Braincast - on the frequency of Mind and Brain

Episode 25 is rather personal with a look behind my mental curtain: motivation and preferences, why Buddhism pops up on a regular basis and about my biggest problem on the topic. A definition of position.

Planing, acting and, most of all, inhibiting – those are the main tasks of the prefrontal cortex. Additionally it has peer-to-peer connections to emotion- and social related areas. So this episode is about that part of the brain, that makes us human. An episode including bad mood and good bets.

Emotions are not just blessing or curse, they are much more. For example one way for the brain to talk to itself – via the body. They are the source of all our decisions. And first and foremost they are a way to survive.

Part 2 about senses and perception is about how the brain deals with incoming data. It shows that some things simply are droped, while others are constructed. A braincast about roses, gorillas, blind spots and two self-experiments.

In dealing with reality the brain might be quite creative, but the senses are not: They send in the real world, one gig of data per second. This and other impressive numbers in Braincast 21. Plus: seeing with the tongue.

Autism is quite extreme: affected people shrink into theirselfs, live complicated rituals and have trouble understanding emotions. But out of autism can arise a real wonder: the savant syndrome, showing the real possibilities of the brain.

Stress is not just stress – it was designed to safe our life. But nowadays we even have stress with stress, and this is just sassy. In this episode you find some inner-headly backgrounds. And even some good news.

Man is the pinnacle of creation and shall rule the world – that´s how we like it to be. But the difference between us and those brute animals is not that big, as this braincast demonstrates.

It the world out there would exist without us noticing, has been a heavy disput between philosophers for centuries. With "neurological constructivism", neuroscience found a position that offers great possibilities.

A peaceful topic at last: altruism, fairness, kindness. From scratch healthy brains are not capable of anything else – and they don´t want to, too. An episode of bright prospects.

How do we know what we know about the brain? And why did it become so much so fast? Braincast 15 wraps this dry topic to digest easily.

No function of the brain gets criticised more often. But the reasons are mostly wrong, nobody really wants absolute memory, as Braincast 14 shows. That memory is a quite creative affair – that would be a neat critique.

The ship of free will is sinking – at least some influential brain researchers say so. Braincast 13 examines backgrounds and backdoors of one of the most controversial topics between our ears.

For decades they told us our brains were doomed, its cells vanish and we would become more dense every day. This is not invariably the case. That and more good news in a Braincast about the date of expiry.

Limbic system, amygdala or neocortex – what does that actually mean? In Braincast 11 we are talking structure and layout of the brain. It might be a little dry. But it is imporatant.

The 10th episode – a small anniversary with a closer look on the development of toddlers. It shows that TV is not that good, love is essential and experience is everything. And that even kids five months old wonder about grammatical mistakes.

Real feelings at Braincast: vital, neurological and hormonal insights about infatuation, love and being dumped. Featuring voles and fidelity, homosexuality and hypothalamus, orgasms in scanners and bad news for men.

This Braincast looks deep into the structure of our brain: what do brain cells look like, how do they operate, how do they communicate and – just a tiny start – how do meaning and decission emerge from that?

Are we our body? Or does it just carry us through the world? Braincast 7 is about this internal relationship of brain, body and mind. This is much more complex than it feels like, and has some strange side-effects, e.g. an orgasm in a foot.

Man is driven by emotions. So the reward system promises heavenly joy once we reach our goal. This makes it rather a motivational system – and it´s one of the best ideas of evolution.

The brain once was a cooling system and a soul organ. It consisted of cavities and gear wheels. Today we know better for we screen even the tiniest structures. Here a brief (historical) summary of models and methods.

One of the most important application of the brain is intelligence. In this episode we talk about definitions, benchmark data and background, about where and what for.

Between mind and brain there is room for different kinds of blindness. Some, like the face blindness – base on structural damage. Others – like emotional blindness – are grounded on lacks in parenting. In this episode we discuss both.

Why do we have a brain at all? Not everybody needs it and it just burns up a lot of energy. But apart from our own body we have to deal with the world, have to decode it´s signals from all the noise ...

Braincast is the podcast on the frequency of mind and brain. Episode one is a short description of what we are up to.