt Whitman, Marcel Proust and the French chef Auguste Escoffier.

Lehrer explains how Walt Whitman believed that the body influences and determines the onset of emotions: it’s easy for us to think back to how often something like this can happen, for instance when the simple fact of tapping one’s fingers or legs can make us nervous, or increase an already nervous state. Another common example is how talking to other people with our arms crossed can make us less open to their points of view. Neuroscience realised this much later on, and it is now accepted that physiology determines behaviour, but it’s intriguing to think that as far back as the 19th century this idea was already on Whitman’s mind.

The idea behind the chapter on Marcel Proust is that memory is somewhat relative, as our memories are constantly modified and their details rearranged endlessly in our mind, so that when we recall an event or experience from the past we either add or take away from its emotional tapestry. Proust realised that in order to survive in our mind, memories cannot be set in stone and they necessarily have to be flexible. Recent supporting scientific evidence for this comes from the discovery that there are certain proteins in our neurones (prions) that when stimulated can activate a particular memory, and they can just as easily erase it due to their plasticity. What’s more, these proteins are extremely unstable and unpredictable, so they will alter the details of our memories over time. Again, we have all had our very own ‘madeleine’ moments, when some seemingly insignificant detail has brought to the surface a vivid memory from the past, and we have all experienced the changing nature of memory, when suddenly thinking of a past event we remember (or perhaps create from scratch?) details that had initially escaped our attention.

Finally, the chapter on Auguste Escoffier provides some food for thought, describing how he broke away from culinary tradition by realising that sensations about food are very individual and are greatly affected by the circumstances and context in which we experience them, both in the present and in the past. This is the reason food products are assessed in blind taste tests now, so that our brain won’t be tricked into judging a product according to pre-existing ideas we have about quality, price, branding and so on.

Some of the chapters contain scientific notions the average reader may not be familiar with, but on the whole the book is thoroughly enjoyable, thanks to the author’s ability to make connections between facts and theories that may at first glance seem totally unrelated. Lehrer makes you reflect on how things or ideas that may sound far-fetched and outlandish to us now could in due time go on to be proved by scientists; in short, however badly or inadequately worded, all ideas and theories potentially have a right to exist in our cultural tradition.