CogNation
Discussions on the future of brain science and technology.
We found 10 episodes of CogNation with the tag “brain”.
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Episode 28: Chris Baty: National Novel Writing Month, Creativity, and Life as a Narrative
August 10th, 2020 | Season 2 | 1 hr 3 mins
baty, brain, chris baty, cognition, creative, creativity, nanowrimo, national novel writing month, novel
Chris Baty, the founder of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) talks with us about why creativity feels good, the way it can spread to other aspects of our life, and in what ways life is (or is not) like a narrative.
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Episode 27: The Connectome
May 12th, 2020 | Season 2 | 31 mins 23 secs
brain, c elegans, cognition, connectome, fruit fly, neuron, neuroscience
30 min episode
A connectome is a representation of every connection between neurons in the brain. Recent brain-slicing technology, in addition to image recognition tools, has begun to make this science-fiction idea become a reality. Rolf and Joe discuss the recent publication of the largest completed connectome to date, that of the fruit fly drosophilia. The database for the connectome is publicly available, and includes huge amounts of data about every one of the approximately 25,000 neurons mapped to date. -
Episode 26: COVID-19 and the Behavioral Immune System: Joshua Ackerman
March 24th, 2020 | Season 2 | 55 mins 35 secs
behavior, behavioral immune system, brain, cognition, corona virus, covid-19, evolutionary psychology, joshua ackerman, michigan, pandemic, psychology, social psychology
How do people behave in a pandemic? Joshua Ackerman of the University of Michigan talks about how we alter our behavior in the face of pathogens from the perspective of social and evolutionary psychology. A repertoire of responses (such as avoidance) referred to as the "behavioral immune system" is discussed as a way for humans to avoid pathogens BEFORE our biochemical immune system encounters them.
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Episode 21: Pain perception and treatment: Guest Mike Trujillo
November 3rd, 2019 | Season 1 | 1 hr 1 min
brain, hird, karuna labs, mind, pain, pain modulation, pain perception, trujillo, virtual reality
Guest Dr. Michael Trujillo of Karuna Labs talks to us about pain perception and recent research on understanding how pain works.
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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.
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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).
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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
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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?
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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.
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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