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Q: When Dr. Daniel Pierce (Eric McCormack) lectures about the human brain in "Perception," is he giving actual scientific facts?

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Author: 
Adam Thomlison / TV Media

As a matter of fact, he is, but Eric McCormack is no neuroscientist. Just like the FBI officers on his show, he has help.

"Perception," the offbeat crime series now in its third season on TNT, employs real-life neuroscientist Dr. David Eagleman as its scientific adviser.

Episodes of "Perception" generally start with McCormack's character, who is himself a professor of neuroscience, giving a lecture on the brain. However, his character also helps the FBI on cases involving tricky issues of the mind, and the topics of the lectures at the beginning of each episode end up relating to that episode's case.

Eagleman said on his professional website that his job is "to suggest ideas and brainstorm scenarios with the talented stable of writers, and then to read the scripts in detail for accuracy and feedback." So he doesn't write the lectures himself, but he makes sure they are, indeed, factual.

In an interview with the public radio show "Science Friday," Eagleman said that his work on "Perception" is part of his goal to break down the walls of the academic ivory tower.

"What's lovely about it is that every week, the show gets to introduce some new issue in neuroscience, some disorder, some strange thing about memory, about face blindness, about whatever it is. I think it gives viewers a real opportunity to dig in and learn something new about science. And I'm a real believer in the endeavor of dissemination of science, the popularization of science."

TNT's dedication to the subject matter was such that it also produced a few short videos in the first season called "Inside the Mind of Perception," in which Eagleman discusses each episode's issues in more detail.

Eagleman isn't the only staffer dedicated to getting the science right on "Perception." Series creator Ken Biller said (in a different episode of "Science Friday," whose producers must love this series) that, while his first goal is to entertain, he's also "an armchair scientist," who spends a lot of his time educating himself about the issues he writes about. "I want it to feel real and interesting. And I think audiences enjoy that."

 

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