BRAINLAND

In this episode we discuss the history and evolution of chess and how chess competence, up to grand master, is rated, including how this would stand up in a scientific research setting. We talk through the range of brain investigation studies included in their recent review and some of the technical background to those tests and limitations of their methods before moving on to the areas of difference between novice players and experts, relating to pattern recognition, memory, imagery and decision making. An interesting finding was reduced grey matter volume in key areas in experts and we talk about the way this links to findings in other skills areas before discussing the possibility that regularly playing chess might be a valuable tool in developing cognitive skills in school age children and maintaining them in older adults (both currently subject to research). Along the way there are interesting diversions into the brains of London taxi drivers, survival value of larger prefrontal areas, other studies of working memory training plus gender differences in chess interest and expertise. Where else could you hear this stuff!

Samantha Brooks is professor of cognitive neuroscience, John Moores University, Liverpool UK https://profiles.ljmu.ac.uk/13546-samantha-brooks/professional

Morgan Williams is a postgraduate researcher, Leicester University, UK.

Ken Barrett is an artist, writer and former neuropsychiatristhttp://www.kenbarrettstudio.co.uk/

Morgan and Samantha's paper ' Neural correlates of chess expertise': https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S3050642525000326

Also discussed: Frontiers | Review of the Neural Processes of Working Memory Training: Controlling the Impulse to Throw the Baby Out With the Bathwater

The Hans Berger, history of EEG Brainland episode: https://open.acast.com/networks/6452b6516dd22500113dc7d2/shows/6452b6516dd22500113dc7ca/episodes/6a4cc139e4f7d40f06345ebc

Opening and closing music: Prelude to Brainland the opera by Stephen Brown

Brainland the opera website: www.brainlandtheopera.co.uk

Instagram: #brainlandcollective

Sketch by KB

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In this episode we explore how post-humanist ideas and perspectives, discussed in the earlier episode with Christine Daigle (season 2, episode 7), are reflected in literature and film. Fresh from teaching a course on post-humanist literature and film, Russ Kilbourn chooses three novels and five films, the former including Mary Shelley's 'Frankenstein' (also discussed in detail at the end of season 2 episode 39), 'Split Tooth' by Inuit musician and writer Tanya Tagak and 'Lament for Julia by Susan Taubes. After defining 'posthumanism' Russ draws out the common threads from those narratives before moving on to his film picks including Villeneuve's 'Arrival', 'Ex machina' and 'Annihilation' by Alex Garland, Frammartino's extraordinary Italian film "Le quattro volte' and experimental film 'Upstream colour by Shaun Caruth. Our wide ranging discussion is difficult to capture in a couple of sentences. Take a listen!And if uou'd like more film chat, this is our Italian cinema podcast

Capolavoro!: https://shows.acast.com/capolavoro-masterworks-of-italian-cinema

Participants:

Russell J Kilbourn is Professor in the Dept of English and Film Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University, Ontario, Canada. http://rjakilbourn.com/

Ken Barrett is an artist, writer and former neuropsychiatristhttp://www.kenbarrettstudio.co.uk/

Novels discussed:

Frankenstein: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankenstein

'Frankenstein disassembled': Brainland episode on Mary Shelley and her novel: https://shows.acast.com/brainland/episodes/deassembling-frankenstein-the-remarkable-life-of-mary-shelle

Split Tooth: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Split_Tooth

Lament for Julia: https://www.the-tls.com/literature-by-region/north-american-literature/lament-for-julia-the-philosophical-pathos-of-susan-taubes-elliot-r-wolfson-book-review-jess-cotton

Films discussed:

Le quattro volte https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1646975/?ref_=fn_i_1

Annihilation https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2798920/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_tt_8_nm_0_in_0_q_Annihilation

Ex machina https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0470752/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_tt_7_nm_1_in_0_q_ex%20machina

Upstream colour https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2084989/

Opening and closing music: Prelude to Brainland the opera by Stephen Brown

Brainland the opera website: www.brainlandtheopera.co.uk

Instagram: #brainlandcollective

Sketch by KB

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode we talk to linguist and academic Nicoletta Asciuto about her York university module 'Found in Translation' and four of her former students. Nicoletta talks about her move from monolingual upbringing to knowledge of ten languages, her decision to teach a module about translating to English from whatever home language. She discusses the often powerful emotional effect of translation for her students, four of whom agreed to join her on the podcast to talk about their work and personal experience - translation as, by turns, mindful, calming, focussing, escapist, deeply connecting to the past/heritage, and, as a group, a safe space that nurtured confidence and acceptance. We also speak more widely about the state of mind in professional translation. Where else but Brainland?

Participants:

Nicoletta Asciuto, Senior Lecturer in Modern Literature, University of York, UK. https://www.york.ac.uk/english/people/nicolettaasciuto/

Former students on Nicoletta's and their home nation:

Anna Thyregod Wilcks (Danish);

Enora Le Roux (French)

Arek Prokopczyk (Polish)

Ives Giulia Cappato (Italian)

with a readquote from Hayley Griffiths (Welsh)

Ken Barrett is an artist, writer and former neuropsychiatrist http://www.kenbarrettstudio.co.uk

Nicoletta's 'Found in Translation' module: https://www.york.ac.uk/students/studying/manage/programmes/module-catalogue/module/ENG00093H/2025-26?query=lost+in+translation&department=&creditLevel=&teachingPeriod=&isAvailableAsElective=false&isAvailableToVisitingStudents=false&electiveTheme=&offset=0&max=15

Musical extract: Prelude from Act 1 of Brainland, composed by Stephen Brown.

Brainland the opera website: www.brainlandtheopera.co.uk

Portrait sketch by KB

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode French philosophy specialist Judith Still talks about Jacque Derrida and in particular his late preoccupation with the animal-human boundary. After surveying philosophical writing on animals going back two millennia, including related views on indigenous peoples, the enslaved and women, Judith talks about the challenges of reading Derrida. We discuss his early life, as a Jewish boy in Algeria, excluded from education in the Vichy period. We deconstruct deconstruction (sort of) before touching on his notion of 'leaving a trace', whether birds create something akin to symphonies and anyway their superiority to us, along with dolphins, in navigating the sound/spatial world. We make brief excursion into the notion of animal art, zoopolitics, factory farming and and the ethics of pedigree dog breeding in an episode that makes an often obscure and challenging subject and writer comprehensible.

Participants:

Judith Still, Emeritus Professor of French and Critical Theory, University of Nottingham, Vice President (Humanities), British Academy. https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/clas/departments/modern-languages/people/judith.still1

Ken Barrett is an artist, writer and former neuropsychiatrist http://www.kenbarrettstudio.co.uk

Judith's book, 'Derrida and other animals: The boundaries of the human:

https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/media/resources/9780748680986_Derrida_and_Other_Animals_-_Introduction.pdf

Musical extract: Prelude from Act 1 of Brainland, composed by Stephen Brown.

Brainland the opera website: www.brainlandtheopera.co.uk

Portrait sketch by KB

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this extraordinarily wide ranging podcast, we talk about doubles from the point of view of psychopathology, neuroscience, and what they tell us about the nature of self. Our neuroscience discussion includes the work of Head, Schilder, Damasio (around the idea of body schema/representations in the brain and their implication - a kind of neural double) followed by a fascinating deviation into Melzak's exploration of the phantom limb and the 'neural matrix' that may underlie it. Our 'double in literature' chat ranges from Euripides over 2 millenia ago to Patrick McGrath's 1999 novel 'Spider' by way of a Scottish gothic tale from 1824. Femi gives an overview of Alfred Hitchcock's double-obsessed oeuvre before discussing the Wachowski brother's 'Matrix' (1999), a kind of thought experiment on the nature of the self, detached from the brain. We end with an 'out of hours' chat about clinical cases. Brainland was created as a platform for this type of terrific conversation.

Participants:

Oluwafemi (Femi) Oyebode, Honorary Prof of Psychiatry, University of Birmingham, UK https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/staff/profiles/clinical-sciences/oyebode-femi

Ken Barrett is an artist, writer and former neuropsychiatrist http://www.kenbarrettstudio.co.uk

Femi's book 'Doppelganger': https://www.cambridgebookshop.co.uk/products/doppelganger?srsltid=AfmBOopUtJI3sepHVB0Vvakdh03zDbmDMPjwH2pfiErw9CJ2RkqX7Pin

Novels discussed:

James Hogg, Private memoires and confessions of a justified sinner ( ). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Private_Memoirs_and_Confessions_of_a_Justified_Sinner

Patrick McGrath's Spider (1990): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spider_(novel)

Frigyes Karinthy's A Journey Round my Skull (1937): https://archive.org/details/bwb_W8-BJJ-568

Penfield and Jaspers Epilepsy and the Functional Anatomy of the Human Brain: https://archive.org/details/epilepsyfunction0000penf

Paul Schilder's The image and the appearance of the human body. (1935) https://archive.org/details/schilder-paul.-the-image-and-appearance-of-the-human-body

Films discussed:

Alfred Hitchock's double obsession: https://indie-outlook.com/2014/06/06/our-mirrors-selves-the-hitchcock-double/

The Matrix (1999): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Matrix

Brainland podcast on the novel and film Solaris: https://shows.acast.com/brainland/episodes/solaris

Musical extract: Prelude from Act 1 of Brainland, composed by Stephen Brown.

Brainland the opera website: www.brainlandtheopera.co.uk

portrait sketch by KB

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Leading ethicist/philosopher Jonathan D. Moreno makes a welcome return to Brainland to discuss his recently published and compelling book 'ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL: Bioethics and the Rules-based Order'. We talk about the history of clinical and bioethic and outline their main components in application to humans. Topics discussed include the Nuremberg trials and why it took 20 years before a consensus in the medical profession, the currently accepted 'ethical principles' and how long term and ethically flawed studies on syphilis triggered them. Jonathan also talks about the notion of 'invisible colleges', the relatively recent requirement for medics to fully inform patients of their diagnosis and prognosis, and the importance of invitro-fertilisation, plus more recently CRISPR gene editing, in reshaping guidelines and policy. We also discuss the wider application of ethics to the biosphere, including the growth of the anti-vivisection movement in the late 19th century. To conclude Jonathan reads the closing, summing up, paragraph of his book. Essential listening!

Participants:

Jonathan D. Moreno is Emeritus Professor of Medical Ethics and Health Policy, of History and Sociology of Science, and of Philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania.

https://pikprofessors.upenn.edu/sites/default/files/2021-10/moreno-cv.pdf

Ken Barrett is an artist, writer and former neuropsychiatrist

http://www.kenbarrettstudio.co.uk

Jonathan's book 'Absolutely Essential: Bioethics and the Rules Based Order'.:https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262553377/absolutely-essential/

Also discussed on the podcast:

DARPA: https://www.darpa.mil/

Jonathan's earlier book on military and intelligence funding of neuroscience: MIND WARS: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mind-Wars-Science-Military-Century/dp/193413743X

Jonathan's last visit to Brainalnd to talk about Mind Wars: https://shows.acast.com/brainland/episodes/mind-wars

Musical extract: Prelude from Act 1 of Brainland, composed by Stephen Brown.

Brainland the opera website: www.brainlandtheopera.co.uk

portrait sketch by KB

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode Christine Daigle, a leading figure in posthumanist philosophy and material feminism, begins by defining those terms before unpacking some of the ideas in her recent book 'Posthumanist Vulnerability: An affirmative ethics'. The humanist and Christian traditions both privilege the human, particularly the male human, in the sense of having 'dominion' over the rest of nature and, too often, women. Posthumanism breaks away from this and material feminism is concerned with the physical and material/economic constraints on women (really oversimplifying - listen to Christine's version). We move on to discuss the unusual structure of the book which, in addition to philosophy includes nine 'meanderings', more personal glimpses of her life, interactions with nature and trauma. Christine talks about her word 'transjective' used to highlight the permeability of the supposedly objective and subjective views and the origin of the term 'vulnerability' (the Latin word for wound). After brief diversion into Deleuze and Guattari, and 'joyful affirmation' we conclude with a reading of from the closing chapter of "Posthuman Vulnerability'. In short, a complex subject made digestible!

Participants: 

Christine Daigle, professor of philosophy, Brock University, Ontario, Canada. https://brocku.ca/humanities/philosophy/christine-daigle/

Ken Barrett, visual artist, writer and retired neuropsychiatrist: http://www.kenbarrettstudio.co.uk

Christine's books:

Posthumanist Vulnerability: https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/posthumanist-vulnerability-9781350302884/

Opening and closing music: Prelude to the opera Brainland, composed by Stephen Brown. 

Brainland the opera website: www.brainlandtheopera.co.uk

Portrait sketch by KB.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Mark Solms is a neuroscientist and psychoanalyst fluent in German, which is why in the 1990s, he agreed to take on the daunting task of collating and translating Freud's 23 years of writing on the brain and neurology pre-psychoanalysis. In this episode Marks talks in detail about Freud's early work in neuroscience, and explains how this transitioned into his theories of the mind and how to help the mentally troubled. After discussing something of his own family life, we move on to his very difficult first case as an analyst and from that to an understanding of why psychoanalysis became so prone to squabbling and factions. We discuss the way Freud's notion of the unconscious and preconscious map onto current understanding of memory - short term/long term, declarative/non-declarative ('declarative' being memories that can be put into words, a function, interestingly, that gradually develops after the age of 2; 'non-declarative' that can't be put into words, including those powerful early life experiences. Mark also talks about the things Freud got wrong before moving on to the conditions that can benefit from long term therapy (certain personality disorders and major depression in the context of early childhood loss and trauma) but emphasises that symptomatic treatments (antidepressants) may be necessary to enable a person to use therapy. We conclude with a question anout his boob's title, and an entertaining answer!

Participants: 

Mark Solms, Professor, Department of Neuropsychology, University of Capetown, SA. https://neuroscience.uct.ac.za/contacts/mark-solms

Ken Barrett, visual artist, writer and retired neuropsychiatrist: http://www.kenbarrettstudio.co.uk

Mark's books:

'The Only Cure': Freud and the neuroscience of mental healing. https://www.weidenfeldandnicolson.co.uk/titles/mark-solms-2/the-only-cure/9781399623377/

Also available as an audiobook, read by Mark, and incuded in Spotify Premium.

'The Hidden Spring': https://profilebooks.com/work/the-hidden-spring/

'The Neuropsychology of dreams: https://www.karnacbooks.com/product/the-neuropsychology-of-dreams-a-clinico-anatomical-study/94585/?

If you are interested in Freud and his contemporaries as portrayed at the movies (including Meynert and Jung) check out Season 2 episode 20, a great conversation with Prof Ian Christie:

https://open.acast.com/networks/6452b6516dd22500113dc7d2/shows/6452b6516dd22500113dc7ca/episodes/68ad6fccef1a5f8b369a2316

Opening and closing music: Prelude to the opera Brainland, composed by Stephen Brown. 

Brainland the opera website: www.brainlandtheopera.co.uk

Illustration 'Young Freud observed...' by KB.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode Laura Spinney talks about the background to her book 'Proto', an extraordinarily wide ranging and engaging account of the origin and archeology of Indo-European languages. We discuss the source of ancient DNA that is uncovering the extraordinary migration west of nomads from the Ukranian and Russian steppe along with their language, the ancestor of the most spoken languages in the world. Early philology, copper smelting (5000 years ago), pottery decoration of lactose intolerance ( among those nomad herdsmen and women) all get a mention. We also discuss before we discuss the origins of celtic languages and the various forms of English. All the above just a sample fo the stories in Laura's very readable guide.

Participants:

Laura Spinney, science journalist and writer https://www.lauraspinney.com/

Ken Barrett, visual artist, writer and retired neuropsychiatrist: http://www.kenbarrettstudio.co.uk

Laura's book 'Proto': https://www.lauraspinney.com/

More on 'proto-indo-european': https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Indo-European_language

The other proto language groups: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-language

Laura's book, very well read, on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/69CajLdpTI4HQZvuzs0LcB?si=2d84b5b6e3074875

Opening and closing music: Prelude to the opera Brainland, composed by Stephen Brown. 

Brainland the opera website: www.brainlandtheopera.co.uk

Portrait sketch by KB

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this podcast we discuss 19th century French novelist, dramatist and memoirist George Sand. In a wide-ranging conversation, based on Fiona's very readable and recent biography, we talk about Sand's great literary success in an era in which she was a political progressive abolitionist, early feminist and even ecologist. Her unusual origins, unhappy marriage, rapid literary success and famous relationship with/patronage of the composer Chopin get an airing. We talk about her first novel, 'Indiana', which contains critiques of arranged marriage and slavery, insightful reflections on language and the politics of her era and influenced the later Bronte sisters, George Elliot and others. We also discuss how her reputation rapidly faded after her death, outside France, such that she is more remembered as Chopin's partner/patron, her love affairs and cross-dressing, than her great literary output and influence on her time. Fiona also reads an extract. A fascinating book and conversation.

Participants:

Fiona Sampson, poet, biographer, Professor Emerita, University of Roehampton; Senior Research Fellow, Harris Manchester College University of Oxford. https://www.fionasampson.co.uk/

Ken Barrett, visual artist, writer and retired neuropsychiatrist: http://www.kenbarrettstudio.co.uk

Fiona's biography 'Becoming George' : https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/460324/becoming-george-by-sampson-fiona/9781529924336

George Sand's novel 'Indiana': https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiana_(novel)

Her autobiography 'Histoire de Ma Vie': https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Histoire_de_ma_vie_(George_Sand)

Opening and closing music: Prelude to the opera Brainland, composed by Stephen Brown. 

Brainland the opera website: www.brainlandtheopera.co.uk

Portrait sketch by KB

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.