CURRENT MISSION

Neuroscience and fiction - separately and together!

ABOUT ME

I am an itinerant neuroscientist, originally from New England, now in St. Louis. By day I study how the brain controls movement, including the mysteries of handedness, and how amputees' brains change after their injuries. By night I am a nascent (but published!) author of speculative fiction.

PHILOSOPHY

I've come to learn -- from life and from neuroscience -- that people are messy things. We strive for a consistent internal narrative and identity, yet these are only a fraction of our minds and brains. We contradict ourselves; we intend to do one thing, then we do another. Our memories are just as shoddy and self-invented as our selves. Humility is always called for.

Buuuuuut, if you want a pretentious answer, my philosophy could instead be: "Be the person you want to be, or die trying."

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

HOW I PARTICIPATE IN COUCHSURFING

Brand new couchsurfer! I've helped host one person, and looking forwards to more, both traveling and hosting.

Actually, I can't host anymore, because I have a tenant while my wife is on Mars. Totally unfair to the tenant to bring folks in for free...

Interests

Hiking, skiing, biking, reading, writing... and, of course, brains. Human brains, monkey brains, other acts of devious science.

• writing
• reading
• traveling
• cycling
• hiking
• skiing
• neuroscience
• science

Music, Movies, and Books

I am a pretty large nerd, so my fiction tastes are slanted heavily towards science fiction and fantasy. Favorites include Michael Swanwick, Maria Doria Russell, Haruki Murakami, Michael Chabon, Elizabeth Bear.

I don't see a ton of movies, but some recent favorites among the weird-and-interesting category: Cosmopolis, Under the Skin, Jodorowsky's Dune, Upstream Color. I like more regular-brow stuff too (from Avengers to Inception to Wes Anderson), but the weird stuff is more conversation-worthy!

For music, I love a lot of indie rock, folk, some pop. Favorites include Frightened Rabbit, Anais Mitchell, Vampire Weekend, Dan Bern, The National, Neko Case, Vienna Teng, Gregory Alan Isakov, etc etc etc. But my "what I enjoy" list is much much broader than this "favorites" list.

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

I have molded white-hot glass, a few inches of wooden paddle or luminous iron between the glass and my hands.

I have climbed the rocky cinder cone island in the middle of Crater Lake... and up there, unexpectedly met a highschool classmate from the other side of the country.

I have made cyborg monkeys. No joke.