The 鈥渂eat generation鈥� of the 1950s and early 1960s 鈥� those Chianti-swilling iconoclasts with a passion for highly individual art, music and writing 鈥� still influences scores of authors and musicians. One of them is neural scientist Joseph LeDoux, Henry and Lucy Moses Professor of Science at New York University. Attending a recent beat festival at the Knitting Factory in New York, and watching a solo performance by singer-songwriter Graham Parker, got him thinking about the beats again, so he picked up a copy of Jack Kerouac鈥檚 On the Road (Penguin, 2000).
LeDoux is also ploughing through Problems in Personal Identity by James Baillie (Paragon, 1992). It鈥檚 relevant, he says, to a topic he鈥檚 interested in: the self. LeDoux鈥檚 book, Synaptic Self (Viking), tackles this topic and a New York Academy of Science conference that LeDoux has organised explores it further: 鈥淭he Self: From Soul to Brain鈥� runs from 26 to 28 September.