Neurratives - A Podcast about Neuroscience in Fiction

TL;DR:

Episodes through the rest of November and December will be every 3-4 weeks rather than every two weeks. Plan is to be back to every two weeks in mid-January. 

We'll be releasing The Matrix (with our first guest!!!!) on December 22nd, the same day that The Matrix Resurrections releases! That episode was incredibly fun to record and we're looking forward to sharing it.

It's a special double feature episode of Neurratives! Nick and Stephen tackle the seminal 1995 cyberpunk anime film Ghost in the Shell as well as its 2017 Hollywood live-action adaptation and happen to stumble across a bit of neuroscience in a sea of philosophy and metaphysics. 

Want to listen to two millennial men talk about the neuroscience of a romantic comedy for 84 minutes? Of course you do. This episode, Nick and Stephen take a look at 2004's '50 First Dates', where Adam Sandler must continually re-woo a heavily amnesiac Drew Barrymore.  Join us as we take a deep dive into the various types of memory, discuss the basis of modern memory research, and wax nostalgic about the early-2000s (spoiler: this movie is PEAK early-2000s everything).

What is 21-time Oscar nominee and 3-time winner Meryl Streep doing in a network TV movie? Why, promoting pediatric epilepsy awareness, of course! Join Nick and Stephen in their discussion of 1997's made-for-television movie 'First Do No Harm', inspired by director Jim Abrahams' experiences with seeking treatment for his son Charlie's medically intractable epilepsy. We'll take a look at the ketogenic diet that the movie advocates - can you treat pediatric epilepsy by chugging heavy cream and chewing sticks of butter? Tune in to learn more!

This. Movie. Rules. In Episode 6, Nick and Stephen take a look at 2013's Pacific Rim, directed by Guillermo Del Toro. If you like giant robots punching equally-giant interdimensional monsters in the face, then we have great news for you! If you like accurate depictions of neuroscience or brain-computer interfaces in your movies about giant robots punching equally-giant interdimensional monsters in the face--well, tune in to find out.

Music: 'Blippy Trance' - Kevin MacLeod

Neurratives returns to the world of television, with Black Mirror season 3, episode 5, 'Men Against Fire.' Nick and Stephen discuss the dystopian world that this episode has created with the assistance of brain-computer interfaces used...somewhat less than ethically. Is there a scientific basis for the capabilities of this horrible, horrible device?

This episode, it's a deep dive into 1990's Awakenings and Robin Williams isn't funny in this medical drama. Except when he definitely is. Nick & Stephen take a journey into the world of clinical neurology in this adaptation of Dr Oliver Sacks's best-selling 1973 memoir of the same name. Robert De Niro co-stars alongside Robin Williams in this film about the extraordinary results of a 1969 clinical trial of L-dopa in comatose patients.

More reading:

Sacks OW, Kohl M, Schwartz W, Messeloff C.  Side-effects of L-dopa in postencephalic parkinsonism. Lancet. 1970 May  9;1(7654):1006. doi: 10.1016/s0140-6736(70)91137-2. PMID: 4191927.

Note: There's two f-bombs in this episode. Normally I edit those out, or bleep them if they come as part of our commentary. However, in this case, they're used in direct quotes of the only profanity in the film, which occurs at kind of an important part of the film, so I've left it in there. Hopefully your virgin ears won't be too traumatized.

It's 1982 and Clint Eastwood must steal an advanced mind-controlled Soviet fighter jet or else America loses the Cold War! In this episode, Nick and Stephen dive into 1982's Firefox as they examine what the '80s thought a brain-computer interface would look like and try to relate it to real science. Can Clint Eastwood save democracy from communism? Just how useful is the brain-computer interface in this film? How does this movie stack up to the gold standard of jet fighter movies, Top Gun? Spoilers: we're on a sigh-way to the danger zone.

Note: We briefly mention a UCSF speech prosthesis study at the end of the episode. At time of recording, this group had not published yet, but serendipitously, they published the following paper in the New England Journal of Medicine last month.

Moses DA, Metzger SL, Liu JR, Anumanchipalli GK, Makin JG, Sun PF,  Chartier J, Dougherty ME, Liu PM, Abrams GM, Tu-Chan A, Ganguly K, Chang  EF. Neuroprosthesis for Decoding Speech in a Paralyzed Person with  Anarthria. N Engl J Med. 2021 07 15; 385(3):217-227.

More about P300 event-related potentials here:

Music: 'Blippy Trance' - Kevin MacLeod

This episode Nick and Stephen dive into Disney Pixar's 'Inside Out'. What does Pixar get right about the brain? Do we really have a flow of memory orbs constantly running inside our heads? And most importantly: does this movie manage to emotionally crush us at some point?

The debut episode of Neurratives! This episode Nick and Stephen discuss the VISOR visual prosthetic worn by Geordi La Forge in 7 seasons and 1 movie of Star Trek: The Next Generation. We also compare it to a currently-available visual prosthetic and talk about some recent research in visual prosthetics.