CogNation

Episode 20: Improving medical treatment in hearing loss: Guest Erick Gallun

October 21st, 2019  |  Season 1  |  1 hr 4 mins

audiology, audition, brain, cognition, healthcare, hearing, hearing loss, mind, va

Dr. Erick Gallun joins us today to talk about the latest in audiology research, and how it can be applied to help those with a range of hearing problems. His research has focused on rehabilitation with Veteran's Association (VA) patients. Rapid-response medical care and an understanding of how hearing is affected by brain damage are critical areas in need of research. Advances in portable computing have made widespread assessment possible, and Virtual Reality applications show promise for cost-effective and standardized assessment.

Episode 19: Concussions, TBI, and Sports

September 19th, 2019  |  Season 1  |  1 hr 29 secs

brain, cognition, concussion, football, nfl, tbi, traumatic brain injury

Joe and Rolf discuss recent evidence to help understand the relationship between playing high-impact sports and traumatic brain injuries (TBIs).

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.