In May at Madison Square Garden, an unknown, unsigned rock band began to play. It was only its fourth show since forming in the fall of 2006. Granted, its last show had sold out, but that was in the basement of the Cornelia Street Cafe in New York, which holds about 30 people. The Amygdaloids were staring at a crowd of 10,000, a big leap for a band that had yet to release, well, anything. Then something phenomenal happened. In the midst of its signature song, “All in a Nut,” an inspired kid in the audience began leaping out of his seat, igniting a wave that went around the entire 200,000-square-foot arena. The band members were stunned; they had never seen anything like it.
All right, the occasion wasn’t a concert but a graduation ceremony for 10,000 students in the New York University College of Arts and Science. Still, this was no ordinary club band hired to entertain the students. The Amygdaloids are made up of four scientists from NYU whose chief singer and songwriter is Joseph LeDoux. Earlier in the evening, LeDoux had given the faculty address. Although one must ask what kind of neuroscience professor invokes Tennessee Williams and surrealist filmmaker Luis Buñuel to send a graduating class out into the world, then picks up his white Stratocaster and launches into a rock ballad about the amygdala, that almond-shaped “nut” in the brain that processes primitive emotions like fear, love, hate and anger: “Why do we feel so afraid/ Don’t have to look very far/ Don’t get stuck in a rut/ Don’t have to look very hard/ It’s all in a nut, in your brain.”
Joseph LeDoux, the Henry and Lucy Moses Professor of Science and a professor of neuroscience and psychology at New York University, brings his band to the Y on April 3.
