What is it all about, starting life over?

I've written a book called Starting Over.

The subtitle is a neuro-emotional Cajun rock and roll memoir.

So that kind of covers the whole topic that we'll be talking about.

But I grew up in South Louisiana in Cajun country.

My father was a butcher.

We were relatively comfortable people, but it was not a fancy kind of way to live.

But share with us, if you will, a little bit about how your views, based on the research, have changed over the years.

If the listener at home is somehow unfamiliar with you and your work, what is the most important context for them to understand?

Oh boy, that's, that's complicated.

Um, [clears throat] I think, um, you know, I, I, I started out from a very con- un- non-conventional, uh, perspective here.

So I had, uh, two degrees in business administration, one in business administration, one in marketing.

Um, and it was-- this was the nineteen sixties, early seventies, and it was, uh, it was not cool to be in marketing, uh, at that time.

It was like, uh, you know, the hippie revolution, and I, I wasn't much a hippie as anybody else, but I got stuck in this marketing stuff before I knew what a hippie was.

So we, um, I, I, uh, had to figure out some angle that made my, uh, life self-respecting.

[laughs]

And I'm wondering if there's any connection between that and your personal life, or if you've had moments of fear and anxiety that maybe influenced your work and your career, or even just a basic question, what led you in the direction from your roots in Louisiana to becoming a neuroscientist?

Okay, well, that may take our whole story, time of the whole story here to tell that story.

You know, when you ask about a personal experience, I always go back to one that happened when I was a very young child.

My father ran a meat market and we lived above it.

This was in Eunice, Louisiana.

Bayou country and a lot of bayous and, you know, rivers and lakes around there.

And one of the guys that worked in the market would sometimes take me fishing somewhere.

And does that relate to what sometimes we hear about the notion of neuroception? And has that happened through the five senses? Or is the nervous system itself able to sense or detect danger or fear in some way independent of a particular sense? Or is it a combination of the five senses?