Dr. Scott Grafton is a Distinguished Professor of Psychological & Brain Sciences at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He directs the Action Lab, which focuses on the neuroscience of goal-directed movement. 

In this episode we discuss Dr. Grafton’s background in neurology research, and the historical progression of integrating the neuroscience of movement, perception, and goal-setting. We talk about how modern neuroimaging techniques replicated and expanded upon findings from early neuropsychological studies of brain damage, and how Dr. Grafton uses dense-sampling techniques to scan individual’s brains repeatedly over short intervals, to study how learning changes the structural and functional organization of brain regions involved in perception and motor control. Lastly, we talk about Dr. Grafton’s ongoing research of how the brain interacts with the rest of the body during physical activity to maintain allostasis, and the implications this has for our understanding of the links between perception, action, and brain health. 

Dr. Deon Benton is an Assistant Professor of Psychology and Human Development at Vanderbilt University, where he runs the Computational Cognitive Development Lab.

In this episode we talk about the interacting forces of nature and nurture that give rise to human children’s tremendous ability for learning, language development, causal reasoning, and social cognition. Deon describes his past and future research on cognitive development in infants and young children, as well as experimental paradigms for how to measure infant attention, such as through eye-tracking. We talk about how infant statistical learning can be modeled computationally, and the difficulties of decoupling innate knowledge about the physical and social world from learning in the postnatal or even prenatal environments. Lastly, Deon advocates for the importance of designing effective early-intervention studies to improve life outcomes for young children exposed to adversity.

Learn more about Deon’s work at: https://theccdlab.com/

Dr. Alan Fiske is a Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at UCLA, where he co-directs the Kama Muta Lab, and the author of several books including Structures of Social Life, Virtuous Violence, and Kama Muta: Discovering the Connecting Emotion.

In this episode we talk about Alan’s career as an anthropologist, the research which led to his books, and the social mechanisms which give rise to both peace and violence in human societies. Finally, we talk about Alan’s research on kama muta.

Kama muta is Sanskrit for “being moved by love”. Alan defines kama muta as “Kama muta is the sudden feeling of oneness, love, belonging, or union with an individual person, a family, a team, a nation, nature, the cosmos, God, or a kitten.” Learn more about kama muta, and experience it for yourself, at: https://kamamutalab.org/

Dr. Dan Conroy-Beam is an Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Dan uses an evolutionary and computational perspective to understand mate choice and mating relationships. Specifically, he is interested in how mate preferences are integrated with one another computationally in order to make mating decisions as well as the decision rules people use to navigate their mating markets and their relationships. Dan's work combines agent-based modeling of mate choice with studies of real couples to compare and explore candidate models for how people evaluate potential mates, pursue partners, and regulate their relationships. Learn more about Dan's work at: https://www.danconroybeam.com/

In this episode we cover a wide range of topics including Dan's research on computational mate choice, the theory and history of sexual selection, different reproductive strategies and status signaling in humans and other animals, and environmental factors influencing mate choice ranging from sex ratio, to resource availability, to modern dating app environments. 

Dr. Rob Henderson is a psychologist best known for his research on luxury beliefs. 

In this episode, we talk about risk and resilience factors for success in America, including growing up in stable two-parent households. Rob shares how his experience growing up in the foster care system and his military service primed him for identifying luxury beliefs of the upper class during his studies at Yale and Cambridge. We discuss how luxury beliefs confer status upon elites, but disproportionately harm people in poor and working-class communities. As a case-study, we talk about changing norms surrounding monogamy and casual sex. Lastly, we talk about evolutionary pressures for and against monogamy, cooperation, and different moral values.

Dr. C. Sue Carter is a Professor of Psychology at the University of Virginia and Distinguished Research Scientist at Indiana University, where she also holds an Emerita position as Rudy Professor of Biology and was formerly Director of the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction. She is a Fellow and past President of the International Behavioral Neuroscience Society, and is known for her pioneering work on oxytocin, the love hormone, and its role in parental care and romantic pairbonding.  

In this episode we discuss how neuroendocrinology research has evolved over the course of Dr. Carter’s career, and how oxytocin became known as “the love hormone”. We discuss her early research examining oxytocin’s role in parental care, pairbonding, and sex drive in prairie voles, and contrast these findings to early evolutionary theories centered around testosterone and other sex hormones. We also talk about vasopressin, a hormone related to oxytocin, and discuss its role in more nuanced forms of care such as defensive aggression. Dr. Carter introduces the term of “sociostasis” as a social form of homeostasis which oxytocin and vasopressin are central to regulating. Lastly, we talk about oxytocin’s interactions with sex and stress hormones prenatally, during infancy, and during puberty, and how the early environment may epigenetically our oxytocin receptors and have lifelong impacts.

Dr. Adam Morris is a cognitive scientist and Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Psychology at Princeton University.

In this episode we talk about Adam’s research on the connections between mindfulness, decision-making, and introspection. We talk about the cognitive mechanisms involved involving in weighing pros and cons of your decisions, how various decision-making strategies may be computationally modeled, and how there may be a disconnect between people’s interoceptive beliefs about their decision-making processes, and what they actually do. Lastly, we talk about the science of mindfulness, and Adam’s ongoing research plans of an intervention study to test whether mindfulness training helps people introspect better about their own decision-making.

Dr. Brynn Sherman is a cognitive neuroscientist and postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Pennsylvania.

In this episode we talk about Brynn’s research on the interaction between statistical learning and memory errors, and how memory is studied using behavioral tasks and neuroimaging. We discuss the distinction between episodic memory and semantic memory, memory encoding and consolidation, and between knowing and remembering. We also discuss Brynn’s more recent research on the effects of stress and sleep on memory, and how these effects manifest in the brain.

Dr. Michael Levin is a developmental and synthetic biologist at Tufts University, where he is the Vannevar Bush Distinguished Professor and director of the Allen Discovery Center and Tufts Center for Regenerative and Developmental Biology.

In this episode we talk about Mike’s research, which ranges from studying the molecular biology of cancer, to the bioelectrics of limb regeneration, to memory and higher-order cognition. Mike describes the overall theme of his research as understanding the embodied nature of cognition in organic and synthetic systems, and the philosophical implications of this worldview. We discuss a wide variety of topics ranging from the neurobiology of planarian flatworms, to the future of regenerative medicine, to philosophical questions about the definitions of life, consciousness, and artificial intelligence.

Dr. Daniel Schacter is a Professor of Psychology at Harvard University where he runs the Schacter Memory Lab, and author of The Seven Sins of Memory.

In this episode we talk about the history of memory research over the last 100+ years, beginning with simple behavioral tasks and up to modern neuroimaging. Dr. Schacter overviews different dimensions of memory scientists have identified, including episodic vs. semantic, implicit vs. explicit, and the processes of encoding, consolidation, retrieval, and reconsolidation. We then discuss each of The Seven Sins of Memory: Transience, Absent-Mindedness, Blocking, Misattribution, Suggestibility, Bias, and Persistence. Lastly, Dr. Schacter describes some of his more recent research on the relationship between episodic memory and imagination and creativity.