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Do you really make choices? We had trouble finding an ending last time. Probably because we weren’t done. There was more to say, and we say it. From AI and ethics, to the question of choice and free will, join us for another episode that creeps out of science and into the less than certain …
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Sometimes science isn’t enough The mind body problem, the hard question of consciousness—why do you feel like you to you? Phil and I attempt to bridge the gap between science and philosophy, only to fall down the chasm. We struggle a while with questions that have no answers, mostly because it means we can’t possibly …
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Brains and batteries, oh my Our last recording went a little long. We split it in two, and this is the second part. Today we talk about the somewhat gruesome history of studying the electrical activity of the brain.
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Bloody brains! The parts of your brain that are working the hardest, need the most blood. Your brain actually pulsates with your heartbeat, and the flow of your blood within your brain changes from minute to minute. One of the ways to study the brain is to track its blood flow. Today, along with the …
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Pulsating, broken brains! Much of what we’ve learned about how our brain works came from the results of injury and disease. From the work of an ancient Egyptian doctor, to a roman physician patching up gladiators, to an unfortunate gunpowder accident in 1848, we talk about some of what we’ve learned from the brain about …
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Light, color, contrast, and brain cells From simple staining, to neurons being stimulated by lasers, today we look at some of the ways we look at our brain, it’s cells, and how said brain cells work.
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We entirely fail to explain MRI Phil and I have decided to look at some of the tools and techniques used to try and understand the human brain. Today, we look at the MRI. Unfortunately, Brad couldn’t follow the physics, and it shows.
In a previous post, I said that adding energy to the system would speed it up. Between that and adjusting the mutation rate, I was right. The figures are adapting to changes within minutes, instead of taking hours. In the most recent post, I managed to get the figures to push a button when they …
Professor Steve Stewart-Williams, one of my twitter folk posted this thing about perceptual illusions. They were all visual. I can’t see them, but I remember seeing some back when I could see well enough to see them. Even then, not all of them would work. In fact, I had different illusions of my own.