CogNation

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.

Brain-Computer Interfaces, part A

February 4th, 2019  |  Season 1  |  51 mins 20 secs

bci, brain, computer, neuroscience, technology

A discussion of the current state of the art of brain-computer interfaces

Brain-Computer Interfaces, part B

February 4th, 2019  |  Season 1  |  50 mins 45 secs

bci, brain, computer, neuroscience, technology

Second part on brain-computer interfaces

Episode 2: Using Virtual Reality for Therapy

January 27th, 2019  |  Season 1  |  1 hr 1 min

mental health, neuroscience, psychology, ptsd, virtual reality

Discussion of VR in therapy

Episode 1: Building machines that think like us

January 20th, 2019  |  Season 1  |  1 hr 17 mins

artificial intelligence, brains, robots

Rolf and Joe discuss the current state of the art in machine intelligence and the prospects for building machines that are as intelligent as people.