Joshua Miele is a blind scientist and inventor living in the Bay Area. Amongst his many initiatives is the Blind Arduino Project, where participants learn how to navigate a world of maker electronics that are really designed for the sighted. He talks to Joe and Rolf about his work to bring accessible and useful tools to the blind community. He teaches blind soldering classes, and he has worked to make braille maps easily accessible. He discusses what technology in recent years has helped the blind, and what hasn't. Blind Arduino Blog: http://blarbl.blogspot.com/ Josh's Handle: @BerkeleyBlink Mailing list for the Bay Area blind arduino monthly meeting: babamm@groups.io Special Guest: Joshua Miele.

CogNation

Episode 37: Dr. Joshua Miele: The Blind Arduino Project

In Annie Murphy Paul's new book, "The Extended Mind (https://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Outside-Brain-Annie-Murphy/dp/0544947665)", the philosophical idea of our minds extending beyond the physical boundaries of the body are explored. Rolf and Joe talk to Annie about the implications of this idea, and how it might be used to improve the way we think in a number of contexts. Special Guest: Annie Murphy Paul.

Episode 36: The Extended Mind with Annie Murphy Paul

The NIH Toolbox is the result of an ambitious project supported by the National Institutes of Health to develop a comprehensive, standardized, and highly accessible test battery to be used in research. Dr. Julie Hook is the Product Manager for the project and is in large part responsible for the development of the Toolkit. Rolf and Joe discuss with Julie a wide ranging set of topics related to the science of cognitive, sensory, and motor testing, including some of the core design principles and theortical considerations.

Episode 35: NIH Toolbox with Dr. Julie Hook

Bestselling author known for making complex topics accessible to readers, Tom Vanderbilt's recent book is Beginners: The Joy and Transformative Power of Lifelong Learning. Rather than buying into the idea that learning is for kids, Tom takes the "beginner's mind" to challenging new skills, such as singing, juggling, and jewelery making, where he starts at ground zero and works to achieve a level of competence. Rolf, Joe, and Tom discuss the value of learning for its own sake, brain plasticisty in new skill learning, how drawing can be a meditative practice while shifting processing to earlier regions in the brain, and many other topics. We forgot to ask about a CogNation discount, but Tom Vanderbilt's book is available here (https://www.amazon.com/Beginners-Transformative-Power-Lifelong-Learning/dp/B086H3ZH2P) at Amazon Special Guest: Tom Vanderbilt.

Episode 34: Tom Vanderbilt: Beginners

Enough with 2020. Rolf and Joe present their predictions for what lies ahead in 2021.....

Episode 33: Flawless Predictions For 2021

Joe and Rolf talk to Dr. Bernard Baars, a leader in the field of consciousness research. Dr. Baars has recently published "On Consciousness", which is a compendium on his work integrating research in psychology and neuroscience on what consciousness is and how it functions. T Special Guest: Bernard Baars.

Episode 32: On Consciousness with Bernard Baars

David Rosen and Scott Miles of Secret Chord Laboratories (secretchordlaboratories.com) talk to Joe and Rolf about musical preference, the role of surprise in these preferences, what's going on in the brain, and how COVID is affecting the way we listen to music. Discussion paper: "A Statistical Analysis of the Relationship between Harmonic Surprise and Preference in Popular Music" (2017) https://www.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fnhum.2017.00263 Special Guests: David Rosen and Scott Miles.

Episode 31: Music and the Brain: Guests David Rosen and Scott Miles

An update on Episode 4, where we first discussed the phenomenon of the "Frey Effect" in which sounds are heard as a result of pulsed microwave radiation. The Frey Effect was proposed to be involved in attacks on the US embassy in Cuba. Could this also be going on in the US embassy in China? Rolf and Joe discuss further, and give a call out for any expertise that could be added.

Episode 30: When Microwaves Continue to Attack

In this half-hour episode, Rolf and Joe discuss research by Jennifer Mitchell and colleagues ("Dopamine, time perception, and future time perspective") showing that the drug tolcapone, which selectively increases dopamine in frontal cortical regions, has the effect of reducing the error in estimating how much time has passed. Individuals tend to systematicaly underestimate how much time has passed (think of impatient kids asking "are we there yet?"), and in this double-blind study, tolcapone nearly eliminated this effect, most dramatically for a 60 second interval. Implications of the study are discussed, including what this says about an "internal clock", whether you should rush to get this drug, and how time perception is related to depression, anxiety, and other mood disorders. We do not discuss the role of tolcapone in ending the world.

Episode 29: Time Perception and Dopamine

Since 1999, National Novel Writing Month has exploded in popularity, becoming one of the most creatively productive events in the world every November. Participants buckle down and write a 50,000-word novel in a month, many enjoying the social support from the NaNoWriMo community. Founder Chris Baty joins us to talk about what he's been up to lately, as well as share some thoughts gained from his writing career. We talk about creativity, the power (or not-power, depending on your inclination) of narrative, what we would contribute to a post-apocalyptic team, and the anxiety of wanting to contribute more. Special Guest: Chris Baty.

Episode 28: Chris Baty: National Novel Writing Month, Creativity, and Life as a Narrative

30 min episode A connectome is a representation of every connection between neurons in the brain. Recent brain-slicing technology, in addition to image recognition tools, has begun to make this science-fiction idea become a reality. Rolf and Joe discuss the recent publication of the largest completed connectome to date, that of the fruit fly drosophilia. The database for the connectome is publicly available, and includes huge amounts of data about every one of the approximately 25,000 neurons mapped to date. Paper: A connectome of the adult drosophila central brain (https://www.biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2020/01/21/2020.01.21.911859.full.pdf) (2020) OR access the database yourself at: https://neuprint.janelia.org/

Episode 27: The Connectome

Season 2 premiere! How do people behave in a pandemic? Joshua Ackerman of the University of Michigan talks about how we alter our behavior in the face of pathogens. A repertoire of responses (such as avoidance) referred to as the "behavioral immune system" is a way for humans to avoid pathogens BEFORE our biochemical immune system encounters them. A pandemic such as COVID-19 may trigger this behavioral immune system, but using far different information than our evolutionary ancestors ever had. Joshua Ackerman's research page at Michigan (https://lsa.umich.edu/psych/people/faculty/joshack.html) Special Guest: Joshua Ackerman.

Episode 201: COVID-19 and the Behavioral Immune System: Joshua Ackerman

Chris Mattman, Principal Data Scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, talks about bridging the gap between lab scientists and data scientists, his work with DARPA unearthing the dark web, machine learning in autonomous planetary rovers, and other cool stuff he's been doing. Chris Mattman's page at NASA (https://scienceandtechnology.jpl.nasa.gov/dr-chris-mattmann) More information about the Memex program at DARPA can be found here (https://www.darpa.mil/program/memex). Chris's forthcoming book, Machine Learning with Tensor Flow (https://www.manning.com/books/machine-learning-with-tensorflow-second-edition?query=Chris%20Mattmann)(2nd ed.) will be available soon. CogNation listeners can get 40% off all Manning products by using the code "podcogn20" when ordering from Manning Publications (manning.com). Special Guest: Chris Mattmann.

Episode 25: NASA Data Scientist Chris Mattmann

David Sobel (https://www.brown.edu/academics/cognitive-linguistic-psychological-sciences/people/faculty/dave-sobel), a developmental psychologist from Brown University, talks to us about the importance of play in learning. He has recently been collaborating with researchers around the country to investigate how children interact with exhibits in childrens' museums. One recent finding we discuss is that parent-child interaction styles can have a strong influence on what children learn. Research at the Causality and Mind Lab and further resources can be found here (https://www.brown.edu/research/labs/causality-and-mind/research-1).

Episode 24: Childrens' Learning and Play: Guest David Sobel

Episode 23: Flawless Predictions for the 2020s

CogNation is a podcast by Rolf Nelson and Joe Hardy, two cognitive psychologists interested in the future of brain science and technology. We explore relevant topics in the areas of cognitive science, technology, AI, and philosophy. Although we dabble with dystopian implications of new technologies (such as the impending robopocalypse), we are led by our curiosity and try to keep it light and fun. https://www.facebook.com/CognationPodcast/ email: cognationpodcast@gmail.com

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