Sense of Mind

How does the human brain develop an addiction? The extremely high prevalence rates for disorders such as alcohol use disorder or drug use disorder (1 in 3 AUD lifetime prevalence, 1 in 10 DUD lifetime prevalence) suggests that addiction is not simply a disease but is instead a natural brain process that each and every one of us is susceptible to. The fascinating thing that is unraveling in the res...

Sense of Mind Podcast Episode 43: Interoception: Why Emotions Feel the Way They Do Watch here: https://youtu.be/5-8IfXRMM9g Feelings are extremely important indicators of our wellbeing, whether they’re purely physical internal sensations (like a stomach ache) or emotional feelings (like the upset stomach you might get before you give a big presentation). Interoception is the sense of the inside of...

Idea for audience to ponder: Everyone knows what an emotion is.. until they are asked to explain it. We all have a sense that we are living emotional lives and that these emotional drives have immense control of our behavior but it’s hard to say what that emotion actually is. Is it the physiology? Is it the brain activity? Can single cells have feelings or emotions without nervous systems? Are the...

Sense of Mind Podcast Episode 42: Horror Movies MANIPULATE YOUR BRAIN (the neuroscience of scary movies) Horror movies can subtly manipulate the human brain, causing us to feel fear when there is not actually any danger. Scary movies do this by stimulating our brain’s fear circuit. But that’s pretty obvious. The more important question is: Why do people voluntarily submit themselves to such a scar...

Can scientists read your mind and figure out what you're thinking just by looking at your brain? Well, sort of. In this episode of The Social Brain with Taylor Guthrie (@The Cellular Republic) and I (@Sense of Mind) talk about a fascinating new area of cognitive neuroscience, called "brain decoding" as well as its counterpart, "brain encoding," and related topics. It all centers on the question po...

Sense of Mind Podcast Episode 41: PLEASURE GENERATORS in the Brain: The Neuroscience of Pleasure Explained In the brain, pleasure is generated by a handful of brain regions called, “hedonic hotspots.” If you were to stimulate these regions directly, you would likely feel pleasurable sensations. However, not all of the hedonic hotspots are the same–some generate the raw sensations of pleasure where...

Brain synchronization and shared neural representations! In episode 3 of The Social Brain with  The Cellular Republic  (Taylor Guthrie) and me, we talk about how brain activity in two different people's brains can become synchronized in social situations. We also talk about Taylor's research into the fact that people who are friends tend to show similar patterns of brain activity in vari...

Neuroscience has a fascinating and at times funny history but it is an extremely new scientific discipline. Explore with us how neuroscience got it's start and how this led to the rise of fields like social and cognitive neuroscience. This is the second episode of a new twice monthly podcast I'm doing with social neuroscientist Taylor Guthrie. Taylor is a researcher, PhD student, and lecturer at t...

From single cells within an organism to individuals within a society, all living things engage in social processes. Join us and explore how these dynamic social interactions shaped evolution and made our brains what they are today. This is the first episode of a new twice monthly podcast I'm doing with social neuroscientist Taylor Guthrie. Taylor is a researcher, PhD student, and lecturer at the U...

Sense of Mind Podcast Episode 40: How Emotions Influence Economic Decisions How do your emotions influence your economic decisions? This video explores how sadness, disgust, fear, gratitude, and happiness influence our decisions, especially those around money. It also explains a couple strategies for regulating our emotions so we can make wiser financial decisions. In general, happiness and gratit...

Sense of Mind Podcast Episode 39: Oxytocin and Sociality - Understanding the ‘Love Hormone’ Watch the full video: https://youtu.be/kBbdWVy957E Oxytocin and human sociality are deeply intertwined. In this video, we’ll look at methods to increase oxytocin levels, how oxytocin promotes helpful behaviors toward people we like and hostile behaviors toward those we don’t, the social salience hypothesis...

Sense of Mind Podcast Episode 38: Dog Minds Decoded with Ellen Furlong Watch the full video: https://youtu.be/J-9rao7zdxY Dogs have rich and complex minds. But since dogs can’t talk, we need scientists who can decode dog minds. So in this episode I interview Dr. Ellen Furlong, a scientist who studies dog psychology and the author of the course, “Decoding Dogs: Inside the Canine Mind,” which is ava...

Sense of Mind Podcast Episode 37: Talking About Neurotheology with Bryan Spoon Watch the full video: https://youtu.be/jsZp_9ILcbI In this episode I’m talking about neurotheology with Bryan Spoon, who is a pastor, chaplain, and neuroscience YouTuber who runs the channel @Neurotheology. “Neurotheology” is the branch of neuroscience that seeks to understand the relationship between the human brain an...

Sense of Mind Podcast Episode 36: How the Cerebellum Works - Dissecting the “Little Brain" Watch the full video: https://youtu.be/Y0qNM93Ztt0 The cerebellum is important for movement and cognition. That might be a surprise, because for a while the cerebellum was thought to be solely involved in the coordination of bodily movements. While the cerebellum is undoubtedly crucial for coordination and a...

Sense of Mind Podcast Episode 35: Cognitive Science with Ryan Rhodes Watch the full video: https://youtu.be/P0ejbrcnmPY Cognitive science is a fascinating area of study that aims to understand how the mind works as an information processing machine. For anyone interested in neuroscience or psychology, it’s important to understand the basics of cognitive science. So in this week’s episode, I’m talk...

Sense of Mind Podcast Episode 34: Nicholas Christakis on The Evolutionary Origins of Society Watch the full video: https://youtu.be/ZymrWBQ9nfE Human societies are a product of our evolution as a social species. While many scientists have focused on the negative side of our evolved social life–especially our violent tendencies–that’s only half the story. Physician and social scientist, Dr. Nichola...

Sense of Mind Podcast Episode 33: Psychology Unlocked! A Conversation with Daniel Edward Watch the full video:https://youtu.be/5-TWn5_E1YQ What is psychology? How do scientists study the mind? What are the most important experiments in the history of psychology? These are questions that Daniel Edward has been asking and answering on his popular YouTube channel, @Psychology Unlocked. I first came a...

Sense of Mind Podcast Episode 32: Talking About Neuroscience with Athanasios Bourganos (@Cognic) Watch the full video: https://youtu.be/SAnsT0cVu30 What is the history of neuroscience? What role does philosophy play in our understanding of how the brain works? In this interview, Athanasios Bourganos (also known as @Cognic on YouTube) and I discuss these fascinating questions. We also touch on free...

Sense of Mind Podcast Episode 31 - Shame - with Joseph Burgo Watch full video: https://youtu.be/8wpnL0gjKNE Shame is an unpleasant emotion we have all experienced at one point or another. Most of us know it as the feeling associated with knowing that we’ve done something wrong–that our actions were not aligned with our values. In this way, as my interview guest Dr. Joseph Burgo argues, shame...

Sense of Mind Podcast Episode 30 - How To Be Fearless: The Neuroscience of Fear Conditioning Watch the full video here: https://youtu.be/UQba4QXHdO8 (references on YouTube!) -- Chapters 00:00 The neuroscience of fear conditioning helps explain how our brains learn to fear things 00:36 Fear Conditioning and Extinction 01:29 Unconditioned vs Conditioned Stimulus 01:50 The Freeze Response 02:32 Fear...

Sense of Mind Podcast Episode 29 - Your brain’s alarm system: The Amygdala Watch the full video here: https://youtu.be/fXuZpMiSGHk The amygdala detects important features of the environment and it can trigger the fight or flight response. This brain region used to be thought of as the brain’s ‘fear center’ or sometimes as the emotional core of the brain, but in recent years neuroscientists have di...

Thinking Tools Podcast Episode 28 - Neuroplasticity Watch the video here: https://youtu.be/q-iQGoxmRkM “Neuroplasticity” refers to the fact that your brain can change its structure and function over time. Neuroplasticity is also sometimes called “brain plasticity,” or simply, “plasticity.” What this means is that you can change how your brain works, at least within certain constraints, such as gen...

Sense of Mind Episode 27: Learning and The Brain | Interview with Artem Kirsanov -  Watch the full video here: https://youtu.be/nFtouEhBj7I -- How does your brain learn about and navigate the world? What brain areas are responsible for our ability to form mental maps of places and spaces? How are attention and memory implemented in the brain and how do they contribute to learning? In this epi...

Thinking Tools Podcast Episode 26 - Prefrontal Cortex Watch the video here: https://youtu.be/p04xZjZUl2o The prefrontal cortex (PFC) allows us to engage in what scientists call “cognitive control” (also known as “executive functioning”) and it is crucial for our sense of self. This video explains what the PFC is, why this brain region’s properties make it well suited to cognitive control and the s...

Thinking Tools Podcast Episode 25 -  The idea of scaling, in biology, refers to how a biological system responds to changes in its overall size. More specifically, the properties that characterize animals–such as their metabolic rate, heart rate, and average lifespan–are systematically related to the size of the animal. But how, in a precise quantitative sense, does such biological scaling ma...