Interview with Philosopher Alva Noë (BSP 58)

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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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Show Notes and Links:

Important scientists mentioned in the interview:

  • 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.

References:

  • 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.

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How our Brain Creates Our World with Chris Frith, PhD (BSP 57)

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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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Useful Links:

Selected References:*

*These references are from Making up the Mind: How the Brain Creates Our Mental World by Chris Frith.

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Review: "Did My Neurons Make Me Do It?" (BSP 53)

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Episode 53 of the Brain Science Podcast is a discussion of Did My Neurons Make Me Do It?: Philosophical and Neurobiological Perspectives on Moral Responsibility and Free Will, by Nancey Murphy and Warren S. Brown.  This book challenges the widespread fear that neuroscience is revealing an explanation of the human mind that concludes that moral responsibility and free will are illusions created by our brains.

Instead, the authors argue that the problem is the assumption that a physicalistic/materialistic model of the mind must also be reductionist (a viewpoint that all causes are bottom-up).  In this podcast I discuss their arguments against causal reductionism and for a dynamic systems model.  We also discuss why we need to avoid brain-body dualism and recognize that our mind is more than just what our brain does. The key to preserving our intuitive sense of our selves as free agents capable of reason, moral responsibility, and free will is that the dynamic systems approach allows top-down causation, without resorting to any supernatural causes or breaking any of the know laws of the physical universe.  This is a complex topic, but I present a concise overview of the book's key ideas.

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Additional Show Notes

References:

  • Books and Ideas #12 ("The Myth of Free Will")

  • Alice Juarrero, Dynamics in Action: Intentional Behavior as a Complex System.

  • Terence Deacon, The Symbolic Species: The Co-Evolution of Language and the Brain.

  • Terrence Deacon, "Three Levels of Emergent PHenomena," in Nancy Murphy and William R. Stoeger (eds.) Evolution, and Emergence: Systems, Organisms, Persons (OUP 2007) ch 4.

  • Alwyn Scott, "The Development of Nonlinear Science", Revista del Nuovo Cimento, 27/10-11 (2004) 1-115.

  • Roger W. Sperry, "Psychology's Mentalist Paradigm and the Religion/Science Tension," American Psychologist, 43/8 (1988), 607-13.

  • Donald T. Campbell, "'Downward Causation' in Hierarchically Organized Biological Systems." in F. J. Ayala and T. Dobzhansky (eds.) Studies in the Philosophy of Biology 179-186.

  • Steven Johnson, Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software

  • Robert Van Gulick, "Who's in Charge Here? And Whose Doing All the Work?"In Heil and Mele (eds.) Mental Causation, 233-56.

  • George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought.

  • Ludwig Wiggenstein, Philosophical Investigations.

Other scientists mentioned in the episode:

  • Antonio Damasio: Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain.

  • Arthur Glenberg: interviewed in Episode 36.

  • Rolf Pfeifer: interviewed in Episode 25.

  • Leslie Brothers, Friday's Footprint: How Society Shapes the Human Mind.

  • Raymond Gibbs, Embodiment and Cognitive Science.

  • Andy Clark, Being There: Putting Brain, Body, and World Together Again.

  • Gerald M.Edelmanand Guilo Tononi, A Universe of Consciousness: How Matter Becomes Imagination.

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Send email feedback to Ginger Campbell, MD at brainsciencepodcast@gmail.com

Embodied Cognition with Art Glenberg (BSP 36)

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Episode 36 of the Brain Science Podcast is an interview with Arthur Glenberg, PhD, about embodied cognition.  Dr. Glenberg recently moved to Arizona State University, after over 30 years at the University of Wisconsin's Laboratory of Embodied Cognition.  His research focuses on the relationship between embodiment and language.  In this interview, we explore the experimental evidence for a theory of language that embraces the concept that our language abilities are actually rooted in our perceptual and motor abilities.  Dr. Glenberg also explains how his work has practical implications in helping children learn how to read.

Since Dr. Glenberg has had a long career as a working research scientist, this interview also provided an opportunity to explore how scientific hypotheses are formed and how experiments are designed to test these hypothesis.  I think this interview will give you a fascinating look into the real world of cognitive psychology.

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Links and References:

Arthur Glenberg, PhD

Other scientists mentioned in the Episode:

  • George Lakoff: pioneering linguist.

  • James Gibson: known for his ideas about affordances.William Epstein-emeritus professor at the University of Wisconsin.

  • Joseph Campos: University of California (Berkelely).

  • Amy Needham and Amanda Woodard-experiments with velcro mits and infant cognition.

  • David A Havas: graduate student and co-author with Dr. Glenberg.

  • Mike Kashak: Florida State University.

  • Mike Rinck: German co-author-see paper under Glenberg.

  • Vittorio Gallese, Dept of Neuroscience, University of Parma, Italy (where mirror neurons were discovered): extensive experimental with motor neurons in monkeys.

  • Fritz Stack (Germany): experiments showing that facial experiments affect mood and cognition.

References:

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Some Recent Research About Embodied Cognition

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There is an ongoing debate on the Brain Science Podcast Discussion Forum about whether the importance of embodiment is an essential obstacle to trying to simulate human cognition with computers.  Meanwhile, the role of embodiment in cognition continues to be a growing area of research.  I enjoyed a recent post on the Scientific American Community website entitled, Thinking with the Body, by Art Glenberg from Arizona State University.  He reviews recent research by Holt and Bellock.  The bottom line is that even when people are involved in verbal tasks, like reading sentences, their comprehension is influenced by their body knowledge of what is being described.

You can read more at Mind Matters: Neuroscience, Psychology, Psychiatry, and More.

How Philosophy of Mind Influences Artificial Intelligence

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The latest episode of Talking Robots is an interview with Inman Harvey of the University of Sussex.  He observes that when researchers attempt to build autonomous robots, their approach is strongly influenced by their philosophy of mind, even if that philosophy is only implicit.  He also points out that what he calls "good old-fashioned AI" fails to represent how brains really work.

This is a point I have emphasized repeatedly.  Inman observes that approaches liked embodied artificial intelligence (which we discussed with Rolf Pfeifer in Episode 25) are really based on a different philosophy of mind that "good old-fashioned AI."

His paper, Philosophy of Mind Using a Screwdriver, is available as a PDF.

Dr. Robert Schleip Discusses Fascia on Books and Ideas

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Books and Ideas Podcast #15 is an interview with Robert Schleip, PhD, from the University of Ulm in Germany.  Dr. Schleip is an experienced practitioner of the body work method known as Rolfing, but several years ago he went back and earned his PhD in Biology and began a second career as a research scientist.

In our interview, we discuss some of the recent discoveries that may revolutionize the way we look at the connective tissue that is commonly called fascia.  We also talk about the importance of applying the scientific method to the evaluation of alternative and complimentary healing methods (CAM).  Dr. Schleip's enthusiasm for science made this a very enjoyable interview.

References and Links:

Dr. Schleip recommends the Wikipedia entry on fascia if you would like to learn the basics.

To learn more about Dr. Schleip's work, visit the Fascia Research Project website at http://www.fasciaresearch.de/

The First International Congress International Research Congress was held in October, 2007 in Boston, MA.

You can find some of the scientists Dr. Schleip mentions this.

Click here for more references, including those written in German.

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Additional Show Notes for BSP 25

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On the last episode of the Brain Science Podcast, I promised to list previous episodes that related to the discussion of embodied artificial intelligence.  For the sake of those of you who rely on the RSS feed to get the show notes, I am going to list those below. They have also been added to the original show notes.

Related Episodes of the Brain Science Podcast::Another thing I did not get into the original notes was a reference for the pivotal paper by Rodney Brooks. Here is  that reference:

Embodied Intelligence with Rolf Pfeifer (BSP 25)

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How the Body Shapes the Way We Think, by Rolf Pfeifer and Josh Bongard

Brain Science Podcast  Episode 25 is an interview of author Rolf Pfeifer, director of the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at the University of Zurich.  The focus of our conversation was the importance of embodiment.  Brains (and intelligence) cannot be understood separate from their interaction with the body and the physical world.  Pfeifer explains how this realization has led the field of artificial intelligence away from a pure computational approach to one he calls embodied artificial intelligence.  His interview is spiced with numerous examples that demonstrate why this approach is relevant to those of us who are interested in the human brain. 

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Episode Highlights:

  • A brief overview of artificial intelligence.

  • Introduction to biorobotics.

  • Why artificial intelligence and biorobotics are relevant to understand the brain.

  • The meaning of complexity and emergence.

  • Why the close coupling of the sensory and motor systems is essential to intelligence.

  • Applying design principles to understanding intelligence.

  • Numerous examples make these potentially intimidating topics accessible to all listeners.

  • I also introduced a new way for listeners to support the Brain Science Podcast 

Related episodes of the Brain Science Podcast:

Scientists mentioned in the podcast:

Books by Rodney Brooks:

Where to learn more about Pfeifer's work:

Sandra Blakeslee (BSP 23)

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This episode is an interview with Sandra Blakeslee, co-author (with her son Matthew) of The Body Has a Mind of Its Own: How Body Maps Help You Do (almost) Everything Better, which we discussed in Episode 21.

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Show Notes

I asked Blakeslee to tell me a little bit of her background as a science writer.  She wrote for the New York Times for many years and was the co-author of both Jeff Hawkins groundbreaking book, On Intelligence, and VS Ramachandran's modern classic Phantoms in the Brain (1998), which was one of the first books to explore neuroplasticity.

In this interview, we explored the relationship between body maps and neuroplasticity, as well as questions from listeners about out of body experiences and other oddities once considered "paranormal."  We talked about how body maps are relevant to understanding why some methods of alternative healing appear to be effective.

I asked her to tell me which scientist she met made the biggest impression.  Here are a few of those she mentioned:

Blakeslee told me about some of the pioneering work that Merzenich is doing to apply his discoveries to help people, both those with disabilities and those who just want to combat aging.  You can learn more about his work at http://www.positscience.com/.

If you would like to contact Sandra Blakeslee to give her feedback or ask her questions, she has a contact form on her books website at http://www.thebodyhasamindofitsown.com/.  She is going to let me know when she gets the references posted on the site.

A review of "The Body Has a Mind of Its Own" (BSP 21)

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Featured in this episode: The Body has a Mind of Its Own: How Body Maps in Your Brain Help You Do (Almost) Everything Better (2007), by Sandra Blakeslee and Matthew Blakeslee.  (Also available on from Audible.com)

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SHOW NOTES

Topics:

  • Body maps and the role of embodiment.

  • Basic ideas about the body maps in the brain.

  • Mapping the world around us.

  • How body maps differ between species.

  • Body schema and body image.

  • The role of body maps in disease.

  • The role of belief in health and illness.

  • How body maps explain non-traditional healing methods and unusual experiences.

  • The role of motor imagery in improving motor skills.

  • Mirror Neurons and grid neurons in the hippocampus  (see more on Scholarpedia).

  • How sensation and emotions come together (the role of the insula).

Scientists mentioned in the podcast:

Other scientists mentioned in The Body has a Mind of Its Own:

Note: This list is not exhaustive.  I know I left off VS Ramachandran and several others, but those listed above did work that was addressed, directly or indirectly, in my podcast.

Brain Structures (links include diagrams of the brain):