CogNation

Latest Episodes:

Episode 28: Chris Baty: National Novel Writing Month, Creativity, and Life as a Narrative Aug 10, 2020

Show notes

Since 1999, National Novel Writing Month has exploded in popularity, becoming one of the most creatively productive events in the world every November. Participants buckle down and write a 50,000-word novel in a month, many enjoying the social support from the NaNoWriMo community.

Founder Chris Baty joins us to talk about what he's been up to lately, as well as share some thoughts gained from his writing career. We talk about creativity, the power (or not-power, depending on your inclination) of narrative, what we would contribute to a post-apocalyptic team, and the anxiety of wanting to contribute more.

Special Guest: Chris Baty.

Episode 27: The Connectome May 12, 2020

Show notes

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.

Paper:
A connectome of the adult drosophila central brain (2020)

OR access the database yourself at:
https://neuprint.janelia.org/

Episode 26: COVID-19 and the Behavioral Immune System: Joshua Ackerman Mar 24, 2020

Show notes

Season 2 premiere!

How do people behave in a pandemic? Joshua Ackerman of the University of Michigan talks about how we alter our behavior in the face of pathogens. A repertoire of responses (such as avoidance) referred to as the "behavioral immune system" is a way for humans to avoid pathogens BEFORE our biochemical immune system encounters them. A pandemic such as COVID-19 may trigger this behavioral immune system, but using far different information than our evolutionary ancestors ever had.

Joshua Ackerman's research page at Michigan

Special Guest: Joshua Ackerman.

Episode 25: NASA Data Scientist Chris Mattmann Feb 22, 2020

Show notes

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

Chris Mattman's page at NASA

More information about the Memex program at DARPA can be found here.

Chris's forthcoming book, Machine Learning with Tensor Flow (2nd ed.) will be available soon. CogNation listeners can get 40% off all Manning products by using the code "podcogn20" when ordering from [Manning Publications](manning.com).

Special Guest: Chris Mattmann.

Episode 24: Childrens' Learning and Play: Guest David Sobel Jan 27, 2020

Show notes

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.

Research at the Causality and Mind Lab and further resources can be found here.

Episode 23: Flawless Predictions for the 2020s Jan 02, 2020

Show notes

Episode 22: The Neuroscience of Free Will: Guest Aaron Schurger Dec 12, 2019

Show notes

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.

Resources:

Here is what a classifier is (a topic that comes up that may be unfamiliar to some).
For advanced readers, check out AdaBoost, a tool that increases performance in classifiers and other types of machine learning.

Papers
"The Time Course of Neural Activity Predictive of Impending Movement" (Basbug, Schapire, & Schurger, TO BE PUBLISHED SOON)
An accumulator model for spontaneous neural activity prior to self-initiated movement (Schurger, Sitt, & Dehaene, 2012)

Unconscious cerebral initiative and the role of conscious will in voluntary action (Libet's 1985 experiments)

Special Guest: Aaron Schurger.

Episode 21: Pain perception and treatment: Guest Mike Trujillo Nov 03, 2019

Show notes

Guest Dr. Michael Trujillo of Karuna Labs talks to us about pain perception and recent research on the management of pain. We discuss a recent article (Hird et al.) exploring the degree to which expectation can alter the perception of pain, as well as Trujillo's work in using Virtual Reality in pain management.

Boundary effects of expectation in human pain perception (2019) by Hird, Charalambous, El-Deredy, Jones, & Talmi

Shout out to Gareth Thompson of Digitimer

Episode 20: Improving medical treatment in hearing loss: Guest Erick Gallun Oct 21, 2019

Show notes

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.
Resources:

P.A.R.T. (Portable Automated Rapid Testing): + link on iTunes

Independent impacts of age and hearing loss on spatial release in a complex auditory environment
by Gallun, et al., 2013

Special Guest: Erick Gallun.

Episode 19: Concussions, TBI, and Sports Sep 20, 2019

Show notes

Evidence has mounted that high-impact sports like boxing and football can lead to later cognitive problems, and there is increasing awareness that concussions should be taken seriously. So how does this all happen, and should you be worried? We take a look at some recent studies that shed some light on the topic.

Articles:
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/2645104
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S104474311500041X

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