Starting Over

How a Cajun boy became one of the world’s leading neuroscientists—and created a musical genre that fused his science with a lifelong passion for music.

We are the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves. How these stories unfold, as much by chance as by choice, is key to maintaining our sense of self through life’s disorienting changes. Neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux is no stranger to such changes. In the remarkable life story he tells in Starting Over, his own experiences vividly and intimately illustrate how narratives, both conscious and unconscious, help us navigate the minefields of life.

Coming out of a part of Louisiana called Cajun Country with two degrees in Business from LSU, LeDoux somehow ended up with a PhD in psychology for discoveries he made about the human brain’s conscious experiences. Similar unlikely detours followed, all entailing starting over in a fundamental way. LeDoux describes how he arrived at each: his breakthrough views about emotional consciousness; coping with the death of his young son Jacob; and his graduation from playing in a band of scientists, The Amygdaloids, to writing songs for them, which led to a novel musical genre.

LeDoux came to be known for his ground-breaking research that made the cluster of neurons known as the “amygdala” synonymous with fear but came to believe that the revolution his research helped spawn had gotten the story wrong. This book explains how and why he turned against the tide.