CogNation

Episode 42: The Science of Sleep with Dr. Aric Prather

November 28th, 2022  |  Season 3  |  1 hr 13 mins

aric prather, brain, cbt-i, cognition, cognitive behavioral therapy, neuroscience, sleep, sleep prescription, stress

Joe and Rolf talk to Dr. Aric Prather, a clinical psychiatrist at UCSF and author of the new book "The Sleep Prescription: Seven Days to Unlocking Your Best Rest" about why sleep is important, the relationship of stress to sleep, and how to tune your body and environment to get a great night's sleep.

Episode 40: Embodied Cognition

July 23rd, 2022  |  Season 3  |  56 mins 51 secs

brain, cognition, embodied cognition, learning, neuroscience, pedagogy, philosophy, teaching

We talk with Dr. Sheila Macrine and Dr. Jennifer Fugate about their new edited volume "Movement Matters: How Embodied Cognition Informs Teaching and Learning", just published with MIT Press.

Episode 38: Flawless Predictions for 2022

January 14th, 2022  |  Season 2  |  41 mins 43 secs

2022, cognition, future, neuroscience, predictions, technology

Joe and Rolf once again scry the future with bold and entirely accurate predictions about the year 2022

Episode 34: Tom Vanderbilt: Beginners

March 22nd, 2021  |  Season 2  |  51 mins 30 secs

beginners, book, brain, cognition, learning, neuroscience, psychology, skill, tom vanderbilt, vanderbilt

We talk with author Tom Vanderbilt about his new book, Beginners: The Joy and Transformative Power of Lifelong Learning.

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 25: NASA Data Scientist Chris Mattmann

February 22nd, 2020  |  Season 1  |  1 hr 2 mins

ai, dark web, darpa, machine learning, mars, nasa, neuroscience, space exploration

Chris Mattman, Principal Data Scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, talks with us about bridging the gap between lab and data scientists, his work unearthing the dark web with DARPA's Memex program, machine learning in autonomous planetary rovers, and other cool stuff he's been doing.

Episode 23: Flawless Predictions for the 2020s

January 1st, 2020  |  Season 1  |  1 hr 20 mins

ai, autonomous vehicles, bitcoin, farming, lasers, neuroscience, robots, smart highways

The Cognation crew discusses the future. Rolf and Joe share their bold predictions for the upcoming decade, which include such insights as "CRISPR Chips, Made with CRISPR to be Crisper (TM)," Disney Bitcoin, and the Robopocalypse.

Episode 22: The Neuroscience of Free Will: Guest Aaron Schurger

December 12th, 2019  |  Season 1  |  57 mins 12 secs

conscious will, consciousness, free will, libet, neuroscience, philosophy, schurger

Guest Dr. Aaron Schurger talks to us about his research on the meaning of the "readiness potential", which has been referred to as "the brain signature of the will". Although this neural signal was already famous from research in the 1960s, it was Benjamin Libet's infamous experiments in the 1980s that proportedly showed that the readiness potential preceded an act of free will by a few hundred milliseconds. More recently (in press), Dr. Schurger and his colleagues have convincingly demonstrated that the readiness potential is not in fact predictive of an act of free will, but instead comes from a lack of a proper experimental control.

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 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