TNT's new drama: Perception

PerceptionFor the past year I have been the scientific advisor for the TNT television drama, Perception, starring Eric McCormack and Rachael Leigh Cook.

Here's the description from TNT:

In Perception, Eric McCormack plays Dr. Daniel Pierce, an eccentric neuroscience professor with paranoid schizophrenia who is recruited by the FBI to help solve complex cases. Pierce has an intimate knowledge of human behavior and a masterful understanding of the way the mind works. He also has an uncanny ability to see patterns and look past people's conscious emotions to see what lies beneath.

Pierce's mind may be brilliant, but it's also damaged. He struggles with hallucinations and paranoid delusions brought on by his schizophrenia. Oddly, Daniel considers some of his hallucinations to be a gift. They occasionally allow him to make connections that his conscious mind can’t yet process. At other times, the hallucinations become Daniel's greatest curse, leading him to behave in irrational, potentially dangerous ways.

My job is to brainstorm about possible scenarios with the talented stable of writers, and then to read the scripts in detail for accuracy.

For each episode, I also spend a minute or two speaking to the underlying neuroscientific issues: 

For more installments of Inside the Mind of Perception, see the Perception website on TNT.

From the Blog

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Newsflashes

New Yorker magazine profile

Read a profile of David in The New Yorker: The Possibilian: What a brush with death taught David Eagleman about the mysteries of time and the brain by Burkhard Bilger.
Eagleman in the New Yorker

Musician Jarvis Cocker reads from Sum

Listen to British rocker Jarvis Cocker read the story "Descent of Species" from Sum. He is one of the dozens of terrific voices who read for the audio book.

How the Internet will save civilization

David's iPad app "Why the Net Matters, or Six Ways to Avert the Collapse of Civilization" was recently called a "superbook" by the New York Times Magazine. For a taste of the argument, read David's article in WIRED or watch a video of his talk at the Long Now Foundation. Don't have an iPad? The manuscript is now available as an eBook.

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