Author: This Is Your Brain producer

The human brain is designed to “snap” under threat, but 100,000 years of evolution did not prepare us for the world we live in today. R. Douglas Fields, PhD, describes how the brain’s rage circuitry is activated — whether that’s a car that cuts you off on the highway or a pickpocket who steals your wallet. The primal rage response also explains a lot about the January 6 mob mentality, the unruly airline passenger who strikes a flight attendant, or a terrorist attack. Learn the nine triggers that are programmed to make you snap (and how to identify the “misfires”).…

Language originates as brain signals — mysterious lines of squiggles — that somehow turn into speech. Meet the neuroscientist who is turning those squiggles into conversations, using artificial intelligence (A.I.) to translate brain activity into words and sentences. Dr. Edward Chang of UCSF talks with Dr. Stieg about the painstaking “magic” of decoding that has allowed a paralyzed man to speak after 20 years of aphasia, essentially live streaming signals from his brain and transforming them into language. Plus – Why are A.I. voices always female? Phil Stieg: Hello, I’d like to welcome Dr. Edward Chang, professor, and chair of neurological…

Depression, anxiety, low libido… your mood is directly related to what you eat. Nutritional psychiatrist (and chef) Uma Naidoo, MD, examines the “gut-brain romance” and explains the delicate balance between your diet and your mental health. If you haven’t given up junk food to lose weight or reduce the risk of diabetes, maybe you’ll do it to feel happier? Plus… what happens when you try too hard to eat healthy. Phil Stieg: Hello, I’d like to introduce Dr. Uma Naidoo, director of the Nutritional and Metabolic Psychiatry Department at Massachusetts General Hospital. Good nutrition is about much more than weight loss,…

From the outside, a human brain appears fairly uniform – but what’s inside is very different depending on where you look. Your brain has complex maps within that allow you to see, understand, imagine, and recognize everything from faces to objects to abstract concepts like love, time, and debt. Neuroscientist Rebecca Schwarzlose of Washington University joins us this week to explain what parts of your brain are at work when you pick up an object, see someone you know, or read a book.  (The writing of “Brainscapes” was supported with a grant from the Public Understanding of Science and Technology…

Can you communicate with someone who’s sound asleep, and is it possible to influence their dreams? Dr. Ken Paller, professor of psychology at Northwestern and a leading sleep researcher, talks about “lucid dreaming” – the state of dreaming while knowing you’re in a dream – as well as about how researchers can reach into the brain of a sleeping person and actually create the experience they have in their dreams. Is it ethical to influence the dream state – and what are the implications for brain health if we can never turn off? Phil Stieg: Hello and welcome to Professor Ken…

Near-death experiences may seem like the stuff of supermarket tabloids, but there are real patterns to what people report after coming close to departing this life.   Dr. Bruce Greyson has been studying near-death experiences  for decades and has stories to tell about out-of-body phenomena, that light at the end of the tunnel, and a near-universal finding of new meaning in life after coming close to death. Plus… a glimpse of what happens to your brain after death. Phil Stieg: Hello, I’d like to welcome Dr. Bruce Greyson, professor of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences at the University of Virginia. Today he is…