CogNation

Episode 50: Neural Interfaces

September 20th, 2023  |  Season 3  |  31 mins 1 sec

brain, communication, mind, neural interface, neurolink, paralyzed, speech

In this half hour episode, Joe and Rolf discuss new work in neural interfaces that is helping paralyzed individuals communicate.

Episode 48: Psychedelic Science 2023

July 18th, 2023  |  Season 3  |  1 hr 35 mins

brain, cognition, conference, denver, mind, psychedelics, therapy

Joe reports from Denver from the Psychedelic Science conference

Episode 24: Childrens' Learning and Play: Guest David Sobel

January 27th, 2020  |  Season 1  |  1 hr 15 mins

causality, child, children, childrens museums, development, learning, mind, museums, parent-child interaction, parenting, philosophy, psychology, scientific research

David Sobel, a developmental psychologist from Brown University, talks to us about the importance of play in learning. He has recently been collaborating with researchers around the country to investigate how children interact with exhibits in childrens' museums. One recent finding we discuss is that parent-child interaction styles can have a strong influence on what children learn.

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.

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 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 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 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 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