Joseph LeDoux

WORLD-RENOWNED EXPERT ON THE NEUROBIOLOGY OF FEAR AND ANXIETY,
TO DISCUSS HIS NEW BOOK ANXIOUS

NYS Writers Institute, Tuesday,September 27, 2016
4:15 p.m. Reading | Standish Room, Science Library, Uptown Campus
8:00 p.m. Reading | Recital Hall, Performing Arts Center, Uptown Campus

EVENT LISTING:
Joseph LeDoux, world-renowned expert on the neurobiology of fear and anxiety, will discuss his new book, Anxious: Using the Brain to Understand and Treat Fear and Anxiety (2015), an accessible, elegantly written guide to the science of his field,on Tuesday, September 27, 2016 at 8 p.m. in the Recital Hall, Performing Arts Center, on the University at Albany’s uptown campus. Earlier that same day at 4:15 p.m., the author will hold an informal seminar in the Standish Room, Science Library on the uptown campus. Free and open to the public, the events are sponsored by the New York State Writers Institute and the Science Library of the University at Albany Libraries.

PROFILE
Joseph LeDoux is the world’s foremost authority on the neurobiology of anxiety and fear. Writing in New York magazine, neuroscience reporter Casey Schwartz said, “If this is the age of anxiety, LeDoux is our Lewis and our Clark.” LeDoux is the author most recently of Anxious: Using the Brain to Understand and Treat Fear and Anxiety (2015), an accessible, elegantly written guide to the science of his field.

Evoking the “father of American psychology,” Nobel Prize-winning neuroscientist Eric Kandel said in advance praise, “Joseph LeDoux is the William James of our era,” and added, “This marvelous book is science at its best.”
Writing in Psychology Today, Glenn Altschuler said, “Anxious is an extraordinarily ambitious, provocative, challenging, and important book. Drawing on the latest research in neuroscience (including work in his own laboratory), LeDoux provides explanations of the origins, nature, and impact of fear and anxiety disorders. The Publishers Weekly reviewer said, “Anxious will open up new worlds of thinking and feeling,” and the Times Higher Education Literary Supplement said that readers of the book, “will start to think differently about what it means to be afraid.”

After earning degrees at Louisiana State University, LeDoux received his Ph.D. from the State University of New York at Stony Brook, where he worked with pioneering cognitive neuroscientist Michael Gazzaniga. He is Director of the Emotional Brain Institute at NYU and also serves as the Henry and Lucy Moses Professor of Science at NYU’s Center for Neural Science and Department of Psychology.

LeDoux’s previous books include The Integrated Mind (with Michael Gazzaniga, 1978), The Emotional Brain (1998), and The Synaptic Self: How Our Brains Become What We Are (2002). The reviewer for Nature called The Emotional Brain, “Highly accessible, a stimulating and thoughtful work [that] is essential reading for any serious student of human nature.” Daniel Goleman, author of the runaway bestseller Emotional Intelligence, said, “Synaptic Self represents a brilliant manifesto at the cutting edge of psychology’s evolution into a brain science. Joseph LeDoux is one of the field’s pre-eminent, most important thinkers.”

The son of a travelling rodeo bull rider, Joseph LeDoux was born and raised in the Cajun Prairie town of Eunice, Louisiana. Steeped in the “swamp pop” and Cajun musical traditions of his youth, LeDoux has also earned a measure of renown as cofounder, guitarist, and lyricist for the band, The Amygdaloids, which explores neuroscientific subjects through music. The band’s latest CD, Anxious, is a companion to his new book. The band’s earlier CD, Theory of My Mind, features the vocal talents of Grammy winner Roseanne Cash.

For additional information, contact the Writers Institute at 518-442-5620 or online at https://www.albany.edu/writers-inst