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David Eagleman is an American neuroscientist, professor, entrepreneur, and author. He is an adjunct professor at Stanford University and serves as the director of the Center for Science and Law, a nonprofit focused around utilizing neuroscience and big data to “advance justice." He is a Guggenheim fellow; cofounded the company NeoSensory, a sensory augmentation company; and founded the company Braincheck, a platform used to assess cognitive changes caused by dementia or concussion.
Eagleman received his B.A., in British and American Literature from Rice University in 1993 and his PhD in Neuroscience from the Baylor College of Medicine in 1998. He completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Salk Institute. His doctoral thesis was entitled “Computational Properties of Extracellular Calcium Dynamics.” He published his first peer-reviewed work in 1997, and has published more than 100 pieces since.
He directed a research laboratory for 10 years at the Baylor College of Medicine and reportedly left when the college did not award him tenure. He now teaches at Stanford University as part of the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute.
His major research interest is in “how the brain constructs perception, how different brains do so differently, and how this matters for society." This includes the realms of “sensory substitution, time perception, vision, and synesthesia” as well as “the intersection of neuroscience with the legal system."
In an episode of Radiolab, he recounted that an instance of falling from a roof as a child raised his interest in understanding the neural basis of time perception:
“What happened was, the event seemed to take a very long time. I thought about whether I had time to grab for the edge of the roof, and I realized it was too late for that. Then, I was looking down at the ground as the red-brick floor was coming towards me, and I was thinking about Alice in Wonderland, how this must be what it was like for her when she fell down the rabbit hole.”
Eagleman is the Director of the Center for Science and Law, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that is using neuroscience and big data with the aim of “advancing justice.” The center’s projects include an iPad-based risk-assessment tool and a criminal records database calibrated for recidivism analysis.
He holds several patents, the earliest of which was filed in 2013, including:
Several are associated with universities while several are also affiliated with Eagleman’s company NeoSensory. The NeoSensory vest shown in his patent method and system for providing adjunct sensory information to a user was also demonstrated in the television show West World.
Eagleman has written several books focusing around cognitive neuroscience, including one work of fiction and one textbook. He also wrote and presented the PBS show “The Brain.”
