This Is Your Brain With Dr. Phil Stieg

Some 6 million Americans suffer from active PTSD at any given moment, and nearly half of us will be exposed to major trauma at some point in our lives. Dr. Shaili Jain, a Stanford University psychiatrist and PTSD specialist, explains why silence plays such a large role in the aftermath of trauma, why some people recover quickly and others don't, and why men experience more trauma but women are mor...

Superstitions, fairy tales, and talismans are more than silly remnants of our early human history -- they are bridges to the unconscious mind. Psychiatrist Daniel Z. Lieberman, MD, talks about just how complicated the unconscious is, and how rituals and fairy tales actually make us more sophisticated managers of our conscious mind.   https://www.danielzlieberman.com/

With the left hemisphere of her brain ravaged by a hemorrhage, neuroscientist Jill Bolte Taylor made a surprising discovery. The brain bleed had not only deprived her of language, it had also wiped away memory of past trauma. What Dr. Taylor learned about brain cells after a stroke has implications for identity, spirituality, and insight.  Find out why you're a better lie detector without your lef...

We all work on important tasks while we sleep – consolidating memories, building immunity, and managing weight, just for starters – but some of us do a whole lot more. From walking and talking to driving and committing crimes, sleep disorders can be disruptive, dangerous, and downright deadly. British neurologist and sleep expert  Guy Leschziner explains how different parts of the brain can be in...

Where in the brain is that little something that makes top performers feel so confident in their ability? Can that confidence be developed in someone who is naturally more timid? Dr. Nate Zinsser, director of West Point's Performance Psychology Program and author of The Confident Mind, explains how a sense of mastery develops, and why butterflies in your stomach are a signal from the brain when yo...

Did you ever notice when you see a close up of Julia Roberts smiling on the big screen, you have an urge to smile back?  That's an effect of your brain's "Mirror Rule" according to Dr. Jeff Zacks of Washington University.  Watching movies in a theater stimulates the signals in our brains more than almost any other activity.  Dr. Zacks investigates the various ways your brain is being manipulated w...

Placental stem cells have the potential to stop cancer and autoimmune disorders in their tracks, slow or even halt the aging process, and perhaps even tackle the next pandemic. Dr. Robert Hariri, a surgeon and stem cell entrepreneur, explains how a temporary product of pregnancy, often discarded as waste, is actually an example of evolution at its best, a veritable "nature's supermarket" for cells...

The past 30 years have produced an epidemic of obesity -- mostly because evolution did not prepare us for so many calories and so little physical activity. Dr. Louis Aronne, a leading authority on obesity, explains how a period of caloric excess can damage the neural connections that manage your metabolism, throwing your weight regulation out of whack. More importantly, he talks about the new drug...

All of life is set to music -- or at least to a rhythm. From the graceful undulation of a jellyfish to the irresistible urge to bop along to our favorite songs, the urge to sway is hard-wired. Dr. Laurel Trainor, a professor of psychology, neuroscience, and behavior at McMaster University and director of the "LIVELab" there, conducts research into auditory development. She has found that our uncon...

Many of us worry about memory loss, but it's surprisingly important to forget. Scott Small, MD, director of the Alzheimer's Disease Research Center at Columbia, says pruning our memories is good for us. We all know "forgive and forget" is key to emotional health, but forgetting is also critical to cognitive health. Find out why a healthy dose of forgetting is not a pathology, but a way of clearing...

The hemispheres of the brain are responsible for different views of the world - one literal, narrow-beam, and maybe a little angry, and the other broad-minded, nuanced, and appreciative of beauty. Psychiatrist, philosopher, and literary scholar Iain McGilchrist has spent his career studying how the two hemispheres of the brain work, together and separately, to forge our understanding of our world....

Extreme athlete Wim Hof has set records for immersion in icy water, and he recommends it for physical and mental health. Find out why his wife's suicide drove Hof to master controlled hyperventilation -- in breathtaking cold -- to become happy, strong, and healthy. (Everything else, he'll tell you, is BS.) Surprisingly, heart and brain science just may support the Wim Hof Method.   http://www.wimh...

Dancer and neuroscientist Julia Basso, PhD, wants us all to dance -- together or separately, it's all good. Dancing with a partner creates a synchrony that's remarkably like that between a mother and infant, and even dancing alone benefits body and brain alike. Find out how dance produces new neurons and engages brain processes, and why it is that joyful movement optimizes brain function. Plus......

This week, a reprise of one of our most popular episodes from Season 2 - Sound may be the least understood of the five senses, with music the most mysterious of all. Neuroscientist Nina Kraus of Northwestern University takes us on a tour of how the brain processes music and explains the lifelong benefits of music education. Find out how music can help offset the effects of poverty, and how concuss...

Our brain pathways are designed to get us through life's traumas, as painful and debilitating as they are. Neurologist Lisa Shulman, MD, joins us this week to talk about how to make sense of grief, how trauma interrupts the connection between the cognitive and emotional parts of the brain, and how the brain learns to consolidate traumatic experiences and allow us to move forward. Plus… humans are...

Smell is our most evocative sense, with instant associations with emotions and memories. Cognitive neuroscientist Rachel Herz, PhD, explains why she loves the stink of a skunk, why a blow to the head can kill off your sense of smell, and how you get a new nose every month. Plus… why stores, hotels, and other brands create signature scents. https://rachelherz.com/   Sign up for our newsletter at ww...

The human brain is designed to "snap" under threat, but 100,000 years of evolution did not prepare us for the the world we live in today. R. Douglas Fields, PhD, describes how the brain's rage circuitry is activated -- whether that's a car that cuts you off on the highway or a pickpocket who steals your wallet. The primal rage response also explains a lot about the January 6 mob mentality, the unr...

Language originates as brain signals — mysterious lines of squiggles — that somehow turn into speech. Meet the neuroscientist who is turning those squiggles into conversations, using artificial intelligence to translate brain activity into words and sentences. Dr. Edward Chang of UCSF talks with Dr. Stieg about the painstaking "magic" of decoding that has allowed a paralyzed man to speak after 20...

Depression, anxiety, low libido… your mood is directly related to what you eat. Nutritional psychiatrist (and chef) Uma Naidoo, MD, examines the "gut-brain romance" and explains the delicate balance between your diet and your mental health. If you haven't given up junk food to lose weight or reduce the risk of diabetes, maybe you'll do it to feel happier? Plus… what happens when obsessing about he...

From the outside, a human brain appears fairly uniform – but what's inside is very different depending on where you look. Your brain has complex maps within that allow you to see, understand, imagine, and recognize everything from faces to objects to abstract concepts like love, time, and debt. This week, neuroscientist Rebecca Schwarzlose of Washington University explains what parts of your brain...

Can you communicate with someone who's sound asleep, and is it possible to influence their dreams?  Ken Paller, professor of psychology at Northwestern and a leading sleep researcher, talks about "lucid dreaming" — the state of dreaming while knowing you're in a dream — as well as about how researchers can reach into the brain of a sleeping person and actually create the experience they have in th...

Near-death experiences may seem like the stuff of supermarket tabloids, but there are real patterns to what people report after coming close to departing this life.   Dr. Bruce Greyson has been studying near-death experiences for decades and has stories to tell about out-of-body phenomena, that light at the end of the tunnel, and a near-universal finding of new meaning in life after coming close t...

ASMR, or the autonomous sensory meridian response, is a state of deep calm accompanied by a sense of "brain tingles." Not everyone experiences it, but if you do, you know what triggers it: a whisper or other soft sounds, a gentle touch or movement, even watching a Bob Ross video. Physiologist Craig Richard explains the science behind ASMR, and why in some people induces a deeply relaxing response...

Whether you're a believer or not, God is taking up space in your head — the prefrontal cortex, to be exact. Jordan Grafman, PhD, of Northwestern University has been studying where religious belief systems are stored in the brain and how they overlap with moral, political, and social systems. This fascinating episode explores near-death experiences, how brain injury can influence belief, and how re...