CogNation

Episode 18: The Psychology of Religion with David Wulff

August 11th, 2019  |  Season 1  |  54 mins 16 secs

brain, cognition, david wulff, psychology, psychology of religion, religion

David Wulff, author of the comprehensive "Psychology of Religion: Classic and Contemporary", talks with us today about some of the issues that psychologists grapple with in studying religion. How can a researcher take a fair and unbiased approach to a topic so fraught with issues of personal belief and faith? How important is belief anyway -- must one sacrifice the intellect to engage in religious practice? David discusses his recent research; his measure of religious tendencies, called the "Faith Q-Sort", has been used internationally to understand how religion manifests differently across individuals

Episode 17: Stanley Milgram and Obedience to Authority

July 25th, 2019  |  Season 1  |  1 hr 11 mins

asch, authority, brain, cognition, milgram, obedience, social psychology

In the 1960s, the social psychologist Stanley Milgram performed some of the most famous experiments in psychology history, demonstrating that ordinary people could do terrible things in certain circumstances. Joe and Rolf look into the meaning of these experiments from a contemporary view. How are they holding up over 50 years later, and what else have we learned about obedience?

Episode 16: Dopamine with Michael Frank

July 3rd, 2019  |  Season 1  |  1 hr 22 mins

brain, brown university, cognition, dopamine, genetics, michael frank, motivation, neuroscience

Dr. Michael Frank of Brown University talks to us about dopamine -- how it works in the brain, what his research has done to elucidate the function of dopamine circuits, and some of the genetics behind it. A really fascinating dive into a great topic.

Episode 15: Speech Synthesis From Neural Signals

June 17th, 2019  |  Season 1  |  47 mins 13 secs

brain, cognition, language, mind, speech, speech synthesis

Joe and Rolf discuss recent research finding that recordings from the brain can be used to reconstruct the speech that is being thought about. Getting into the prospects of mind-reading and other futuristic possibilities, they discuss some of the limitations of research in the area and what makes progress so difficult.

Source material: Speech Synthesis from Neural Decoding of Spoken Sentences by G. Anumanchipalli et al. (2019)
YouTube video of the model

Episode 14: Color, Concepts, and Design: Guest Karen Schloss

June 4th, 2019  |  Season 1  |  1 hr 4 mins

brain, cognition, color, concepts, design, neuroscience, psychology, recycling

Our guest is Karen Schloss, who studies the way in which color is imbued with meaning through a lifetime of associations with objects (like bananas and fire trucks) and concepts (like love and politics). We discuss her research, including topics such as:

1. What color should recycling bins be?
2. A tool that can help designers use color-concept associations in their work
3. The "blueberry problem" (why is is that blueberries aren't very blue?)
4. How to market a blue banana
5. What color heaven and hell should be

Episode 13: Blue Light and Sleep

May 20th, 2019  |  Season 1  |  49 mins 34 secs

blue light, brain, eeg, melatonin, photosensitive retinal ganglion cells, sleep

We examine a paper that finds sleep disruption from using tablet computers (as compared to reading a book in dim light). How much should we be worried about the effects of screens on a good night's sleep?

Papers:
"Evening use of light-emitting eReaders...."
"Melanopsin: photoreceptors, physiology and potential"

There's good reason to believe that blue light is the main culprit -- recently discovered receptors in the eye that respond to blue light directly connect to brain areas implicated in sleep regulation. We lay out the case....

Episode 12: The Future of Medical Education: Guest Brent Stansfield

May 4th, 2019  |  Season 1  |  56 mins 26 secs

brain, brent stansfield, cognition, education, future, health care, medical school, medicine

Joe and Rolf talk with Brent Stansfield, who is currently the director of medical education at Wayne State University, about the future of health care and the kinds of value that doctors can provide as artificial intelligence and robotic surgery come of age.

We frame the discussion around the article "Medical Education Must Move From the Information Age to the Age of Artificial Intelligence" by Steven Wartman & Donald Combs.

Episode 11: Intelligence

April 23rd, 2019  |  Season 1  |  1 hr 11 mins

brain, cognition, history, intelligence, thinking

We talk about the history of research on intelligence. Is intelligence a real thing? What does it actually refer to, and can it be measured? Joe and Rolf discuss.

Episode 10: Augmenting the Brain

April 11th, 2019  |  Season 1  |  1 hr 4 mins

bci, brain, brain augmentation, brain enhancement, cognition, eeg, hippocampus, mind, perception, tdcs

Rolf and Joe discuss recent developments in brain augmentation technology, including transferring memory in rats, applying electrical stimulation, cognitive training, and others.

Episode 9: Self-Control as a Resource

March 31st, 2019  |  Season 1  |  1 hr 2 mins

brain, ego depletion, self-control, willpower

Is self-control something that we an think of as a resource that can be depleted and replenished? It's been a popular model in psychology for years, but it has come under question recently. We discuss "Why self-control seems like (but may not be) limited", a paper by Inzlicht and colleagues that proposes an alternate model.

Episode 8: Artificial Life

March 22nd, 2019  |  Season 1  |  54 mins 32 secs

artificial life, brain, christopher langton, cognition, evolution, life, mind

Can we create life artificially? What would that even mean? Rolf and Joe talk about the field of Artificial Life, or "A-Life", which has worked toward the goal from a number of academic disciplines for the past thirty or so years. They think about different approaches, such as software, hardware, and biological artificial life, and consider what it might take to convince us that we have created something that would be considered life.

Episode 7: Heroism and Heroic Actions: Stephanie Preston

March 13th, 2019  |  Season 1  |  56 mins 2 secs

behavior, brain, cognition, evolution, evolutionary psychology, hero, heroism, michigan, preston, psychology

What makes a hero? Guest Stephanie Preston, director of the Ecological Neuroscience Lab at the University of Michigan, takes an evolutionary look at what might underlie extraordinary acts, done at great personal risk, to help or save the life of others.

Episode 6: The Illusion of Conscious Will

March 5th, 2019  |  Season 1  |  51 mins 49 secs

cognition, daniel wegner, free will, philosophy, psychology

A discussion of Dan Wegner's "The Illusion of Conscious Will"

Episode 5: Reading the Mind with EEG: Adrian Nestor

February 22nd, 2019  |  Season 1  |  1 hr 4 mins

bci, brain, cognition, eeg, fmri, mind, perception

Dr. Adrian Nestor of the University of Toronto talks with us about the state of the art in using EEG to read our percepts and thoughts

The Frey Effect, Continued: Dr. Beatrice Golomb

February 12th, 2019  |  Season 1  |  17 mins 40 secs

brain, cuba, embassy, frey effect, neuroscience, perception, sound

Rolf interviews Dr. Beatrice Golomb as an addendum to our previous show about the Frey Effect

The Frey Effect (or, When Microwaves Attack)

February 12th, 2019  |  Season 1  |  1 hr 10 mins

brain, cuba, embassy, frey effect, neuroscience, perception, sound

Discussion of the Frey Effect, an interesting phenomenon where sound is perceived from microwave radiation, and has been suggested as the cause of mysterious afflictions at the American embassy in Cuba.