WaterCooler Neuroscience

Latest Episodes:

BTAB S1, EP15 – Does how we move alter how we think? Aug 08, 2021

Show notes

This episode has Jordana and Wilf talking about a review paper that wants to 'shift the paradigm' and discuss how children use the executive function, the ability to alter their actions, and where we should be studying to understand that process. This paper however was written in a way that doesn't fit many scientific standards so we will be hearing from Jordana about how this paper can inform clinical studies and open our minds to new ways to think about how thought and movement are linked. On the other hand, Wilf will be talking about how from an academic perspective this theory has problems and there is an issue with vagueness in this paper which makes it much harder to understand from the research science side of Brains Talking about Brains. This show is sponsored by NeuroCatch Inc., an objective quick measure of brain health available today. If you would like to know more about NeuroCatch Inc. please head to our website www.watercoolerneuroscience.co.uk

Think Fast S2, EP31 – Will airports have mind readers? Aug 04, 2021

Show notes

This episode is bringing you shorts from WCNeuro S4 which did not make it into the main episode. We will be talking about how very controlled experiments in the lab do not automatically relate to flashy headlines like airports are going to read your mind while you go through a metal detector. We also talk about how subliminal messaging is one of the weakest psychological tools a scientist can use, but why supraliminal messaging is everywhere and does have any effect on you. That effect is just not that scary. Wilf also mentions a paper by Dr Davinina Fernadez-Espejo in this episode, the following link provides context to that paper and findings https://jme.bmj.com/content/41/7/534. This show is sponsored by NeuroCatch Inc., an objective quick measure of brain health available today. If you would like to know more about NeuroCatch Inc. please head to our website www.watercoolerneuroscience.co.uk

BTAB S1, EP14 – How our memory leads our eyes Aug 01, 2021

Show notes

Today's episode is looking into a paper that studies how our memory builds up the scene around us. It goes without saying that our ability to see is incredible but the mechanics of how our eyes dart around a room, remember details subconsciously and then continue to the next point is the focus of this episode. We are talking about Dr James Kragel's work on this fascinating topic but also talking about how even professional neuroscientists can find new concepts challenging and what both Jordana's and Wilf's backgrounds brought to their understanding of this cutting edge work.

Think Fast S2, EP30 – Yes, I know that voice with Dr Emma Holmes Jul 28, 2021

Show notes

Few professionals require someone to be familiar with how their voice is heard and how people in turn become familiar with a voice than podcasters. Today's guest however is even more of an expert is one of the researchers around the world who study the processing humans do to understand voices. Voice perception and language perception are automatic in humans, even if you don't understand someone's language you can still learn to recognise their voice. You would think that Neuroscience, a field that is decades old, and Psychology, a field that is over a century old, would just have solved the mystery of how the brain processes and familiarises itself with voices but in reality, we are still learning. Cutting edge Neuroscience and Psychology still focus on understanding processes that day to day is the definition of mundane. Listen in to hear how Dr Holmes' work is finding out that voice processing is anything but boring.

BTAB S1, EP13 – AI confirming lab findings Jul 25, 2021

Show notes

With AI being used across neuroscience we find hundreds of different ways to 'use AI'. In Season 4 of WaterCooler Neuroscience Wilf Nelson talked with world experts to find out what modern AI and computational neuroscience is. In that series, we found one of the best ways to use AI is to make artificial versions of our experiments and see if they work when only the models we create are running the show, no sneaky helping hand from nature to get our experiment to come up positive. In this episode of BTAB Jordana and Wilf are continuing that thought by talking about a paper that was first run in mice in a lab and then re-runs in a computer with a simulation to see if the theoretical model scientists said was running the mice brain could do all the stimulating activities. Listen in to what modern-day AI is really doing.

Think Fast S2, EP29 – Getting inspired with Dr Edward Vessel Jul 21, 2021

Show notes

Art is not typically an area of study for Neuroscience and Psychology given the fields' preference for simple experimental stimuli and as little interpretation as possible. Dr Vessel however explores how people experience and are influenced by art using experimental Psychology. We want to better understand not just how people report interacting with Art but then how Art alters their behaviour, thoughts and perceptions in the same way we would test anything else in a professional lab. We bring you Dr Vessel's work on understanding how artwork can inspire people to write stories.

BTAB S1, EP12 – From machine psychology to experiments in humans Jul 18, 2021

Show notes

Brains Talking about Brains is not just a show about human or even animal psychology. It is a show about Psychology in all its forms and now that can include AI psychology. AI are not conscious and thinking as sci-fi movies would define them but AI that runs phones, servers and statistics programs do have regular patterns for how they handle information. Those patterns can form the basis for understanding the psychology of a thing and in this episode, Jordana and Wilf are talking about a theoretical paper that tries to explain the weirdness of reported human dreams through a quirk of AI data processing. Because science must be falsifiable Wilf and Jordana set out to see if this theory can be tested with an experiment, if it can be falsified and where that might just not be possible right now.

Think Fast S2, EP28 – Bringing the science out of the lab with Dr Jyoti Mishra Jul 14, 2021

Show notes

EEG caps have been around in one form or another for almost a century and have drastically increased the ways that brain science can be done through a cheap, reliable and data rich method. However, EEGs are usually confined to university and hospital labs with arduous sets up nothing like how movies can make EEG experiments appear. Today I am talking with Dr Jyoti Mishra about how her work is taking an easy to use cap and bringing it to schools, outpatients and those in isolated situations so Neuroscience can better understand people who don't fit the usual participant criteria.

WCNeuro S4, EP7 – Should AI do everything with Sebastian Musslick Jul 12, 2021

Show notes

To finish off this series of WaterCooler Neuroscience we are talking about why AI probably shouldn't be a general intelligence. General intelligence is what humans have, we can turn our minds to anything we chose and learn new things with success based on how intelligent we are overall. AI does not work like this; an AI is trained to be good at one thing but fail. Look no further than asking a chess expert to make a cheese sandwich versus a chess AI, the chess AI can't even be spoken to. We talk about why many specific AI is probably the best route for the future rather than a general AI that tries to mimic human behaviour. If you aren't convinced consider your phone is already a collection of very specific AI instead of one general AI.

WCNeuro S4, EP6 – How your brain knows it has arms with Giulio Rognini Jul 12, 2021

Show notes

There are things our brains do that are so natural and obvious we don't even notice our brain does it. One of those things is the perception that we have a body, even if you feel pain or that something is slightly off with your body you always perceive that you have a body. In this episode, we are talking about how researchers are working to understand how our brain is constantly measuring our limbs to keep track of what they are and what state they are in and more importantly we are learning how AI can help us replicate those signals in amputees. If you want to see the future of brain-body research and prosthetics then tune in.

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