All in the mind podcasts

It's here.

The best cog-sci, neuro-sci, psy-sci and sci-fi on your hi-fi, the awesome All in the mind podcasts from Meme Queen Natasha Mitchell and the good people at the Australian Broadcasting Coprporation's Radio National. Hello Australia.

This podcast has won awards all over the world. It has high production values, an informed, educated presenter and is consistently awesomely awesome.

The show is updated every week here, but for those of you who may have missed out on the earlier ones, I offer these downloadable, iPod friendly files for your listening plea-zure.

Jerome Kagan – The Father of Temperament

Bio terrorism

Neuroethics in the 21st century

The Neurobiology of Suicide

Is music a universal language?

The orgasmic brain

The Blind Brain pt 1

The Blind Brain pt 2

Fundamentals of the Brain and Mind: A Short Course in Neuroscience

This is a lecture series from MIT that acts as an introduction to neuroscience. Absolutely enthralling stuff. Go get yourself some popcorn and settle in, these lectures are great. By the way, I've put the lectures in reverse order, but I really like Steven Pinker so he get's to go first.

Lecture 1:
Words and Rules: The Ingredients of Language - Steven Pinker After fifteen years of studying words in history, in the laboratory, and in everyday speech, Steven Pinker has worked out the dynamic relationship – searching memory vs. following rules – that determines the forms our speech takes. In one of his final lectures at MIT Pinker gives the ultimate lecture on verbs, in a rich mixture of linguistics, cognitive neuroscience, and a surprising amount of humor.

Lecture 2:
Cognitive Control: Understanding the Brain's Executive - Prof. Earl K. Miller
We often take it for granted that we know the difference between a cat and a dog. Where and how do we store the visual information that categorizes “catness” in our minds, so that the next time we see a cat, we know that it is not a dog?

Lecture 3:
Neurobiology of Memory: How Do We Acquire, Consolidate and Recall Memory - Susumu Tonegawa
Tonegawa’s work involves manipulating genes to explore memory and learning from the most basic biochemical and cellular levels, up to the most complex behaviors. One of Tonegawa’s goals in designing defective mice is to simulate profound human disorders, like schizophrenia.

Lecture 4:
Architecture of the Brain - Elly Nedivi
In this lecture Elly Nedivi provides an overview on the basics of brain anatomy, working her way up the spinal column to the deepest recesses of the cerebral cortex

Lecture 5:
The Changing Brain - Mark Bear
How do our right and left eyes take in two separate streams of visual information and end up with a single view of the world? This question has come under intense scrutiny from neuroscientists for decades, and Mark Bear brings us up to date in his lecture (There are serious audio problems until around 4:15, at which time the audio is dramatically improved.Hang in there, it's worth it)

Lecture 6:
Vision: Challenges and Prospects - Pawan Sinha
In a fraction of a second, most of us can recognize a face in a crowd, or make out a face from a blurry image. Pawan Sinha focuses on our uncanny ability to recognize faces as a way of getting at one of the key problems of neuroscience: how our brains represent and then encode objects.

Lecture 7:
The Brain and Mind - Mriganka Sur

In his kickoff lecture for this series on neuroscience, Sur provides both a current overview of brain models and function, and a peek at his own research

Cal Tech - Unconcious processing

A video webcast of a California Institute of Technology lecture that gives a good undersatanding of unconcious processing and the enormous amount of unconcious proecessing going on in the brain. The title of the lectue is "The Zombie within".

Dr Gregory Berns - Satisfaction

Dr Gregory Berns discusses his book, "Satisfaction", which deals with the neuroscience behind motivation and satisfaction in life. Berns argues the more complicated and challenging a life you pursue the more likely it is that you will be satisfied. Which is why I wrestle alligators. This is a loooooong lecture. A little thin, but also some scary dated schizophrenia treatments.

Nobel Laurete, Eric Kandel talks about the brain

Eric Kandel's work on understanding memory led to his Nobel prize. He is articulate and very entertaining. If you can wade through Charlie Roses endless interruptions, this is a very good talk.

Michael Gazzaniga speaks with Willian Safire

The father of neuroscience discusses the brain and how it learns. Michael Gazzaniga is always amazing to listen to and William Safire is always self deprecating and funny.

Brains, Rewards and Addiction

Another lecture from the grey matters series from UCSD. This time Prof. Terrence Sejnowski discuses how the the reward centre of the brain becomes hijacked by addicitve drugs. There's also a video that shows how manipulations in the the social behaviour of monkeys can arise simply by changing the balance of serotonin between the alpha male and those lower down.

You're looking at the shape of anger

In an interesting art/neuroscience project, participnats were hypnotised and asked to recall traumatic events and to emote primary emotions such as anger. Each participant was wired to EEG, and EKG sensors and monitored. The resulting ingormation was visualized as still images using Iris Explorer and visualized in realtime, interactive space using specialy develop data acuisition modules in EonReality.
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Vittorio Gallese - Eye of the Beholder

Vittorio Gallese, the scientist who discovered mirror neurons, engages in a roundtable discussion with artists and art historians about how neuroscientific discoveries can influence our understanding of how we perceive art.

Decisions: How Do We Animals Decide What To Do?

What causes different people to make such different decisions each day and over the course of their lifetimes? Professor William Kristan of the University of San Diago gives a lecture based on the premise that since all animals make decisions, one way to gain some insight into this question is to begin by trying to understand the decision-making process in the brains of simpler animals.

The neuroscience of Rock, Paper Scissors.

In RPS circles a common mantra is “Rock is for Rookies” because males have a tendency to lead with Rock on their opening throw. If you're playing a ventren, it pays to play scissors on the first throw. This and a host of other good advice courtesy of the RPS Society as they prepare for the World RPS Championships this year in Toronto, Canada. See, it's not all nerd herding at Mind head. Sometimes we even photocopy our ties.

Aniruddh Patel - Music and the brain

Ani Patel discusses what music can teach us about the brain, and what brain science, in turn, can reveal about music. Arni has a really impressive CV; he worked under E.O.Wilson at Harvard and after graduating went onto become the Esther J Bernham fellow at the Neurosciences institiue in San Diago. Watch it here.

Malcolm Gladwell - the mind knows not what the tongue wants.

You know what, this is awesome. Malcolm Gladwell uses Spaghetti sauce and focus groups as an inroad to talking about human behaviour.

All in the mind - Mindreading: Mental surveillance

Scientists are uncovering new ways to fish for your thoughts, and to decipher the brain's neural code behind your thinking. Download this audio befor it's taken offline

All in the mind - Mindreading: Neuroscience on the witness stand

Brain scans are becoming commonplace as evidence in US courts, in the bid to convict offenders or free them. But is the technology half-baked? Download this audio before it's taken offline.

Jeff Hawkins - Brain Science and computing

Jeff Hawkins is awesome. Even if you have no interest in Neuroscience you should watch this TED lecture. He gives his ideas about the framework of how the brain works, which is essentially a predictive model, (or rather one in which the neo cortex observes patterns and sends this informtaion to the other parts of the brain) and explains why it is high time we had a workable model of the mind. Plus he gets a few laughs.

V.S.Ramachandran Lectures on Synethesia

A series of lectures from the always charming V.S.Ramachandran who researches Synethesia and Neuroscience. He was lucky enough to find a colour blind synesthete who could only see the colour red when they looked at the number five. Again, through Real Audio, the betamax of the internet streaming world.

Lecture one: Phantoms in the brain

Lecture two: Synapses and the self

Lecture three: The Artful Brain

Lecture four: Purple numbers and sharp cheese.

Lecture five: Neuroscience, the new philosophy.

Another great Art & Neuroscience lecture from Margaret Livingstone

Apart from having to put up with the endless, "Dr Livingstone I presume" jokes from fellow neuroscientists, Margaret Livingstone also has to convince people that what they see isn't actually what they see. This lecture on vision and aesthetics is fantastic.

Dr Margaret Livingstone's Art & Neuroscience Lecture

Margaret Livingstone's lecture about what art can tell us about the brain is fascinating. It's about 45 minutes and you can't download it to your iPod, but it's well worth eating lunch at your desk and watching it. She explains why certain colour combinations send parts of the brain blind and even explains how the eye's centre surround visual system makes the Mona Lisa smile. You'll never take your eyes for granted again.

All In The Mind Podcast.

The award winning "All In The Mind" podcast is a radio program and podcast created by Radio National on the ABC in Australia. It is truly the best neuroscience podcast on the planet. The BBC do a similar show but it's not nearly as extensive or well produced. One of the best podcasts I've ever heard.