From Our Neurons to Yours

Psychedelics are a hot topic in psychiatry today.  They’re producing dramatic reversals for patients with severe depression, PTSD, and other mental health conditions. But scientists still have fundamental questions about why these drugs are so effective. For example, is the "trip" even necessary? Some think it is not and are working to design drugs with similar brain chemistry but no psy...

This week on From Our Neurons to Yours, we're talking about the neuroscience of climate change with neuroeconomist Nik Sawe. If you follow the science or the news, you know how big of a risk climate change is. Storms, coastal flooding, heat waves, extinctions, mass migration — the list goes on. But — as you can probably also appreciate — it’s really hard to properly perceive that risk. It’s m...

This week we’re doing something a little different. My good friend Michael Osborne, who produces this show also has his own podcast, called Famous & Gravy – Life Lessons from Dead Celebrities. I recently guest-hosted an episode about one of my all time scientific and writerly heros, Oliver Sacks, which we're releasing for both our audiences. I hope you enjoy! --- We've concluded Seas...

Today: the clocks in your body. We're talking again this week with Tony Wyss-Coray, the director of the Knight Initiative for Brain Resilience here at Wu Tsai Neuro.  Last year, we spoke with Tony about the biological nature of the aging process. Scientists can now measure signs of aging in the blood, and can in some cases slow or reverse the aging process in the lab. We discussed how this bi...

Today on the show, a new understanding of Parkinson's disease. Parkinson's disease is one of the most common neurodegenerative disorders — right after Alzheimer's disease. It's familiar to many as a movement disorder: people with the disease develop difficulties with voluntary control of their bodies. But the real story is much more complicated. This week, we speak with Kathlee...

This week on From Our Neurons to Yours, we sit down with Stanford neurobiologist Lisa Giocomo to explore the intersection of memory and navigation. This episode was inspired by the idea of memory palaces. The idea is simple: Take a place you're very familiar with, say the house you grew up in, and place information you want to remember in different locations within that space. When it's...

In this episode of "From Our Neurons to Yours," we're taking a deep dive into the neuroscience of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and the recent discovery that the anesthetic ketamine can give patients a week-long "vacation" from the disorder after just one dose. Join us as we chat with Dr. Carolyn Rodriguez, a leading expert in the field, who led the first clinical tr...

Welcome to "From Our Neurons to Yours," from the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute at Stanford University. Each week, we bring you to the frontiers of brain science — to meet the scientists unlocking the mysteries of the mind and building the tools that will let us communicate better with our brains. This week, we're tackling a BIG question in neuroscience: why do we do what we do? Sp...

Imagine being trapped in your own body, unable to move or communicate effectively. This may seem like a nightmare, but it is a reality for many people living with brain or spinal cord injuries. Join us as we talk with Jaimie Henderson, a Stanford neurosurgeon leading groundbreaking research in brain-machine interfaces. Henderson shares how multiple types of brain implants are currently being devel...

Imagine an electrical storm in your brain, a power surge that passes through delicately wired neural circuits, making thousands of cells all activate at once. Depending on where it starts and where it travels in the brain, it could make your muscles seize up. It could create hallucinatory visions or imaginary sounds. It could evoke deep anxiety or a sense of holiness, or it could even make you los...

Imagine Thursday. Does Thursday have a color? What about the sound of rain — does that sound taste like chocolate? Or does the sound of a saxophone feel triangular to you?   For about 3% of the population, the sharp lines between our senses blend together. Textures may have tastes, sounds, shapes, numbers may have colors. This sensory crosstalk is called synesthesia, and it's not a disorder,...

Welcome back, neuron lovers! In this week's episode of From Our Neurons to Yours, we're talking about the neuroscience of sleep. Why is slumber so important for our health that we spend a third of our lives unconscious? Why does it get harder to get a good night's sleep as we age? And  could improving our beauty rest really be a key to rejuvenating our bodies and our minds? To learn...

Welcome back to "From Our Neurons to Yours," a podcast from the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute at Stanford University. In this episode, we explore the collective intelligence of ant colonies with Deborah Gordon , a professor of biology at Stanford, an expert on ant behavior, and author of a new book, The Ecology of Collective Behavior . We discuss how ant colonies operate without centra...

Welcome back to "From Our Neurons to Yours," a podcast where we criss-cross scientific disciplines to take you to the frontiers of brain science. This week, we explore the science of dizziness with Stanford Medicine neurologist Kristen Steenerson, MD , who treats patients experiencing vertigo and balance disorders. In our conversation, we'll see that dizziness is not a singular expe...

Welcome back to our second season of "From Our Neurons to Yours," a podcast where we criss-cross scientific disciplines to take you to the cutting edge of brain science. In this episode, we explore how sound becomes information in the human brain, specifically focusing on how speech is transformed into meaning. Our guest this week is Neuro-linguist Laura Gwilliams, a faculty scholar at t...

We all know exercise has all sorts of benefits beyond just making us stronger and fitter. It lowers and inflammation. It buffers stress and anxiety. It clarifies our thinking. In fact, regular exercise is one of the few things we know with reasonable confidence can help extend our healthy lifespan. But for all the evidence of the benefits of exercise, it's a bit surprising that we don't...

When we're kids, our brains are amazing at learning. We absorb information from the outside world with ease, and we can adapt to anything. But as we age, our brains become a little more fixed. Our brain circuits become a little less flexible. You may have heard of a concept called neuroplasticity, our brain's ability to change or rewire itself. This is of course central to learning and m...

Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) is a technology that uses magnetic fields to stimulate or suppress electrical activity in brain circuits. It's part of a transformation in how psychiatrists are thinking about mental health disorders that today's guest calls psychiatry 3.0. Nolan Williams has recently pioneered a new form of TMS therapy that has just been approved by the FDA to tre...

One of the strangest and most disconcerting things about the COVID 19 pandemic has been the story of long COVID. Many COVID long-haulers  have continued experiencing cognitive symptoms long after their initial COVID infection — loss of attention, concentration, memory, and mental sharpness — what scientists are calling "brain fog".  For some patients, the condition is so serious that it...

Nearly one in five Americans lives with a mental illness. Unfortunately there’s a limited set of options for treating psychiatric disorders. One reason for that is that these disorders are still defined based on people’s behavior or invisible internal states — things like depressed mood or hallucinations. But of course, all our thoughts and behaviors are governed by our brains.  And there’s a lot...

Today we’re going to talk about frogs — and spiders — as parents.  What today’s show is really about is “pair bonding” — that’s the scientific term for the collaborative bonds that form between two parents — as well as the bonds between parents and their offspring. It turns out that if you look across the animal kingdom, strong family bonds are way more widespread than you might imagine. Frogs hav...

Recently on the show, we had a conversation about the possibility of creating artificial vision with a bionic eye. Today we're going to talk about technology to enhance another sense, one that often goes underappreciated, our sense of touch. We humans actually have one of the most sensitive senses of touch on the planet. Just in the tip of your fingers, there are thousands of tiny sensors, wh...

Hi listeners, we're shifting to a biweekly release schedule after this episode. See you in a couple weeks! --- Most of us probably know someone who developed Alzheimer’s disease or another form of dementia as they got older. But you probably also know someone who stayed sharp as a tack well into their 80s or 90s. Even if it’s a favorite TV actor, like Betty White.  The fact that people age so...

We take this for granted, but our eyes are amazing. They're incredible. We process the visual world so automatically and so instantaneously, we forget how much work our eyes and our brains are doing behind the scenes, taking in light through the eyeball, transforming light into electrical signals in the retina, packaging up all that information, and sending it on to the brain, and then making...

We've probably all heard of circadian rhythms, the idea that our bodies have biological clocks that keep track of the daily cycle, sunrise to sunset. Maybe we've even heard that it's these biological rhythms that get thrown off when we travel across time zones or after daylight savings. So on one hand, it's cool that our body keeps track of what time it is, but today our questi...