Brain Science Podcasts and Discussions

Image via WikipediaRecently I discovered some fantastic web resources for anyone interested in neuroscience, the human mind, consciousness, the brain, and related topics; and, you don't have to be a professional "neuroscientist" to enjoy these podcasts and discussions! Dr. Ginger Campbell is the developer of these web-based sites, devoted to public education in science:

First, check out the Brain Science Podcast and Blog (click here). Fascinating stuff!

Here's Dr. Campbell's description of one of the podcasts:

Brain Science Podcast #35 is a discussion of Mirrors in the brain: How our minds share actions, emotions, and experience by Giacomo Rizzolatti and Corrado Sinigaglia. Mirror neurons were discovered in Rizzolatti’s lab in Parma Italy in the early 1990’s and his book is a detailed to discussion of the experimental evidence in both monkeys and humans. Direct single neuron recordings have been made in monkeys. The evidence in humans is indirect since it is based on mainly on neuroimaging studies like PET scans and fMRI scans. Even so mirror neurons appear to be essential to our ability to understand both the actions and emotions of others. Listen Now.

In this episode we also explore the evidence that there are other neurons in the motor areas of the brain that have sensory properties and that the areas of the brain traditionally thought to be devoted to sensory functions also contain neurons with motor properties. Another fascinating discovery is the fact that there are neurons that respond not only to somatosensory inputs (such as being touched) but also to visual or auditory inputs from objects within our peri-personal space. For background on these body maps I recommend listening to Episode 21 and Episode 23. If you are new to the Brain Science Podcast you may want to listen to those episodes first because this week’s episode is a little more technical than most.

You can subscribe to these podcasts by email, or with iTunes.

Also, on the Brain Science Podcast Forum (click here), you can find (and participate in) some really interesting discussions, some of them directly about the podcasts, and also a lot of other discussions about various topics within neuroscience.

One of the things I like best about these resources is that they are clearly devoted to enhancing public understanding of science. I am concerned about what I am seeing in our culture today as a hard shift in what appears to be an anti-scientific direction; our students are not getting excellent educations in science, and many of those who have completed their formal educations are choosing to adopt fundamentalist and isolationist stances (and these, in my opinion, are closely related to anti-scientific attitudes). We have, for example, Holocaust deniers; many who deny the evidence demonstrating ongoing climate change; the growth of fundamentalist religions that take a literal and concrete approach to scripture; groups of parents, and school boards, attempting to curtail education in the areas of evolution and sexuality; state legislators who enact punitive and restrictive laws concerning reproductive health services, gay and lesbian people, the criminalization and punishment of drug abuse/dependence, the enthusiastic use of the death penalty...

To my mind, this trend represents a rising tide of darkness. Perhaps many of us are, in these troubled and troubling times, willfully shielding our eyes and our minds, covering up ourselves and our families underneath a cozy blanket of denial and ignorance... and if we continue in this direction, we will bring about nothing but disaster.