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 140 is our Eleventh Annual Review episode. We look back at the highlights from 2017 and also share a few ideas from this years annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience. Thank you for your support.
Read MoreIn part 2 or our 10 Anniversary Retrospective we consider the question What is Mind? I reflect back on books and guests who have appeared in the last 5 years, and consider how my take on this question has evolved over the 10 years I have been creating Brain Science (formerly called the Brain Science Podcast.) Listener feedback is also included.
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In this very special episode, we begin a two part celebration of the 10 year anniversary for Brain Science. The podcast began in December 2006, which makes it one of the longest running shows since the first podcasts were launched in 2004.
Ten years is a lot of ground to cover, so for this episode we are only focusing on the early years from 2006 to 2011. Learn why the podcast began and get a peek into the format changes the show has had over the years. This episode contains something that you rarely see in the show - listener feedback! You'll get to hear what listeners think about the show, how they use the show to help them with their work, and you'll even get to hear from a critic! So many of you have reached out over the years, and although there isn't room for all our feedback in this episode, please know that each and every email that has been received is appreciated!
In today's episode Dr. Campbell discusses:
how the brain makes us human is an endlessly fascinating topic
favorite shows from the first 5 years of Brain Science
BSP 47 provides the best summary of what we know about brain evolution
favorite guests from the first 5 years
some of the decisions about the podcast frequency and the reasons beind them
the book review that got the show started
the best way to access past episodes of the show
shows mentioned are tagged with the term Embodied Cognition, so search for them that way
In this show, we mentioned the best ways to listen to episodes from our first 5 years. Our episode archive is available to Premium subscribers for only $5/month. The best way to access these episodes is via the FREE Brain Science mobile app, which is available for iOS, Android, and Windows phone.
You can also support the show via Patreon.
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Dr Great Art (podcast) hosted by Mark Staff Brandl
This Week in Science with Dr. Kiki Sanford
Astronomy Cast with Dr. Pamela Gay
Bibliography of all books features on Brain Science (with Amazon and Audible links)
Full list of first 129 episodes of Brain Science
Full list of Guests who have appeared on Brain Science
Are You Sure? The Unconscious Origins of Certainty by Ginger Campbell (buy PDF)
On Being Certain: Believing You’re Right, Even When You’re Not by Dr. Robert Burton
Dragons of Eden by Carl Sagan
Part 2 of our 10th Anniversary will be posted in January 2017
Please send your feedback to brainsciencepodcast@gmail.com.
This is a brief 10 minute audio that provides information about Brain Science (formerly the Brain Science Podcast). It includes a brief introduction to the show, some tips about the website and how to support Dr. Campbell's work.
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Michal Graziano and Kevin
In his latest book Consciousness and the Social Brain Princeton neuroscientist Michael Graziano proposes a unique and compelling theory of consciousness. He proposes that the same circuits that the human brain uses to attribute awareness to others are used to model self-awareness. He emphasizes that his attention schema theory is only tentative, but it is testable and it does fit our current knowledge of brain function.
In a recent interview for the Brain Science Podcast (BSP 108), Graziano used the following clinical example to clarify his approach. A colleague had a patient who was convinced that he had a squirrel in his head. When confronted with the illogic of his claim the patient replied “Not everything can be explained by science.” In this example it is clear that the squirrel doesn’t really exist, so the question to be answered is HOW did his brain reach the conclusion that it does.
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While imagining one has a squirrel in one’s head is thankfully rare, we also know that our subjective experiences of the world are not necessarily accurate. Our perception of the world is shaped by how our brain processes the sensory inputs it receives. For example, we perceive white light as an absence of color even though in reality it consists of all wavelengths.
Perception is something our brains do constantly and which we can not consciously control. In considering awareness (and by extension consciousness) perception-like Graziano is emphasizing several important features. The most important is probably the fact that it is only “quick and dirty model” of what is really going on, which means that our intuitions about consciousness are not necessarily reliable. In fact, humans have a strong tendency to over-attribute awareness to the world around us. This is part of the social circuitry that has made us the most successful species in the earth’s history, but it can also lead to amusing results (as anyone who has interacted with Siri on an iPhone has no doubt observed).
Another implication of considering awareness as a form of social perception is that it reverses the usual approach taken to understanding consciousness. Instead of asking how a physical brain can produce something subjective and non-physical called consciousness, we ask what kind of information processing leads to the conclusion that I (or anyone else) is conscious. As Graziano points out, this is a “mechanistic” model. Not only can it be tested but it has interesting implications. Dr. Graziano concluded that one of the key implications is "that awareness and consciousness are tools for information processing, and they are mechanistically understandable, and presumably can be engineered.”
I find the attention schema theory to be very compelling. Besides being testable, it has a simple elegance that I appreciate. It also explains why most humans experience a world filled with spirits, and are utterly convinced that their own consciousness is something special and non-physical.
Since understanding consciousness is one of the deepest questions facing neuroscience, it has been explored on many previous episodes of the Brain Science Podcast. Rather than list all those episodes I want to mention just a few that I think are particularly relevant to this month’s episode.
BSP 21 and BSP 23 discuss how the brain maps the body. Understanding the concept of a body schema puts Graziano’s attention schema theory into scientific context.
In BSP 57 psychologist Chris Frith (Making up the Mind: How the Brain Creates Our Mental World) introduced the idea that our brain creates the world we experience, but that world is not necessarily an accurate representation of the physical world around us.
In BSP 67 philosopher Thomas Metzinger (The Ego Tunnel: The Science of the Mind and the Myth of the Self) considered how unusual experiences (like the out of body illusion) shed light on how our brains create the world we experience, including our experience of who we are.
Please post your comments about this episodes in the new thread on our Goodreads page at http://brainscienceforum.com.
Dr. Campbell will be speaking at The Amazing Meeting this July. This year's theme is skepticism and the brain.
Don't forget to check out listener John Richards new neuroscience glossary at http://richardsonthebrain.com.
Penny Lewis
In The Secret World of Sleep: The Surprising Science of the Mind at Rest Dr. Penelope A. Lewis provides a highly readable account of the fascinating world of sleep research. Fascinating research is being carried out with animals as varied as fruit flies and rats, as well as with humans. I was surprised to learn that most people actually find it fairly easy to fall asleep in an fMRI scanner.
I have just posted an interview with Dr. Lewis (BSP 107) that includes a discussion of the role of sleep in memory as well as interesting findings about how synapses in the brain actually change during sleep. We still don't know exactly what sleep (and dreaming) are essential, but research in this field is growing. Dr. Lewis is excited about emerging research that suggests improving slow wave sleep may significantly improve learning and memory.
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The Secret World of Sleep: The Surprising Science of the Mind at Rest by Penelope A. Lewis
Dreamland: Adventures in the Strange Science of Sleep by David K. Randall (audible link)
Dreaming: A Very Short Introduction by J. Allan Hobson
Xie L, Kang H, Xu Q, et.al. 2013. Sleep Drives Metabolite Clearance from the Adult Brain. Science 342: 373-377. DOI: 10.1126/science.1241224 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=Sleep+Drives+Metabolite+Clearance+from+the+Adult+Brain
G. Tononi and C. Cirelli, “Sleep and Synaptic Homeostatis: A Hypothesis,” Brain Res. Bull. 62 (2003): 143-150. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14638388
Bushey D, Tononi G, Cirelli C. Sleep and synaptic homeostasis: structural evidence in Drosophila. Science, 332(6037):1576-1581, 2011. [DOI: 10.1126/science.1202839]. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2715914/
See episode transcript for additional links and references.
Dr. Campbell has been invited to speak at The Amazing Meeting 2014, which will be held in Las Vegas July 10-13. This year's theme is Skepticism and The Brain. Stay tuned to learn more.
It will soon be possible to gain CE credit for selected episodes of the Brain Science Podcast.
Listener John Richards has relaunched is excellent Neuroscience Glossary at http://richardsonthebrain.com. This is a great place to learn more about terms and ideas that you hear on the Brain Science Podcast.
Please post your comments about this episode in our Goodreads Group at http://brainscienceforum.com or send email to brainsciencepodcast@gmail.com.
The Autistic Brain: Thinking Across the Spectrum by Temple Grandin (with Richard Panek), is a tremendous gift, not just to patients and their families, but also to teachers, mentors, friends, and everyone who is interested in understanding how our brains make us who we are.
I think that this is a book everyone should read because as we come to appreciate the fact that the strengths and challenges of autism occur across a broad spectrum, we may also realize that some of these issues actually affect people who aren't considered autistic. It is not the label that matters. What does matter is recognizing that each of us has his or her own strengths and weaknesses, but thanks to brain plasticity, we all have the potential to nurture our strengths and, when necessary, accommodate our weaknesses.
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The Autistic Brain: Thinking Across the Spectrum by Temple Grandin, with Richard Panek; Also available from Audible.com.
Paul Offit, MD reviews the evidence that autism is NOT caused by vaccines
Please see the episode transcript for additional links and references.
I am still trying to schedule an interview with Dr. Temple Grandin, but there is a possibility that the next episode of the Brain Science Podcast will not come out until August 2013.
The Deadline for listener submissions to Episode 100 is August 1, 2013.
Several products are not available directly on this website including the PDF version of Are You Sure? The Unconscious Origins of Certainty by Ginger Campbell, MD and a zip file contain BSP 1-10. Click here to learn more.
Be sure to sign up for the Brain Science Podcast Newsletter so that you can receive show notes automatically and NEVER miss a new episode. (But there was a glitch last month, so if you did not get the show notes for BSP 97, please click here.
Bruce Hood, PhD
The Self Illusion: How the Social Brain Creates Identity, by Bruce Hood, is a fascinating look at how our brains create both our experience of the world and our sense of being a single, coherent self. As the word "illusion" in the title indicates, neither is exactly what it seems. When I interviewed Dr. Hood (BSP 88), he explained that The Self Illusion is a broad introduction to this somewhat surprising idea. TheSelf Illusion was written with a general audience in mind. For those already familiar with the topic, he also puts a new emphasis on the role of development. All readers should come away with a new appreciation for the critical role social interactions play through out human life.
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Books and Ideas #34: Bruce Hood talks about his first book, SuperSense. (mp3)
BSP 29: Dr. Maryanne Wolf, author of Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain. (mp3)
BSP 57: Dr. Chris Frith, author of Making up the Mind: How the Brain Creates Our Mental World. (mp3)
BSP 67: Thomas Metzinger, PhD, author of The Ego Tunnel: The Science of the Mind and the Myth of the Self. (mp3)
Books and Ideas #43: Dr. Carol Tavris explains the basics of cognitive dissonance. (mp3)
BSP 72: The Neuroscience of Magic. (Listen Now)
BSP 75: Dr. David Eagleman, author of Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain. (mp3)
Books and Ideas #48: Jonathan Gottschall, author of The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human. (mp3)
SuperSense: Why We Believe in the Unbelievable, by Bruce M. Hood. (Audible link)
The Self Illusion: How the Social Brain Creates Identity, by Bruce Hood (Audible link)
Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength, by Roy F. Baumeister & John Tierney (Audible link)
Please see the FREE episode transcript for many additional references, including references to the scientific studies discussed in this podcast.
I will be in Philadelphia, PA October 16-21 to attend the AAFP annual meeting. Listeners who live in the area and physicians who are attended this meeting are invited to drop me an email if interested in getting together in person.
The latest episode of Books and Ideas is an interview with Jonathan Gottschall, author of The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human. This episode continues some of the same themes explored in BSP 88.
Upcoming episodes: Discussion of Self Comes to Mind, by Antonio Damasio, and interviews with Evan Thompson (Mind in Life) and Jaak Panksepp (The Archaeology of Mind).
Sign up for the Brain Science Podcast Newsletter: You will get the show notes automatically and never miss a new episode.
Don't forget to post your review of my eBook, Are Your Sure? The Unconscious Originis of Certainty, on Amazon.com, Goodreads.com or your favorite website. (Send me your Amazon receipt to get a free PDF.)
Connect with other BSP fans: BSP Facebook Fan Page, Google +, Discussion Forum on Goodreads.com.
Follow me on Twitter: @docartemis.
Send me feedback at brainsciencepodcast@gmail.com
I launched the Brain Science Podcast in December 2006, so to celebrate I am posting my Fifth Annual Review Episode (BSP 80). This podcast includes a review of the highlights from this year's episodes along with my reflections on what we have learned about brain health over the last few years. I also take a look ahead to 2012 when I hope to continue to produce a Brain Science Podcast every month.
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BSP 72: Stephen L. Macknik and Susana Martinez-Conde, authors of Sleights of Mind: What the Neuroscience of Magic Reveals about Our Everyday Deceptions.
Extra: Books and Ideas with Dr. Paul Offit, author of Deadly Choices: How The Anti-Vaccine Movement Threatens Us All.
BSP 73: Lawrence Shapiro, author of Embodied Cognition.
BSP 74: Olaf Sporns, author of Networks of the Brain.
BSP 75: David Eagleman, author of Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain.
BSP 76: Sian Beilock, author of Choke: What the Secrets of the Brain Reveal About Getting It Right When You Have To.
BSP 77: Fabrizio Benedetti, author of Placebo Effects and The Patient's Brain
Extra: Books and Ideas with Carol Tavris, co-author of Mistakes were Made (But Not By Me).
BSP 78: Review of Beyond Boundaries: The New Neuroscience of Connecting Brains with Machines---and How It Will Change Our Lives by Miguel Nicolelis.
BSP 79: Interview with Miguel Nicolelis.
Check out the new BSP page on Google+
We also have a BSP Fan Page on Facebook and a Discussion Forum at Goodreads.com.
Please check out the new Brain Science Podcast T-shirts.
Read episode transcripts on your iPhone, Ipad, or Android device with the BSP app.
Your iTunes reviews are greatly appreciated.
See the episode transcript for additional links and more information about 2012.
Episode 66 of the Brain Science Podcast is an interview with Randy Gallistel, PhD, Co-Director of the Rutgers Center for Cognitive Science and co-author (with Adam Philip King) of Memory and the Computational Brain: Why Cognitive Science Will Transform Neuroscience.
We discuss why read/write memory is an essential element of computation, with an emphasis on the animal experiments that support the claim that brains must possess read/write memory. This is significant because current models, such as neural nets, DO NOT incorporate read/write memory in their assumptions about how brains work. It is not necessary to have any background in information theory or computation to appreciate the experiments that are discussed in this episode.
Episode 3 and Episode 12 of the Brain Science Podcast providebackground information for this episode.
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Spikes: Exploring the Neural Code, by Fred Rieke, David Warland, Rob de Ruyter van Steveninck, William Bialek.
Memory and the Computational Brain: Why Cognitive Science Will Transform Neuroscience, by C. R. Gallistel, Adam Philip King.
Claude E. Shannon: His paper (A Mathematical Theory of Communication, Bell System Technical Journal, Vol. 27, pp. 379–423, 623–656, 1948) is a cornerstone of information theory.
Rüdiger Wehner: Swiss researcher who has studied dead reckoning in insects.
Nicky Clayton and Tony Dickinson: these researchers have performed elegant experiments that study scrub jay caching.
Christof Koch: was interviewed in Episode 22 of the Brain Science Podcast.
This was Dr. Campbell's 100th podcast (BSP 66 plus Books and Ideas 34)! How long have you been listening?
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Send feedback to gincampbell at mac dot com or leave voice mail at 205-202-0663.
Episode 65 of the Brain Science Podcast is an interview with Jaak Panksepp, PhD, author of Affective Neuroscience: The Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions. Dr. Panksepp has done pioneering work on the neural origins of emotions. In this interview, we discuss how his work challenges some of the common assumptions about emotions and some of the important implications of his discoveries. New listeners may want to go back and listen to Episode 11 for an introduction to the neuroscience of emotion.
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Affective Neuroscience: The Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions, by Jaak Panksepp.
"How to Undress the Affective Mind: An Interview with Jaak Panksepp," S. Gallagher, Journal of Consciousness Studies, Volume 15, Number 2, 2008 , pp. 89-119(31).
"Affective consciousness: Core emotional feelings in animals and humans,"J Panksepp, Consciousness and Cognition 14 (2005)30-80. Elsevier. (available on-line via ScienceDirect.com)
Visit Dr. Panksepp's faculty page for more references.
John Bowlby: studied the effects of maternal deprivation, helped develop attachment theory.
John Cacioppo: developed the concept of social neuroscience.
Antonio Damasio: neurologist and author of several books including The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness.
Walter Hess: work in the 1930's showed that stimulation of the cat hypothalamus led to anger. He shared the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1949.
Tom Insel: Director of the National Institutes for Mental Health (NIMH).
William James: early pioneer of scientific psychology. The James-Lange Theory of emotion is an outdated theory that emotion result from the brain's interpretation of signals coming from the body.
Eric Kandel: won the Nobel Prize in 2000 for his work with memory in the Aplysia.
Brian Knutson: former student of Panksepp.
Joseph LeDoux: well-known for his work with fear and memory.
Endel Tulving: memory researcher at the University of Toronto.
For all the scientists mentioned see the episode transcript.
Send feedback to brainsciencepodcast@gmail.com.
Episode 64 of the Brain Science Podcast is our Third Annual Review Episode. It includes a review of some of the major ideas we talked about in 2009 and a look ahead to what I have planned for 2010.
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Teenagers: A Natural History, by David Bainbridge (BSP 63).
Play: How It Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul, by Stuart Brown, MD (BSP 60).
Making up the Mind: How the Brain Creates Our Mental World, by Chris Frith (BSP 57).
Did My Neurons Make Me Do It?: Philosophical and Neurobiological Perspectives on Moral Responsibility and Free Will, by Nancey Murphy and Warren S. Brown (BSP 53 and BSP 62).
Out of Our Heads: Why You Are Not Your Brain, and Other Lessons from the Biology of Consciousness, by Alva Noë (BSP 58).
David Bainbridge, PhD: University Clinical Veterinary Anatomist from Cambridge University (BSP 63).
Stuart Brown, MD: retired psychiatrist and founder of the National Institute for Play (BSP 60).
Warren S. Brown, PhD: experimental psychologist from Fuller Theological Seminary (BSP 62).
Guy Caldwell, PhD: molecular biologist from the University of Alabama (BSP 59).
Patricia Churchland, PhD: neurophilosopher from University of California at San Diego (BSP 55).
Chris Frith, PhD: neuropsychologist from University College London (BSP 57).
Allan Jones, PhD: Chief Science Officer at the Allen Institute for Brain Research (BSP 61).
Eve Marder, PhD: neuroscientist from Brandeis University (BSP 56).
Michael Merzenich, PhD pioneer in neuroplasticity (BSP 54).
Alva Noë, Phd: philosopher from the University of California (BSP 58)
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Episode 63 of the Brain Science Podcast is an interview with David Bainbridge, author of Teenagers: A Natural History. Our focus is on how the brain changes during the teenage years. Bainbridge teaches veterinary anatomy and reproductive biology at Cambridge University and has published several other popular science books, including Beyond the Zonules of Zinn: A Fantastic Journey Through Your Brain , which I discussed back in Episode 32.
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David Bainbridge's Home page.
Teenagers: A Natural History, by David Bainbridge.
Beyond the Zonules of Zinn: A Fantastic Journey Through Your Brain, by David Bainbridge.
Episode 32: Introduction to Neuroanatomy based on Beyond the Zonules of Zinn by David Bainbridge.
Send feedback to gincampbell at brainsciencepodcast@gmail.com.
Episode 62 of the Brain Science Podcast is an interview with Warren Brown, PhD, co-author (with Nancey Murphy) of Did My Neurons Make Me Do It?: Philosophical and Neurobiological Perspectives on Moral Responsibility and Free Will. This book was discussed in detail back in Episode 53, but this interview gave me a chance to discuss some of the book's key ideas with Dr. Brown. We focused on why a non-reductive approach is needed in order to formulate ideas about moral responsibility that are consistent with our current neurobiological understanding of the mind.
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Did My Neurons Make Me Do It?: Philosophical and Neurobiological Perspectives on Moral Responsibility and Free Will, by Nancey Murphy and Warren S. Brown.
Episode 53 of the Brain Science Podcast: a detailed discussion of Did My Neurons Make Me Do It?
Tom Clark's review of Did My Neurons Make Me Do It?
Episode 30 of Books and Ideas: Dr. Campbell interviews Tom Clark about Naturalism and Did My Neurons Make Me Do It?
"Neuroscience and the Soul," letter in Science 2/27/09 Vol. 323, page 1168 (available on-line to AAAS members)
Additional References are included in the episode transcript.
In Episode 60 of the Brain Science Podcast, Ginger Campbell, MD, interviews Dr. Stuart Brown, author of Play: How It Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul. Our focus is on the importance of play for normal mental development and psychological health. We also explore the importance of play in adults.
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Anthony Pellegrini, PhD (University of Minnesota): Studies rough and tumble play.
Brian Sutton-Smith, PhD (Strong Museum of Play, NY): studies the storytelling aspects of play.
John Ratey, MD (Harvard Medical School): author of Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain.
Sergio Pellis, PhD (Canadian Centre for Behavioral Neuroscience): has studied rough and tumble play in mice and rats for many years.
Marian C Diamond, PhD (University of California-Berkeley): pioneer in the study of effects of enrichment on the mammalian brain. Recent Video.
Richard Feynman, PhD (1918-1988): Nobel physicist who is also remembered for finding the cause of the Challenger disaster. (see the video)
Roger Guillimen, PhD (The Salk Institute): won the 1977 Nobel Prize in Medicine for "discoveries concerning the peptide hormone production of the brain."
Play: How It Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul ,by Stuart Brown, MD with Christopher Vaughn
A Nation of Wimps: The High Cost of Invasive Parenting, by Hara Estroff Marano
The Gift of Play: Why Adult Women Stop Playing And How To Start Again, by Barbara Brannen
Exuberant Animal: The Power of Health, Play, and Joyfill Movement, by Frank Forenich
Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain, by John J. Ratey
Send email to Dr. Campbell at brainsciencepodcast@gmail.com.
Episode 58 of the Brain Science Podcast is an interview with philosopher, Alva Noë, whose book, Out of Our Heads: Why You Are Not Your Brain, and Other Lessons from the Biology of Consciousness, argues persuasively that our minds are MORE than just our brains. He says that "the brain is necessary but not sufficient" to create the mind.
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Alva Noe (University of California, Berkeley).
Out of Our Heads: Why You Are Not Your Brain, and Other Lessons from the Biology of Consciousness, by Alva Noé.
Paul Bach-y-Rita: pioneering studies in sensory substitution using tactile stimuli to substitute for vision.
Held and Hein: experiments with cats showing that development of normal vision requires motor-sensory feedback.
Brain Mechanisms in Sensory Substitution by Paul Bach-y-Rita, 1972.
Bach-y-Rita, P "Tactile-Vision Substitution: past and future", International Journal of Neuroscience 19, nos. 1-4, 29-36, 1983.
Held, R and Hein, "Movement-produced stimulation in the development of visually guided behavior." Journal of Comparative and Physiological Psychology. 56(5), 872-876, 1963.
Held, R. "Plasticity in sensory-motor systems." Scientific American. 213(5) 84-91, 1965.
Special thanks to Diane Jacobs, Jenine John and Lori Wolfson for transcribing all the episodes of the Brain Science Podcast.
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Please send your feedback to brainsciencepodcast@gmail.com.
Episode 57 of the Brain Science Podcast is an interview with neuropsychologist, Dr. Chris Frith, author of Making up the Mind: How the Brain Creates Our Mental World. Our brain processes information about the world outside us (via our senses) in the same way that it processes information from within our bodies and from our own mental world. In this interview. Dr. Frith and I explore the implications from recent discoveries about how our brain generates our mental world.
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Chris Frith, PhD: University College London Wellcome Trust Center for Neuroimaging.
Necker cube: a visual illusion that shows that some visual processing can not be changed by top-down feedback.
PubMed: a public service of the US National Library of Medicine and the National Institutes of Health.
Bayes, T (1763). “An essay toward solving a problem in the doctrine of chance.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, 53, 470-418.
Blakemore, SJ, Wolpert DM, and Frith, CD (1990) Central Cancellation of self produced tickle sensation. Nature Neuroscience, 1(7), 635-640.
Botvinick, M and Cohen, J (1998) Rubber hands "feel" touch that the eyes see. Nature, 391(6669), 756.
Kilner, JM, Paulignan, Y, and Blakemore, SJ, (2003) An interference effect of observed biological movement on action.Current Biology, 13(6), 522-525.
Rizzolatti, G and Craighero, L (2004). The mirror-neuron system. Annual Review of Neuroscience, 27, 169-192.
Wicker, B, Keysers, C, Plaily,J, Royet, JP, Galese, V, and Rizzolatti, G (2003). Both of us disgusted in My insula: The common neural basis of seeing and feeling disgust.Neuron. 40(3), 655-664.
Wegner, D (2003). The Illusion of Conscious Will, MIT Press.
Wegner, DM, Fuller, VA and Sparrow, B. (2003) Clever hands: Uncontrolled intelligence in facilitated communication. Journal of Personal Social Psychology, 85(1), 5-19.
*These references are from Making up the Mind: How the Brain Creates Our Mental World by Chris Frith.
Send feedback to brainsciencepodcast@gmail.com.
Episode 56 of the Brain Science Podcast is an interview with neuroscientist, Eve Marder, PhD. Dr. Marder has spent 35 years studying the somatogastric ganglion of the lobster. In this interview we talk about how she got into neuroscience during its early days, her recent tenure as president of the Society for Neuroscience, and how some of her key discoveries have implications for studying more complex nervous systems.
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Gina Turrigiano (synaptic scaling).
Brain Awareness Week.
Wikipedia links: Eve Marder, central pattern generator.
The Practical Psychiatrist has chosen the Brain Science Podcast for its semi-annual Community Service Award in Mental Health.
Episode 55 of the Brain Science Podcast is an interview with highly respected philosopher Patricia Churchland. Churchland is the author of Neurophilosophy and Brain-Wise. She is currently on the faculty of the University of California at San Diego, and she was a featured speaker at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in 2008.
In this interview, we talked about neurophilosophy, which is an approach to philosophy of mind that gives high priority to incorporating the empiric findings of neuroscience. We also talk about the evolving relationship between philosophy and neuroscience. Churchland shares her enthusiasm for how the discoveries of neuroscience are changing the way we see ourselves as human beings. We also talked a little about the issues of reductionism that I first brought up in Episode 53.
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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.
Brain-Wise: Studies in Neurophilosophy, by Patricia Smith Churchland.
Neurophilosophy: Toward a Unified Science of the Mind-Brain, by Patricia Smith Churchland.
Supersizing the Mind: Embodiment, Action, and Cognitive Extension, by Andy Clark.
Liars, Lovers, and Heroes: What the New Brain Science Reveals About How We Become Who We Are, by Steven R. Quartz andTerrence J. Sejnowski.
The Really Hard Problem: Meaning in a Material World, by Owen J. Flanagan.
Freedom Evolves, by Daniel C. Dennett.
Episode 5: Introduction to philosophy of mind and the question of consciousnes.
Episode 22: Interview with Christof Koch about consciousness.
Episode 53: Discussion of Did My Neurons Make Me Do It? a defense of free will.
Episode 32 of the Brain Science Podcast is a whirlwind (55 minute) tour of brain anatomy. It is based on David Bainbridge's new book: Beyond the Zonules of Zinn: A Fantastic Journey Through Your Brain (2008). Click here for some of the key illustrations from the book. I want to thank David for sharing these images, and I encourage everyone to read the book.
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