Joseph LeDoux University Professor & Henry and Lucy Moses Professor of Science, Center for Neural Science and the Department of Psychology, New York University Joseph LeDoux is the Henry and Lucy Moses Professor of Science at NYU in the Center for Neural Science. He also directs the Emotional Brain at NYU and is a professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at NYU Langone Medical School. His work is focused on the brain mechanisms of memory and emotion. LeDoux is the author of The Emotional Brain, Synaptic Self, and Anxious. The latter received the American Psychological Association William James Book Award. LeDoux has also written about the brain for the New York Times and Huffington Post. LeDoux has received a number of awards, including the Karl Spencer Lashley Award from the American Philosophical Society, the Fyssen International Prize in Cognitive Science, Jean Louis Signoret Prize of the IPSEN Foundation, the Santiago Grisolia Prize, the American Psychological Association Distinguished Scientific Contributions Award, the American Psychological Association Donald O. Hebb Award. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the New York Academy of Sciences, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a member of the National Academy of Sciences. He is also the lead singer and songwriter in the rock band, The Amygdaloids. His most recent book, The Deep History of Ourselves: The Four-Billion-Year Story of How We Got Conscious Brains, is a finalist for the 2020 Pen America EO Wilson Literary Science Writing Award. Participant In: The Topology of Fear Saturday, March 9th 1:30 - 3:30PM Past Event Watch the video » How do emotions color and shape our actions? How do we decide to take action in the midst of fear for our own lives–go to war, fight an intruder, save a person falling on subway tracks–or to ward off catastrophes such as global climate change and the irreversible loss of species that could lead to… read more » Second Annual Heavy MeNtal Variety Show Saturday, May 18th 6:30 - 8:00PM Past Event Watch the video » A night of mind, brain, and magic. The Amygdaloids will play several suites of our original songs on mind/brain topics: the mind-body problem, memory, emotion, unconscious processes, and mental disorders. Each suite will be preceded by a short (3 min) lecture on the scientific or philosophical foundations of the topic by Neuroscientist and Amygdaloid, Joseph… read more » The Amygdaloids Warburg Symposium Concert Friday, October 11th 7:00 - 7:45PM Past Event Watch the video » The Amygdaloids are a New York band made up of scientists who shed their scientific garb at night and take to the stage with songs about love and life peppered with insights drawn from research about mind and brain and mental disorders. At the Friday night concert, the group will play several suites of songs… read more » Aby Warburg: Art, Neuroscience, and Psychoanalysis: Day 2 Sunday, October 13th 9:30 - 4:15PM Past Event Watch the video [Part 1] » Watch the video [Part 2] » Watch the video [Part 3] » This two-day symposium explores Warburg’s ideas and their adumbrations, e.g., his preoccupations with – and intuitions about – memory, both in relation to different forms of artistic creation and in anticipation of concepts related to neuroplasticity and neuroesthetics; the significance and fluency of the image – its elliptical and metaphoric functions – and of affect… read more » Fear: Wherefore, Whence? Saturday, May 7, 2016 2:30 - 4:30 pm Past Event Watch the video » Someone is shouting! Ho! Do you hear? Am I howling in vain? For if one is frightened, everything makes a noise! – Sophocles, Acrisius [fragment] …the sound of a driven leaf shall put them to flight, and they shall flee as one flees from the sword, and they shall fall when none pursues. They shall stumble over… read more » How Deep Do We Go? Behavior, Mind, and The 4-Billion-Year History of Life Saturday, February 29, 2020 at 2:30pm Past Event Watch the video » The starting point of this roundtable discussion is Joseph LeDoux’s book, The Deep History of Ourselves: The Four-Billion-Year Story of How We Got Conscious Brains. LeDoux’s research on how the brain detects and responds to danger helped jumpstart and define the modern science of emotion. After three decades, he came to the realization that the commonly… read more » Emotion September 23rd, 2023 at 2:30pm EST Past Event Watch the video » What is human life without emotion? Could the “dawn of humankind” even be imagined without emotion exerting its effects right there from the start? And across the millennia emotion has forever been at the heart of most matters. Human history has been shaped by emotion and reshaped by attitudes toward emotion; a powerful human force… read more »
The Topology of Fear Saturday, March 9th 1:30 - 3:30PM Past Event Watch the video » How do emotions color and shape our actions? How do we decide to take action in the midst of fear for our own lives–go to war, fight an intruder, save a person falling on subway tracks–or to ward off catastrophes such as global climate change and the irreversible loss of species that could lead to… read more »
Second Annual Heavy MeNtal Variety Show Saturday, May 18th 6:30 - 8:00PM Past Event Watch the video » A night of mind, brain, and magic. The Amygdaloids will play several suites of our original songs on mind/brain topics: the mind-body problem, memory, emotion, unconscious processes, and mental disorders. Each suite will be preceded by a short (3 min) lecture on the scientific or philosophical foundations of the topic by Neuroscientist and Amygdaloid, Joseph… read more »
The Amygdaloids Warburg Symposium Concert Friday, October 11th 7:00 - 7:45PM Past Event Watch the video » The Amygdaloids are a New York band made up of scientists who shed their scientific garb at night and take to the stage with songs about love and life peppered with insights drawn from research about mind and brain and mental disorders. At the Friday night concert, the group will play several suites of songs… read more »
Aby Warburg: Art, Neuroscience, and Psychoanalysis: Day 2 Sunday, October 13th 9:30 - 4:15PM Past Event Watch the video [Part 1] » Watch the video [Part 2] » Watch the video [Part 3] » This two-day symposium explores Warburg’s ideas and their adumbrations, e.g., his preoccupations with – and intuitions about – memory, both in relation to different forms of artistic creation and in anticipation of concepts related to neuroplasticity and neuroesthetics; the significance and fluency of the image – its elliptical and metaphoric functions – and of affect… read more »
Fear: Wherefore, Whence? Saturday, May 7, 2016 2:30 - 4:30 pm Past Event Watch the video » Someone is shouting! Ho! Do you hear? Am I howling in vain? For if one is frightened, everything makes a noise! – Sophocles, Acrisius [fragment] …the sound of a driven leaf shall put them to flight, and they shall flee as one flees from the sword, and they shall fall when none pursues. They shall stumble over… read more »
How Deep Do We Go? Behavior, Mind, and The 4-Billion-Year History of Life Saturday, February 29, 2020 at 2:30pm Past Event Watch the video » The starting point of this roundtable discussion is Joseph LeDoux’s book, The Deep History of Ourselves: The Four-Billion-Year Story of How We Got Conscious Brains. LeDoux’s research on how the brain detects and responds to danger helped jumpstart and define the modern science of emotion. After three decades, he came to the realization that the commonly… read more »
Emotion September 23rd, 2023 at 2:30pm EST Past Event Watch the video » What is human life without emotion? Could the “dawn of humankind” even be imagined without emotion exerting its effects right there from the start? And across the millennia emotion has forever been at the heart of most matters. Human history has been shaped by emotion and reshaped by attitudes toward emotion; a powerful human force… read more »