My piece on music in Scientific American.  

                New paper in the journal Complexity on the brain-like organization of cities.  
                        LiveScience (Yahoo News), Reason, The Atlantic, Open Mag, io9,
                        Technovelgy, Digital City, ScientificBlogging, RPI press release, Reprint
                        The research was also featured on Discovery Channel's (Sept 16, 2009) Daily Planet TV show (7 min, 30 sec in).  

My Lab, My Blog, LinkedIn, Twitter, Contact

			MARK CHANGIZI is a scientist with expertise in theoretical neurobiology, vision, cognitive science, and language. Born in 1969 and raised in Fairfax, Virginia, he attended the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, and then went on to the University of Virginia for a degree in physics and mathematics, and to the University of Maryland for a PhD in math. In 2002 he won a prestigious Sloan-Swartz Fellowship at Caltech, and since 2007 he has been an assistant professor in the Department of Cognitive Science at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. His research aims to grasp the ultimate foundations underlying why we think, feel and see as we do. Focusing on "why" questions, he has made important discoveries on why we see in color, why we see illusions, why we have forward-facing eyes, why letters are shaped as they are, why the brain is organized as it is, why animals have as many limbs and fingers as they do, and why the dictionary is organized as it is.
	He has more than thirty scientific journal articles, some of which have been covered in news venues such as the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, USA Today, Time Magazine, Reuters, ABC News, Financial Times, Daily Telegraph, Scientific American, Wired, Discover Magazine and Live Science. He has written two books, THE VISION REVOLUTION (Benbella, 2009) and THE BRAIN FROM 25,000 FEET (Kluwer, 2003). He is currently wrapping up his third book, HARNESSED: How Language and Music Mimicked Nature and Turned Ape to Man. Praise for THE VISION REVOLUTION: "...the novel ideas...may have a big effect on our understanding of the human brain." -- Wall Street Journal, June 19, 2009. Book excerpt in WSJ. "Changizi's theories are appealing and logical... ...will make you wonder the next time you notice someone blush" -- Scientific American MIND, July 2009 "...surprising, overturning theories that have dominated primatology since the 1970s" -- Barnes & Noble Spotlight Review, July 13, 2009 "Changizi challenges common notions regarding sight. ...keep[s] them... dazzled." -- Publishers Weekly (starred review), May 11, 2009 The book has also been mentioned in interviews in the New York Times and Scientific American,