A Podcast that Explores how neuroscience is unraveling the mystery of how our brain makes us human
Brain Science is a monthly podcast Brain Science, hosted by Ginger Campbell, MD. We explore how recent discoveries in neuroscience are helping unravel the mystery of how our brain makes us human. The content is accessible to people of all backgrounds.
BS 212 is a free encore presentation of an interview with Thomas Metzinger, author of The Ego Tunnel. We focus on Consciousness as a biological process created by the interaction of the brain, body, and external world.
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Evan Thompson (click photo to buy BS 115 audio)
Scientific interest in the Mind and Consciousness is relatively new, but both Western and Eastern Philosophy have a long tradition of exploring these topics. In his new book Waking, Dreaming, Being: Self and Consciousness in Neuroscience, Meditation, and Philosophy, Evan Thompson explores how these diverse traditions can inform and enrich one another.
Thompson goes beyond a narrow view of consciousness, which focuses only on the waking state. Instead he considers how dreaming, lucid dreaming, and even near death experiences can advance our understanding of how our brain's generate both consciousness and our sense of Self.
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New episodes of the Brain Science Podcast are always FREE. The most recent 6 years of content is free. See the individual show notes for links the audio files.
BSP 5: Very brief introduction to Philosophy of Mind.
BSP 55: Patricia Churchland, PhD, discusses Neurophilosophy.
BSP 58: Alva Noë, PhD, discusses Out of Our Heads: Why You Are Not Your Brain, and Other Lessons from the Biology of Consciousness.
BSP 67: Thomas Metzinger discusses The Ego Tunnel: The Science of the Mind and the Myth of the Self.
BSP 73: Embodied Cognition with Lawrence Shapiro, PhD.
BSP 81: Patricia Churchland discusses Braintrust: What Neuroscience Tells Us about Morality.
BSP 89: Evan Thompson discusses Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind.
BSP 96: Robert Burton, MD discusses A Skeptic's Guide to the Mind: What Neuroscience Can and Cannot Tell Us About Ourselves.
This month's Audible recommendation: The Teenage Brain: A Neuroscientist's Survival Guide to Raising Adolescents and Young Adults byFrances E. Jensen, MD
The next episode of the Brain Science Podcast will feature Dr. Norman Doidge talking about his new book The Brain's Way of Healing: Remarkable Discoveries and Recoveries from the Frontiers of Neuroplasticity.
Reminder: the 25 most recent episodes of the Brain Science Podcast are always free, but Premium subscribers have unlimited access to all back episodes and transcripts. The Brain Science Podcast Mobile App is FREE. It is a great way to consume both free and premium content (since this will not appear in iTunes or other podcasting apps).
Please share your feedback about this episode by sending email to brainsciencepodcast@gmail.com or going to the Brain Science Podcast Discussion Forum at http://brainscienceforum.com. You can also post to our fan pages on Facebook or Google+. I am looking for help with these community pages so please email me at brainsciencepodcast@gmail.com if you are interested.
Robert Burton, MD
In On Being Certain: Believing You Are Right Even When You're Not, Robert Burton showed that the feeling of certainty, which is something we all experience, has its origin in brain processes that are both unconscious and inaccessible to consciousness . Now in his new book, A Skeptic's Guide to the Mind: What Neuroscience Can and Cannot Tell Us About Ourselves, he extends these ideas to other mental sensations such as our feeling of agency and our sense of causation. The idea that much of what our brain does is not accessible to our conscious awareness is NOT new, but Dr. Burton considers the implications for our understanding of the MIND.
When we talked recently (BSP 96), Dr. Burton explained that his new book has two main parts. In the early chapters, he extends the principles he developed in On Being Certain to other mental sensations. We tend to take things like our feeling of certainty, agency, and causation for granted, but he points out that these are generated in parts of the brain that we can neither access or control. What makes A Skeptic's Guide to the Mind stand out is that Burton then explores the implications of this reality. He argues that while we can become ever more knowledgeable about how our brain works, the MIND, which is something that we each experience subjectively, is much more elusive.
The fact that we are trying to study the MIND with the MIND has inherent limitations and I think that Dr. Burton is right when he says our response should be HUMILITY.
Premium Subscribers now have unlimited access to all old episodes and transcripts.
New episodes of the Brain Science Podcast are always FREE. All episodes posted after January 1, 2013, are free. See the individual show notes for links the audio files.
A Skeptic's Guide to the Mind: What Neuroscience Can and Cannot Tell Us About Ourselves, by Robert Burton
On Being Certain: Believing You Are Right Even When You're Not, (2008) by Robert Burton
Are You Sure? The Unconscious Origins of Certainty, by Ginger Campbell
An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, by David Hume (1748)
See the episode transcript for additional links and references.
BSP 42: A discussion of On Being Certain
BSP 43: Interview with Robert Burton about On Being Certain
BSP 67: Interview with Thomas Metzinger, author of The Ego Tunnel
BSP 85: Interview with Sebastian Seung, author of Connectome.
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