#NewToCogSci: Resources for the Curious

Interested in cognitive science? Lots of us are, and I get questions from readers (thanks!!) asking for resources to this interdisciplinary field, which comprises the "...study of mind and intelligence, embracing philosophy, psychology, artificial intelligence, neuroscience, linguistics, and anthropology" (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy).

I'm including three sets of resources, and omitting two. This is due to my own professional and learning biases. I'm a text-based learner and like to read my cognitive science in short bursts (reference material, Twitter, or blogs) or listen to interviews with cognitive scientists. So these biases give me great familiarity with:

• Twitter & Blogs
• Podcasts
• Books & Magazines

I'm not including popular or scholarly non-fiction, partly because there is so much out there and partly because I don't typically read non-fiction (shhh, that's a secret!), so I can't list my favorite cognitive science books here. I'm also not including videos, because I don't have the patience to sit through a video.

Twitter & Blogs
These are in addition to the Twitter feeds mentioned elsewhere in this post (like @SciAmMind and @AllintheMind).

• @mocost (Mo Costandi) writes the Neurophilosophy blog for the Guardian and describes himself as a "Neuroscientist turned writer."
• @neuroconscience (Micah Allen) is a PhD in cognitive neuroscience; meta/social cognition, neural plasticity, connectivity, & mental training. Solid news about all of the above.
• @TheNeuroScience (Stanford) tweets lots of news about neuro- and cognitive science.
• @PsychScience (Association for Psychological Science) tweets news and scholarly articles about all aspects of psychology.
• @TheSocialBrain (Dr. SunWolf) tweets about "neuroscience, social behaviors, and the science of happiness."
• @VaughanBell tweets news & articles about all aspects of cognitive science and science more broadly. He also blogs at MindHacks (which is also on Twitter @mindhacksblog).

Podcasts (oh my!) 

• All in the Mind is a weekly 30-minute radio show from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Radio National. Host Lynne Malcolm covers one brain / cognitive science / mind issue per show. Recent episodes have covered The Science of Compassion, The Psychology of Cults, and How language shapes thought.
  
  They say that it's "a program about the mind, brain and behaviour, and the endlessly fascinating interactions between them;" I say it's a must-listen. See also @AllintheMind on Twitter.
  
• Brain Science Podcast is a monthly hour-long interview with leading scientists in all areas of brain science from independent podcaster and emergency physician Ginger Campell.  This year's shows have featured, among others, neurophilospher Patricia Churchland, Christof Koch, and a detailed review of Antonio Damasio's Self Comes To Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain.
  
  Check out all 92 episodes, which include detailed show notes and the podcast. If you're new to cognitive science, the first few episodes are a great introduction to various concepts.
  
• On Being. American Public Media's weekly hour-long show features Krista Tippett talking about a variety of spiritual and scientific topics. The most recent episode is about language (Unfolding Language, Unfolding Life); other episodes include Opening to Our Lives: Jon Kabat-Zinn's Science of Mindfulness, The Science of Healing Places with Esther Sternberg, and Investigating Healthy Minds with Richard Davidson.

Books & Magazines

As a librarian, I'm very familiar with reference resources such as encyclopedias and dictionaries, and there are some wonderful reference sources for cognitive science -- and if you're new to cognitive science as a whole,

Books are linked to WorldCat, so you can see if a nearby library owns the title. You can also easily get from WorldCat to Amazon or Barnes & Noble to order the title for your collection.

• Scientific American Mind is a wonderful magazine with articles written for a scientifically knowledgeable lay audience; topics cover all areas of cognitive science and neuroscience. Recent articles include "How Video Games Change the Brain", "Schools Add Workouts for Attention, Grit and Emotional Control," and Christof Koch usually has a column on Consciousness in each issue.
  
  The website offers a few paragraphs of each article for free, but to read the full article, you need a subscription (through your library or on your own). Each major article offers citations for more reading on the article's topic. Check out @SciAmMind on Twitter, too.
  
  They have a section of Reviews and Recommendations (2012; 2013) which is a good way to find popular non-fiction in cognitive science.
  
• The open access Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy includes several entries containing the word "cognitive" which include cognitive science, embodied cognition, and evolutionary psychology. They also cover topics like emotion and consciousness as well as biographical entries on folks ranging from Socrates to Descartes to Sartre.
  
  The SEP's goal is to provide "the philosophical profession and the general public alike with high-quality scholarship on a variety of topics relevant to the human condition," writes Edward Zalta ("The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: A university/library partnership in support of scholarly communication and open access," College & Research Library News, Sept. 2006 (pdf))
  
• A great dictionary for understanding psychology terms is Raymond Corsini's 1999 Dictionary of Psychology. The images are terrific (my favorite is the one for pilomotor response) and the definitions are clear and concise. Citation: Corsini, R. J. (1999). The dictionary of psychology. Philadelphia, PA: Brunner/Mazel.

• A great encyclopedia is Michael Gazzaniga's The Cognitive Neurosciences, the fourth edition of which came out in 2009. The academic library review magazine Choice calls it a "benchmark resource for the cognitive neurosciences" (May 2010); sections include Development and Evolution; Plasticity; Attention; Sensation and Perception; Memory; Language; The Emotional and Social Brain; Consciousness and several more. Citation: Gazzaniga, M. S. (2009). The cognitive neurosciences. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.

all icons from Iconfinder (from the 'Nuvola' icon set)

What's your favorite Cognitive Science resource? Feel free to add yours in the comments!

Favorite Podcasts

I've had two conversations recently in which I was discussing favorite science podcasts. Since this blog serves as a long-term memory aid, I'm listing, in alphabetical order, some of the sci-tech podcasts I like right now. (read about earlier favorites)

• All in the Mind Terrific 30-minute discussion of all things psychology from Australia's ABC Radio National. Host and science journalist Natasha Mitchell is very knowledgeable and has interviewed folks like Steven Pinker, Dan Dennett, and others in psychology, neuroscience, and even philosophy. I've blogged about many episodes. (note: their web site was down as I wrote this, but it should be back soon)
  
• Brain Science Podcast Host Ginger Campbell (an ER "doc" in Alabama) conducts terrific interviews and book talks about many cognitive science topics. She's interviewed Christof Koch, linguist Alice Gaby, and Brain Rules author John Medina. She asks good, knowledgeable questions and her conversations have inspired me to buy many books for myself and for my library. You can follow Ginger on Twitter, and read what I've blogged about prior Brain Science podcasts.
  
• Free Library of Philadelphia "Author Event" lectures, feature many types of authors including several scientists. I just listened to physicist Paul Davies' talk entitled Cosmic Jackpot: Why Our Universe Is Just Right for Life and was riveted by Simon Winchester talking about The Man Who Loved China: Joseph Needham and the Making of a Masterpiece. There are also lectures by Steven Pinker on his book The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature and Eric Kandel talking about In Search of Memory: The Emergence of a New Science of Mind. Looks like mathematician and physicist Brian Greene will be speaking this fall! These hour-long talks usually contain a 30-minute lecture then ~30 minutes of Q&A with the audience.
  
• Future Tense 3-4 minute radio program subtitled "Public radio's daily journal of the digital age." Host (and Twitterer) Jon Gordon covers many aspects of technology, such as podcasting (not mainstream yet, apparently), PowerPoint, as well as many Mac and PC issues. I've blogged many Future Tense episodes.
  
• GSLIScast Audio recordings from many speaker presentations at Simmons Graduate School of Library & Information Science. They usually run 60-90 minutes.
• Radio Times with WHYY's Marty Moss-Coane. The majority of these 50-minute podcast are NOT about science, but the ones that are are terrific (and the others are, too). Moss-Coane has interviewed Avery Gilbert, psychologist and smell expert; Gary Marcus, Hampshire alum and director of NYU's Infant Language Learning Center; and Drew Westen, author of The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation. Unfortunately, the mp3 links have a short shelf-live at WHYY's site, so it's best to subscribe to the show via iTunes.
  
• SirsiDynix Institute Free, hour-long workshops with library leaders about various aspects of library science, including David Lee King's primer on video on the web and the awesome Maximizing the Power of the Web: Pew Internet & American Life Project's 2007 Findings with Lee Rainie.
  
• TED Talks 20-minute talks by prominent thinkers in many disciplines, including science, technology, arts, and more. Topics include Sugata Mitra showing how kids teach themselves; Patricia Burchat shedding light on dark matter; and Kevin Kelly on the next 5,000 days of the web. I've blogged about several TED Talks.
  
• TVBarn Not science-related, but thoughtful conversations about TV between (Twitterer) Aaron Barnhart and a few radio talk show hosts across the country. My favorites are when he speaks with Paul Harris. They are usually 5-15 minutes but sometimes last longer.

Please add your favorite science podcast(s) in the comments!

Finding CogSci Podcasts

In case you're wondering ... here are some ways to find nifty cognitive science & other podcasts.

Here's a Google search trick I use to find podcasts of interviews with folks whom I'd like to hear: inurl:podcast + "name of person" (in quotes). The command inurl:podcast means that the word "podcast" has to be in the URL, which gives you a good chance that the link will actually lead to a podcast. This does result in some false positives, but it's a pretty reliable search.

A search for this: inurl:podcast "david sloan wilson" yields 6 results, including an interview with Wilson on the site of publisher's of his recent book.

A search for this inurl:podcast "positive psychology" brings up over 200 results, many of which are interviews with scholars working with positive psychology.

Lists of psychology & cogsci podcasts:

• The British Psychological Society has a Research Digest Blog with some nifty posts. One feature of this blog is a section called "Elsewhere (for when you've had enough of journal articles" (heh) which lists some mainstream (frequently the Manchester Guardian) coverage of psychology & cognitive science, including podcasts.
  
• The BPS also has a blog post called Psychology Podcasts: a Clickable List which is a nice list of podcasts about psychology. Christian Jarrett maintains the list and is happy to post new links to the site.
• This Week in Science features some cognitive science / cognitive psychology; see their list of posts in cognitive science.
• University of California San Diego faculty member Rafael Nunez has posted entire 80-minute lectures for his Introduction to Cognitive Sci class.
  

Regular readers of the CogSci Librarian will know that these are among my favorites:

• Ginger Campbell at the Brain Science Podcast covers lots of interesting cognitive science topics, including consciousness, memory, body maps, and more.
• Natasha Mitchell's All in the Mind podcast covers all kinds of topics, such as intuition, music, and vision, as well as interviews with Daniel Dennett & Steven Pinker.
  
• The New York Times "Science Times" podcast often features psych / neuroscience stuff. See New York Times & scroll down to Science Times, or subscribe in iTunes.

Blogged with Flock

Brain Science Podcast

I've just discovered a new podcast about cognitive science called the Brain Science Podcast, created by an emergency physician, Dr. Ginger Campbell.

The most recent episode is about Emotion; Campbell reviews the 2001 book Emotion : The Science of Sentiment, by British philosopher Dylan Evans.

Here are the show notes, which is a good summary of what Campbell discussed:

"This episode is a short introduction to the idea that our emotions are an essential part of our intelligence.

* We discuss the Basic Emotions based on the work of anthropologist Paul Eckman.
* We learn about culturally learned emotions such as “being a wild pig,” which is observed among the Gurumba people of New Guinea
* Paul Griffiths introduced the idea of “higher cognitive emotions”
* Emotions seem to exist on a continuum from the highly innate basic emotions to the culturally specific emotions
* The work of Joseph Ledoux and Antonio Damasio reveal that our emotions are an important element of normal intelligence
* We consider how fear actually follows two pathways in the brain
* We consider the role of the limbic system including the amygdala
* We consider the relationship between emotions and mood
* We consider how mood effects memory and decision making
o This includes Robert Zajonc’s discovery of the “mere exposure” effect
* We briefly consider the question of whether computers could ever display emotions"

Other topics have included neuroplasticity (in which Campbell covered Sharon Begley's book Train your mind, change your brain : how a new science reveals our extraordinary potential to transform ourselves and consciousness).

Highly recommended.

Neuroanatomy Now

Neuroanatomy seems to be hot in my podcast feed lately. Ted | Talks just featured a presentation by Jill Bolte Taylor, neuroscientist and stroke survivor.


(or read the transcript)

And my favorite brain science podcaster, Ginger Campbell, just podcast a "whirlwind (55 minute) tour of brain anatomy, based on Beyond the Zonules of Zinn: A Fantastic Journey Through Your Brain (2008) by David Bainbridge. Thanks to Dr. Bainbridge’s generosity (and permission) Ginger has embedded some of the brain anatomy figures on her podcast site, along with the author’s legends. This MRI of Bainbridge's own brain is pretty cool.

For More Information

• Bainbridge, David. Beyond the Zonules of Zinn: A Fantastic Journey Through Your Brain. Harvard, 2008.
  
• A Brief Introduction to Brain Anatomy. Brain Science Podcast, March 7, 2008. See also the figures page.
  
• Taylor, Jill Bolte. My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist's Personal Journey. Lulu.com, 2006.
• -- Ted| Talks. February 2008.
  

Podcast / Interviews I've Enjoyed

I've heard some very interesting podcasts / interviews lately & instead of blogging about each one, I thought I'd just list them with a very brief note about what was relevant for cog sci.

• WNYC's Radio Lab is a fun 50-minute show covering various aspects of science very loosely defined. I just listened to the show on Time from 2005, and it was a fascinating look into various aspects of people's perception of time. Hosts Jad Abumrad & Robert Krulwich speak with Oliver Sacks, Rebecca Solnit, Jay Griffith, and physicist Brian Greene.


• ETA I found it ... There was a great interview recently on WHYY's Radio Times, with Marty Moss-Coane, about bonobos. "How do baboons relate to each other and understand their place in the world and what can we learn from them about human behavior? Penn researchers Dorothy Cheney and ROBERT SEYFARTH, who joins us in the studio today, have been studying baboons and monkeys in their natural habitat for over 20 years. Their work is documented in a new book, Baboon Metaphysics: The Evolution of a Social Mind. Radio Times, June 7, 2007. Archive no longer available.


• Dr. Ginger Campbell, of the the Brain Science Podcast, recently interviewed Elkhonon Goldberg, author of The Executive Brain: Frontal Lobes and the Civilized Mind (Oxford, 2001). Interesting discussion of the pre-frontal lobes, and how they relate to the other structures of the brain. Campbell also discuss some ideas about why the left and right sides of the brain differ, as well as several important ways in which the cortex, and especially the pre-frontal lobes differ from some of the older parts of the brain.
  


• The SETI Institute has a terrific radio show called Are We Alone; the SETI's mission is "to explore, understand and explain the origin, nature and prevalence of life in the universe." They seem to like cognitive science, at least enough to have had a recent episode on consciousness called That Thinking Feeling (mp3). Show hosts Seth and Molly interviewed a bevy (?) of neuro* & *philo* folks, including Marvin Minsky, author of The Emotion Machine (Simon & Schuster, 2007); Nicholas Strausfeld, Neurobiologist at the University of Arizona at Tucson, who talks about how smart cockroaches are, and how he knows; and Susan Clancy, author of Abducted: How People Come to Believe They Were Kidnapped by Aliens (Harvard, 2005) (because of "sleep paralysis"?!



• ETA ... Australia's All In The Mind offers another great episode, this time entitled Nature? Nurture? What makes us human? It's a podcast of the start of the 2007 Alfred Deakin Innovation Lecture series, and it features bits of Matt Ridley's lecture, in which he speaks about his book Nature Via Nurture : Genes, Experience, and What Makes Us Human (HarperCollins, 2003). Following his lecture, Natasha Mitchell speaks with Professor Robert Williamson A.O. and Rhonda Galbally A.O, for a fascinating discussion of the "nature vs. nurture" debate. note to former reference students: Dunedin features prominently. A print transcript of Ridley's lecture is available, as is a podcast, in addition to the All in the Mind podcast.

All shows are highly recommended!

More on Embodied Cognition

Ginger Campbell interviews philosopher Lawrence Shapiro about his new book, Embodied Cognition, on the March 25, 2011 episode of the Brain Science Podcast. Shapiro writes about his new book on his website:

I lay out the various research programs within embodied cognition, critically assessing the arguments for and against their claims. I conclude with some remarks regarding the prospects of embodied cognition and its place in relation to traditional cognitive science.

Ginger does a nice job of getting Shapiro to provide a balanced introduction to embodied cognition in the podcast. You can listen to the podcast or download the transcript (pdf) at the Brain Science Podcast website.

Another Reason I Blog

This blog was originally intended to provide a spot to put articles, links, etc. I found that would interest "my" faculty & staff at Hampshire College's School of Cognitive Science. I became more and more interested in the interdisciplinary topic of cognitive science as time went on, especially psychology, but also computer science, education, and animal science. And philosophy. Well, ok, just about all aspects of cog sci interest me. As part of my own education, I would browsed through journals in the field so I'd know what "my" faculty were thinking about. As part of my job, I purchased books in the various fields, and I used the blog to highlight new books & databases. The focus of the blog was intended to be exclusively cognitive science.

Then I left Hampshire, and that was very sad because the faculty there is great fun. I have kept up my interest in cognitive science and I have taken to listening to podcasts during my 2.5 hours in the car each day. The combination of the two has led to many blog posts, as I try to synthesize what I've learned and share it with the world. Posting about what I've heard helps me remember what I've learned within the cognitive science realm.

On the other hand, I am a working librarian and a teacher of library science at Simmons Simmons Graduate School of Library & Information Science (at their Mount Holyoke College campus). There is some overlap between cognitive science and information science (think usability) and everyone likes to or needs to search, so some posts appeal to both the cogsci audience and the LIS audience. Also, I suspect that many of my regular readers are educators of one kind or another, so the periodic posts about teaching appeal to the cog sci audience.

Some topics, however, are weighted heavily to LIS and probably appeal more to my LIS colleagues, friends, and even former students. My occasional rants about marketing are a good example, as are the rarer posts about reference, or anything labeled "library science."

Why the mix of topics and audiences? I want to naturally, personally, show scientists & psychologists what we librarians do and how we think. It's partly my nature to be inclusive, but it's partly a mechanism through which I can demonstrate the "marketing" of library science without being dreadfully obvious about it. I read somewhere -- and I can't go back to the source, because I read this a few weeks, months, years ago (you all know how memory works, right?!) -- that it's a good idea for academic librarians to publish in the non-library literature to highlight what they do in a venue where their faculty colleagues congregate. I definitely can't get published in Behavioral and Brain Sciences or Trends in Cognitive Sciences, which some of you might read, but ... I can publish here and reach a few faculty / graduate students in cognitive science and psychology and philosophy.

It's a big Internet, but the nice thing is we can get to know each other in ways we can't quite in real life. So ... that's another reason I blog.

Welcome to readers of these science-y blogs ...
* BPS Research Digest (from the British Psychological Society)
* the Brain Science Podcast
* Channel N
* Combat Philosopher

and all you Googlers!

Brain Plasticity and Psychotherapy

Australia's terrific cognitive science radio show All in the Mind just had a two-part series called The Power of Plasticity in which host Natasha Mitchell interviewed psychiatrist Norman Doidge (Columbia University and the University of Toronto) and Jeffrey Schwartz (UCLA) about "neuroplasticians" (Doidge's term).

As Mitchell notes on the episode page, "the adult brain was a rigid, unchangeable organ, but that pessimistic perspective is now being radically revised;" she talks with Schwartz and Doidge about the many ways they know that the brain is, in fact, changeable and adaptable.

Schwartz discusses how people with obsessive compulsive disorder can take advantage of the brain's plasticity to actually change the wiring and minimize the disorder. He says that the part of the brain involved with OCD (the cordate nucleus) functions somewhat like the transmission in a car:

... what happens in obsessive compulsive disorder is you literally do get a stuck transmission and you get this error detection circuit coming in from another part of the brain in the front called the orbital frontal cortex locking, and you can't shift out of it and because you're locked in to an error detection circuit, you are bombarded with feelings that something is wrong, even though the rest of your brain and mind adequately can tell most of the time that even though this feels terrible it really doesn't make sense.

And apparently, according to Schwartz, "people could direct their own inner environment through this enhanced understanding. So I said [to myself] this is self-directed neuroplasticity."

Doidge talks about how psychotherapy can also change some of the brain's wiring; his analogy is to skiing:

plasticity is like snow on a hill in winter, if we're going to ski down that hill because the snow is plastic and pliable we can take many different paths down that hill, not an infinite number, there are rocks here and trees over there. And if we had a good pass down the first time, being human we will tend to favour a path close to that the second and third times and then because the snow is pliable and plastic we'll develop tracks which become ruts and we can get stuck in them, brain lock.

He adds that "many of the neuroplastic treatments basically find ways of setting up road blocks, so that you can get out of those ruts and learn about new pathways and grow new pathways etc."

Both Schwartz and Doidge tell some fascinating stories. The two episodes are well worth a listen, and you can read the transcript online if you prefer.

For More Information

• The Power of Plasticity, Part 1 of 2. All in the Mind, September 13, 2008.
• The Power of Plasticity, Part 2 of 2. All in the Mind, September 20, 2008.
• See also: Norman Doidge Discusses Neuroplasticity Brain Science Podcast, December 14, 2007.
  

Great CogSci podcast called @hiddenbrain

I'm so glad to report that there is a good cognitive science podcast in the U.S.: Hidden Brain, hosted by NPR reporter Shankar Vedantam and available on NPR and wherever podcasts can be found.

The Dec. 13, 2016 episode, We're More Alike Than Different, Thanks To Peer Pressure's Relentless Influence features an interview with Penn marketing professor Jonah Berger and combines two of my interests: cognitive science and advertising / marketing.

Berger says we tend to be pretty good at recognizing how social influence and peer pressure affect other people's choices. But we're not so good at recognizing those forces in our own decision-making.

It's a great episode, and if you like cognitive science, I highly recommend Hidden Brain.

This makes a great compliment to Australia's outstanding cognitive science podcast, All in the Mind, which I've written about before.

Neuroplasticity on PBS

A recent Mind Hacks post alerted me to the upcoming PBS series Brain Fitness Program, to be shown as part of the December 2007 pledge drive. From the PBS Press Release: "Dr. [Michael] Merzenich, of the University of California San Francisco, has been leading the effort to design the scientifically based set of brain exercises that are demonstrated in this program."

Alvaro, at the blog Sharp Brains, reports on this as well, and suggests that there will be a video available as part of the pledge drive, available for a $120 donation to PBS. I'm a member of PBS; I'm hoping the show will be available as a podcast as well.


(see the trailer from YouTube)

The PBS press release describes Merzenich's work:

"Dr. Michael Merzenich and his colleagues worked together to create a system for strengthening the brain and making it perform with more agility, speed and comprehension. The Brain Fitness Program is based on neuro-plasticity — the ability of the brain to change, adapt and even rewire itself. The brain remains highly malleable or 'plastic' throughout life, and by presenting the brain with the proper stimuli, scientists can drive beneficial physical and functional change. In the past two years, this global team of scientists has developed computer-based stimulus sets (or 'exercises') that drive beneficial changes in the brain. This methodology is being expanded to address auditory and visual processing and memory, dealing with complexity and the neurological basis for difficulties in hand movement, posture, balance and mobility."

For those in my tv viewing area, this will be shown on the afternoon of December 15, or you can check your local listings.

For More Information

• Alvaro, Brain Fitness Program and Neuroplasticity @ PBS @ Sharp Brains blog, Dec. 2, 2007.
  
• Merzenich, Michael. Blog: On the Brain (see posts tagged brain science program). Bio from positscience
• PBS press release: The Brain Fitness Program – New PBS Special Teaches Viewers How to Exercise Their Brains (undated)
  
• Vaughn, Harnessing the Brain's Power to Reorganise After Injury @ Mind Hacks blog, December 04, 2007.

Neuroethics

Natasha Mitchell of Australia's All in the Mind radio show / podcast hosted a great panel discussion at last month's World Conference of Science Journalists [click on "program"], held in Melbourne.

Here's the official description of Mitchell's panel:
"The Brain. It's been called the final frontier of science. Colourful fMRI scans light up our TV screens and newspapers promising to reveal the secrets of the psyche. From the search for the brain's God Spot, to the rapid rise of neuroeconomics, neuromarketing and neuroethics - makes for sexy headlines - but have journalists become blinded by the lights and allure of the brain scan? Are we telling too simplistic a story about the human self?"

Panelists included award-winning science journalists Deborah Blum (University of Wisconsin / Madison Professor of Journalism) and Jonica Newby (Producer, reporter and science journalist at Australian ABC TV's flagship science program, Catalyst), and Professor Fred Mendelsohn (Director of the Howard Florey Institute at the University of Melbourne).

It was a great overview of lots of interesting neuroscience topics, including gender differences in the brain, fMRIs, and twin studies.

What I liked most, however, were the discussions of neuroethical dilemmas. Deborah Blum mentioned a study which used fMRI technology to distinguish between the brains of those who are psychopathic and those who are not; participants were shown several words like "table", "house", "suicide", "murder", and "funeral." fMRIs of those who were psychopaths didn't distinguish between hearing the word "table" and hearing the word "murder", unlike "normal" participants. Blum then referred to Robert Hare, who reportedly can diagnose psychopaths at the age of less than ten. She asks several interesting questions, especially in light of what just happened in Virginia:

"Suppose you said, okay, you're eight, you are a potential psychopath...and what are you going to do with that information? ... [D]o you want to know that as a parent? ... [W]hat would you do – lock him away at the age of ten? I mean it raises – alter his brain chemistry in some way, figure out a way to light up those areas that don't light up at the word murder? Would you want to manipulate people like that?"

Hmmm. I don't know. Read the transcript, or listen to the show to hear more intriguing questions like that.

Lots of information about the show at the All in the Mind web site, including a transcript. The show lasted 45 minutes, and I'd have gladly listened for at least another 45!

Somewhere over the Brainbow ...

Heard an interesting podcast on Science Friday about a "brainbow:" a way of coloring neurons in a living brain to see the connections between them. Astonishing!!

Here's the Science Friday blurb:
"Building a Brainbow"
"Researchers have developed a technique that takes brain mapping to a new level, allowing them to label individual neurons in the brain in different colors. The technique, dubbed 'brainbow' by the researchers involved, could help scientists gain a better understanding of brain function than previous staining techniques allow.

" 'There are few tools neuroscientists can use to tease out the wiring diagram of the nervous system; Brainbow should help us much better map out the brain and nervous system's complex tangle of neurons,' said Jeff Lichtman, one of the authors of a report on the technique published in the journal Nature. (Full disclosure: Lichtman is also the father of Science Friday digital media producer Flora Lichtman.) In this segment, Ira talks with Lichtman about the technique and its potential applications to neuroscience."

There is more coverage on this story, including the Nature article:
* Livet, Jean, Tamily A. Weissman, Hyuno Kang, Ryan W. Draft, Ju Lu, Robyn A. Bennis, Joshua R. Sanes & Jeff W. Lichtman. Transgenic strategies for combinatorial expression of fluorescent proteins in the nervous system. Nature 450, 56-62 (1 November 2007) | doi:10.1038/nature06293. (abstract only; full-text may be available @ your library).
* BBC News: Cell stains create a 'brainbow', Nov. 1, 2007.
* Science Friday: Building a Brainbow, November 2, 2007.
* Wired: Neurons or Pollock? Scientists Create Technicolor 'Brainbow', Oct. 31, 2007. -- with awesome graphics.

Interesting CogSci Folks

Two quick notes:

• Ginger Campbell, of the Brain Science Podcast recently interviewed Patricia Churchland on Neurophilosophy and other topics.  Read Ginger's show summary & download the show if you want to hear the whole thing:

Churchland is the author of Brain-wise : studies in neurophilosophy [WorldCat.org] (c2002) and Neurophilosophy : toward a unified science of the mind-brain [WorldCat.org] (c1986). She is currently on the faculty of the University of California at San Diego and she was a featured speaker at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in 2008.

In this interview we talked about neurophilosophy, which is an approach to philosophy of mind that gives high priority to incorporating the empiric findings of neuroscience. We also talk about the evolving relationship between philosophy and neuroscience. Churchland shares her enthusiasm for how the discoveries of neuroscience are changing the way we see ourselves as human beings. We also talked a little about the issues of reductionism

• Longtime readers of this blog may remember I wrote about Pat & Paul Churchland 2 years ago, summarizing an extensive New Yorker article about both of them.
  

• If you'll be anywhere near Storrs, CT on Thursday, March 19, you might want to stop by the Dodd Center's Konover Auditorium to hear Marc Hauser (Professor of Psychology, Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, and Anthropology, Harvard University) speak at 4:00 p.m. His talk is entitled:  

 The Evolution of a Moral Grammar.  Marc Hauser is an expert on the evolution of animal communication, behavioral ecology, and the evolution of mind.  His work integrates animal behavior, cognitive neurosciences, anthropology, and philosophy.  He is the author of a number of influential books, including The Evolution of Communication [WorldCat.org] (c1996) and Moral Minds: How Nature Designed our Universal Sense of Right and Wrong [WorldCat.org] (c2006).  

• Hauser was interviewed on Australia's radio programme All in the Mind in late 2006, which I summarized on this blog.
  
  

Christof Koch Now

["... Now" is a short post of cog sci topics in the news]

Ginger Campbell over at the Brain Science Podcast recently interviewed Christof Koch. It’s a fascinating discussion -- almost a lecture by Koch -- on the nature of consciousness. Koch kept things (relatively) simple and it was pretty easy to follow for the non-philosopher, non-neuroscientist, non-physicist. He was delightfully gracious, even as he knocked philosophers here & there.

Koch and Susan Greenfield had an interesting point/ counterpoint about where the neural correlates of consciousness are in the October 2007 Scientific American: very short version; full version your library. :-)

Another podcast ... (tho' I haven't listened to these yet)
* 'Consciousness, Free Will, and God': "The nature of consciousness in humans and animals and its effect on how we view religion, science and philosophy will be tackled during three lectures at Vanderbilt University by prominent researcher Christof Koch." This page offers links to the three lectures in mp3; you can also get them via iTunes.

ScienceOnline11: ScienceWeekly Podcast

I really enjoyed #scio11, also known as ScienceOnline 2011. Here is another of the neat things I learned:

• My bee buddy Kerstin Hoppenhaus introduced me to Alok Jha's Science weekly podcast. I listened to and loved an episode on my drive to the conference -- and then met Alok himself. I highly recommend his podcast.
  
• The Jan. 24 episode is about ScienceOnline, so you can hear more about the conference.
• The September 20, 2010 episode is entitled What the Brain Can and Can't Do and is a good listen for cognitive science aficionados.
  
• Alok and ScienceWeekly are both on Twitter.
  

Science weekly comes out Mondays, so listen to it today!

Olympic Medals & Emotions

My favorite brain science podcaster alerted me to a new-to-me psychology podcast called the Psych Files. In this week's episode, Psych Files host Michael Britt talks about the emotions of (some) Olympic medal winners.

Quick, who do you think is happier:
Silver medal winners?
Bronze medal winners?

(I think we can probably surmise that gold medal winners are the happiest of the three, but that isn't addressed in the podcast)

Answer: Bronze medal winners.

Britt summarizes a neat 1995 study in which non sports fans analyzed video of silver and bronze medal winners in the 1992 Olympics to see which winners were happier. With some degree of reliability, subjects agreed that bronze medal winners were happier. Britt and the study's authors suggest that this is because the bronze medalists were happy because they won a medal, while silver medalists were less happy because they didn't win the gold.

Britt's podcast summary is: "Psychologists say that winning the silver medal - coming in second - is actually less satisfying than coming in third - the bronze. Why is that? Sounds weird, but it also sounds right, doesn’t it? Have you ever come in second in a contest or received an A- instead of an A? Find out why winning the silver is…a bummer."

The article's abstract is:

Research on counterfactual thinking has shown that people's emotional responses to events are influenced by their thoughts about "what might have been." The authors extend these findings by documenting a familiar occasion in which those who are objectively better off nonetheless feel worse. In particular, an analysis of the emotional reactions of bronze and silver medalists at the 1992 Summer Olympics -- both at the conclusion of their events and on the medal stand -- indicates that bronze medalists tend to be happier than silver medalists. The authors attribute these results to the fact that the most compelling counterfactual alternative for the silver medalist is winning the gold, whereas for the bronze medalist it is finishing without a medal. Support for this interpretation was obtained from the 1992 Olympics and the 1994 Empire State Games. The discussion focuses on the implications of endowment and contrast for well being.

I particularly enjoyed Britt's analysis of the article, and his (minor) critique. He also offers some intriguing suggestions for extensions of the study. If you want some psychology to go along with your Olympics, this is a good place to look.

For More Information

• Britt, Michael. The Olympic Silver Metal? What a Bummer! The Psych Files, episode 67.
• Medvec, Victoria Husted; Madey, Scott E.; Gilovich, Thomas. When Less is More: Counterfactual Thinking and Satisfaction Among Olympic Medalists (pdf at Cornell). Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, Oct 1995, Vol. 69 Issue 4, p603-610. (cited by 85 in Scopus [subscription required])
  

Michael Gazzaniga Now

I've just seen / heard about a couple of interviews with Michael Gazzaniga, the father of cognitive neuroscience:

He was on the Australian radio show All in the Mind in June, and they introduce him as follows:

One of the big names of the brain is Michael Gazzaniga, whose career was forged in the lab of Nobel laureate Roger Sperry. His striking experiments continue to uncover the differences between your left and right hemispheres. Today he's on the US President's Bioethics Council, heads up a major project on neuroscience and the law, and is a prolific writer of popular neuroscience. He joins Natasha Mitchell to reflect on the brain's left and right, and the mysterious nature of free will.

He was in Australia for the International Human Brain Mapping Conference, and Natasha Mitchell's 30-minute interview covered split brains, the discovery of "blind sight," and free will. You can listen to the podcast or read the transcript; you can also subscribe to All in the Mind via iTunes.

Ross Buck, professor in the University of Connecticut's department of Communication, points me to an upcoming interview in Seed magazine. While the published interview won't appear until the August issue of Seed, you can read the full transcript of the conversation between Tom Wolfe and Michael Gazzaniga. You can also watch a video of the interview at the Seed Salon. About the interview and video, they say:

Tom Wolfe + Michael Gazzaniga

Wolfe, who calls himself “the social secretary of neuroscience,” often turns to current research to inform his stories and cultural commentary. His 1996 essay, “Sorry, But Your Soul Just Died,” raised questions about personal responsibility in the age of genetic predeterminism. Similar concerns led Gazzaniga to found the Law and Neuroscience Project. When Gazzaniga, who just published Human: The Science Behind What Makes Us Unique, was last in New York, Seed incited a discussion: on status, free will, and the human condition.

Note that UConn has several of Gazzaniga's books, and I will shortly order his latest, Human : The Science Behind What Makes Us Unique.

For More Information

• Gazzaniga, Human : The Science Behind What Makes Us Unique. New York : Ecco Press, 2008.
• Interview: All in the Mind, ABC Radio National, June 21, 2008.
• Interview: Seed, August 2008. Interview transcript online July 1, 2008.
  

Podcasts Rock

Well, I am a complete convert to the joys of (listening to) podcasts. Now that they're in iTunes and easy enough for a person's father to use, I am finally using them. (And there will be lots of commuting time in my future during which I can listen to my collection).

There are some great science podcasts, which will help me keep up with cog sci in my new life. On July 2, 2005, Science Friday spoke with Nobel Laureate Eric Kandel about memory, learning, and the human brain. Less about the human brain, really, and a bit more about slug brains, but Dr. Kandel made it interesting. You can stream the show here, or search iTunes for Science Friday and then look for July 2.

In non-CS related podcasts, I love Slate Magazine's podcast. Andy Bowers (former correspondent for NPR) reads a story a day from Slate online. Nice to hear his voice again, and very interesting to hear some random Slate articles.

Oh, and just one more -- haven't listened to this yet, but I will real soon: WordNerds! The most recent 'cast covers collective nouns for ~40 minutes. A linguist's delight!

the Magic of Consciousnes, or, Teller Speaks

Interesting article in last week's Times about a recent conference by the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness (ASSC). George Johnson covered the event, and describes it: "After two days of presentations by scientists and philosophers speculating on how the mind construes, and misconstrues, reality, we were hearing from the pros: James (The Amazing) Randi, Johnny Thompson (The Great Tomsoni), Mac King and Teller — magicians who had intuitively mastered some of the lessons being learned in the laboratory about the limits of cognition and attention."

You can see some tricks from Teller, and some explanations about how his repetition and our assumptions aid the tricks at the video below (approx. 17 minutes).



Teller of "Penn and Teller" TALKS! ¦ about magic, consciousness and the art of visual illusion! from Dean McCall and Vimeo.

And on the ScienceTimes podcast, David Corcoran interviews Teller, who explains in more detail -- and less flourish -- about why his and other magic tricks work. He says that magicians exploit the way we see the world ... just for a minute ... just for fun.

For More Information
* Corcoran, David. ScienceTimes Podcast , August 21, 2007.
* Johnson, George. "Sleights of Mind", New York Times, August 21, 2007.
* Laureys, Steven. Eyes Open, Brain Shut. Scientific American, May2007, Vol. 296 Issue 5, p86-89. Teller refers to this article in which Laureys proves that when eyes don't move, they cease to see. [Full-text available in Academic Search Premier]
* Mind Science Foundation: Magic of Consciousness Symposium – Video Clips.