Thinking Tools Podcast Episode 25 - 

The idea of scaling, in biology, refers to how a biological system responds to changes in its overall size. More specifically, the properties that characterize animals–such as their metabolic rate, heart rate, and average lifespan–are systematically related to the size of the animal. But how, in a precise quantitative sense, does such biological scaling manifest?

In this episode of the Thinking Tools Podcast, I speak with Dr. Geoffrey West about these and other ideas from his 2017 book, “Scale: The Universal Laws of Growth, Innovation, Sustainability, and the Pace of Life in Organisms, Cities, Economies, and Companies”

Watch the video episode here: https://youtu.be/sHXoKURiPfc

Geoffrey West is Distinguished Professor and former President of the Santa Fe Institute and an Associate Senior Fellow of Oxford University’s Green-Templeton College. He obtained his BA from Cambridge in 1961 and PhD from Stanford in 1966 where he was later on the faculty. For many years he ran high energy physics at Los Alamos National Laboratory. West is a theoretical physicist whose primary interests have been in fundamental questions ranging across physics, biology and the social sciences. His work is motivated by the search for unifying principles and simplicity underlying complexity. His research includes metabolism, growth, aging & death, sleep, cancer, ecosystems, rates of growth & innovation, and the accelerating pace of life. Most recently he has been developing a science of cities and companies, including the challenge of long-term global sustainability. West has lectured worldwide at many high profile events including Davos and TED. He has received many awards and his work featured in numerous publications, podcasts and TV productions including New York Times, Financial Times, Time, The Economist, Le Monde and Scientific American, and participated in television productions including Nova, National Geographic and the BBC. His work was selected as a breakthrough idea by the Harvard Business Review in 2006, and in 2007 he was on Time magazine's list of "100 Most Influential People in the World".

Find out more about Geoffrey’s work: https://www.santafe.edu/people/profile/geoffrey-west

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Thinking Tools Podcast Episode 24 - 

Understanding social neuroscience requires understanding the neuroscience of the self. That’s because our social interactions are deeply intertwined with how we understand ourselves, our goals, needs, desires, and dreads. Social cognitive neuroscience, one field that studies the brain in social circumstances, has discovered much regarding how our brains process information about ourselves and others.

In this episode of the Thinking Tools Podcast, I speak with Taylor Guthrie, the creator of one of my favorite YouTube channels, @The Cellular Republic (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUNqseoOq5DfzwCRI-7ZAow).

There, Taylor provides university-level lectures on social neuroscience as well as shorter videos that provide insight into other aspects of neuroscience.

Taylor Guthrie is a PhD student at the University of Oregon where his main focus of study is social neuroscience. He is particularly interested in how our brains begin to represent social information in more similar ways to each other as we form close relationships with one another. His work explores the nature of the self at a neural level and seeks to uncover the ways in which the brain separates information about the self from information that is used to represent the various other people around us. He uses MRI and computational analysis methods to explore these various processes.

Watch the full video here: https://youtu.be/deDUbxNJiOk

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Thinking Tools Podcast Episode 23 - 

Spikes are action potentials–or the firing of neurons, while dark neurons indicate how rare such events really are in the human brain. That is, when we picture a brain, we sometimes imagine it flooded with action potentials, a hundred billion neurons all activating nearly simultaneously. The reality is that there are far fewer neurons active at any given time. Dr. Mark Humphries, author of the 2021 book, “The Spike: An Epic Journey Through the Brain in 2.1 Seconds,” has dubbed this phenomenon “the dark neuron problem.”

In this episode of the Thinking Tools Podcast, I speak with Dr. Humphries about this and a few other ideas from “The Spike.”

Mark Humphries is a computational neuroscientist and writer. His lab at the University of Nottingham, UK, researches how groups of neurons collectively encode information about the past, present, or future, in order to guide behaviour. He writes about systems neuroscience for a broad audience at Medium (https://drmdhumphries.medium.com).

Find Mark on Twitter @markdhumphries  (https://twitter.com/markdhumphries).

Watch the video version on YouTube: https://youtu.be/bbsyYThAjCY

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Thinking Tools Podcast Episode 22 - The Evolution of the Brain

Watch the video here: https://youtu.be/j_ldDirCCns

The evolution of the brain began in relatively simple creatures, possibly for the purpose of coordinating digestion and other basic physiological processes. Hundreds of millions of years later, the brain evolved into the modern versions we see across the animal kingdom today. Yet, some may have changed more than others over that time. For example, scientists believe that humans and all other mammals evolved from fish, so by looking at the differences between human and fish brains, we can infer some of the evolutionary changes that occurred over those ~370 million years. Much of what makes our human brains unique appears to be in the cerebral cortex, though other brain structures are no doubt important in what makes us human. Finally, many of the quirks of our behavior and mental life, especially those surrounding sex and sex differences, can be explained partly by our evolutionary history.

This video is a brief exploration of brain evolution. It addresses questions like, Why did the brain evolve? How did the brain change over evolutionary time? What makes the human brain unique? And what vestiges of evolution remain hidden in our modern minds?

However, this video is ultimately incomplete. There are so many aspects of both brain and human evolution that I did not mention here or which I did not cover in detail. If you want to know more about this topic, I encourage you to check out the books, articles, and studies cited on YouTube.

Need a quick primer on how evolution works? Check out this video: https://youtube.com/shorts/VnCRcNgM7Lk?feature=share

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Thinking Tools Podcast Episode 21 - 

❓ Do you consider yourself spiritual? ❓

The neuroscience of spirituality and religious experience is a fascinating subject. In this episode, I interview Dr. Andrew Newberg about the brain, spirituality, and religion. Even if you’re not particularly spiritual or if, like me, you don’t believe in god, spirits, the soul, or the afterlife, it’s still fascinating to understand that the brain is naturally wired for profound experiences and what effect they have on our health and wellbeing. In this episode, we primarily discuss his 2012 Teaching Company Course, “The Spiritual Brain: Science and Religious Experience.” Check out the full episode (link in bio).

Andrew B. Newberg, M.D. is currently the Research Director at the Marcus Institute of Integrative Health at Thomas Jefferson University and Hospital in Philadelphia. He is a Professor in the Department of Integrative Medicine and Nutritional Sciences, with a secondary appointment in the Department of Radiology at Thomas Jefferson University. He is Board Certified in Internal Medicine and Nuclear Medicine. He has actively pursued a number of neuroimaging research projects which have included the study of aging and dementia, epilepsy, and other neurological and psychiatric disorders.  Dr. Newberg has been particularly involved in the study of mystical and religious experiences, a field referred to as “neurotheology”. He has published over 250 peer reviewed articles and chapters on brain function, brain imaging, and the study of religious and mystical experiences.  He has published 12 books which have been translated into 17 different languages. He was listed as one of the 30 Most Influential Neuroscientists Alive Today by the Online Psychology Degree Guide.

Watch the video version on YouTube: https://youtu.be/9KmWbvVOT0E

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Thinking Tools Podcast Episode 20 -

❓ Have you heard of mirror neurons? ❓

Mirror neurons are a special type of brain cell that were once thought to explain the brain basis of language and that of our understanding of the actions of other people, or “action understanding.” However, between the late 1990s and early 2010s, neuroscientist Gregory Hickok crafted a devastating argument against these claims, culminating in his 2014 book “The Myth of Mirror Neurons: The Real Neuroscience of Communication and Cognition.” (WW. Norton and Co.) His critiques contributed to a lively debate on the topic of mirror neurons, language, and action understanding.

So what are mirror neurons? In this episode of the Thinking Tools Podcast, I speak with Dr. Gregory Hickok about his book as well as a sophisticated dual stream model of speech and language processing in the brain, which he created with neuroscientist David Poeppel.

Dr. Hickok’s research focuses on the neurobiology of language, speech, and hearing with application to understanding the nature of acquired language disorders (aphasia). He has published over 190 scientific papers and book chapters and edited several book volumes on the neurobiology of language and hearing. His research uses a multi-method approach including functional MRI, electrocorticography, neuropsychology, and computational modeling, and has been funded by the National Institutes of Health for the last three decades. Dr. Hickok was the inaugural Chair of the Society for the Neurobiology, founding director of UC Irvine’s Center for Cognitive Neuroscience and Center for Language Science, and Editor-in-Chief of Psychonomic Bulletin & Review from 2014-2019. Dr. Hickok received his Ph.D. in Psychology and Linguistics at Brandeis University in 1991 and did postdoctoral training in Cognitive Neuroscience at MIT and the Salk Institute for Biological Studies.  He joined the faculty at UC Irvine in 1996 where he is currently Professor of Cognitive Sciences and Language Science.

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Thinking Tools Podcast Episode 19 -

Executive function is a set of mental skills that we humans use to plan, hold information in working memory, and generally get things done. Collectively, these are often referred to as “cognitive control,” and they go a long way in explaining what makes humans unique in the animal kingdom. Not other animals can plan in the way we do, thinking decades ahead and making sacrifices now for that far off future.

So how does executive function work? In this episode of the Thinking Tools Podcast, I speak with Dr. David Badre, a cognitive neuroscientist and the author of this 2020 book, On Task: How Our Brain Gets Things Done, (2020, PRinceton University Press) which is all about cognitive control.

David Badre is Professor of Cognitive, Linguistic, and Psychological Sciences at Brown University, where he is also on the faculty of the Carney Institute for Brain Science. He is a graduate of the University of Michigan. He received his PhD from MIT and did his postdoctoral fellowship at UC Berkeley before joining Brown as faculty in 2008. His laboratory studies the neuroscience of cognitive control and executive function.

❓ When do you find it difficult to exert cognitive control?❓

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With this newsletter, I want to connect with you and give you exclusive content that I think will be beneficial or interesting. Every one of them will contain the following five items:

1. A fascinating fact about the human brain

2. Science-based productivity and happiness tips

3. My thoughts about life, culture, or current events

4. A book recommendation

5. A thought-provoking quote

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Thinking Tools Podcast Episode 18 - 

1. Fact: The sensory cortices may be defined by the kinds of data they receive.

2. Tip: Be deliberate and cautious about what you repeatedly do. You will become it.

3. Book: “Livewired: The inside story of the ever-changing brain” by David Eagleman

4. Quote: How to change your brain most effectively.

5. Thoughts: The future of the human brain in general and perception in particular may be hard to recognize

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References

1. Eagleman, D. (2020). Livewired: The inside story of the ever-changing brain. Canongate Books.

2. My interview with Robert Plomin: https://youtu.be/_qF8QVYmg-c

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With this newsletter, I want to connect with you and give you exclusive content that I think will be beneficial or interesting. Every one of them will contain the following five items:

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Thinking Tools Podcast Episode 17 -

Nature vs nurture. Genes vs environment. DNA vs life experience. What makes us who we are?  In Episode 17 of the Thinking Tools Podcast, I speak with Dr. Robert Plomin about his 2018 book, “Blueprint: How DNA Makes Us Who We Are.” Dr. Plomin is Professor in Behavioural Genetics at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King’s College London.

He has published more than 900 papers and is the author of the major textbook in the field as well as a dozen other books. He has received lifetime research achievement awards from all the major societies in the behavioral sciences, as well as being made Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, British Academy, American Academy of Political and Social Science, and Academy of Medical Sciences (UK). In 2021, he received the Grawemeyer Award for Psychology.

After 50 years of research, he has come to the view that inherited DNA differences are the major systematic force that makes us who we are as individuals – our mental health and illness, our personality and our cognitive abilities and disabilities. The environment is important, but it works completely different from the way we thought it worked. The DNA revolution has made it possible to use DNA to predict our psychological problems and promise from birth. These advances in genetic research call for a radical rethink about what makes us who we are, with sweeping, and no doubt controversial, implications for the way we think about parenting, education and the events that shape our lives. This is the theme of his book, Blueprint: How DNA Makes Us Who We Are (Allen Lane, 2018; Penguin Press, 2019).

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4. A book recommendation

5. A thought-provoking quote

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Thinking Tools Podcast Episode 16 - 

1. Fact: How your brain corrects errors in movement.

2. Tip: Focus on neurological mechanisms and evidence, not misleading rhetoric.

3. Book: “The Myth of Mirror Neurons,” by Gregory Hickok

4. Quote: Why individual neuroscience studies may be misleading.

5. Thoughts: Read review articles and meta-analyses to start learning about a topic.

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References

Hickok, G. (2014). The myth of mirror neurons: The real neuroscience of communication and cognition. WW Norton & Company.

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With this newsletter, I want to connect with you and give you exclusive content that I think will be beneficial or interesting. Every one of them will contain the following five items:

1. A fascinating fact about the human brain

2. Science-based productivity and happiness tips

3. My thoughts about life, culture, or current events

4. A book recommendation

5. A thought-provoking quote

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