CogNation

This episode is dedicated to the memory of colleague and friend Grace Baron.Joe and Rolf talk to Dr. Matthew Goodwin, a professor at Northeastern University whose research focus is on autism. His most recent paper used biosensing (heart rate, skin conductance, etc.) to predict aggressive behavior in profound autistic individuals up to three minutes before the event.

Joe and Rolf discuss the ideas of perceptual psychologist Donald Hoffman, who has argued that our perceptual systems have no access to reality, since evolution is driven by fitness functions, not objective truth. He has also argued that our perception is a user interface (like a desktop on a computer, or a VR headset), and that objects such as the moon don't exist when we are not apprehending them. Hoffman, Donald. The case against reality: Why evolution hid the truth from our eyes. WW Norton & Company, 2019.Bagwell, J. N. (2023). Debunking interface theory: why Hoffman's skepticism (really) is self-defeating. Synthese, 201(1), 25.

Neil Markey, a veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan, used meditation for years to deal with depression and PTSD. He is currently CEO of Beckley Retreats, a group that runs retreats to Jamaica and the Netherlands for guided psychedelic experiences. He talks about his path from the military to consulting to his work with Beckley, how guided psychedelic retreats are run (including work to prepare in advance, as well as to integrate after), and how he envisions the future of psychedelics for both treatment of disorders and for enhancing quality of life for those without disorders. Special Guest: Neil Markey.

We discuss the recent controversy about Integrated Information Theory (IIT), a theory about the neural correlates of consciousness, with Felipe De Brigard, a philosophy and psychology professor at Duke University who signed a letter describing the theory as pseudoscience. The letter: https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/zsr78/ The adversarial collaboration: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0268577 Description of IIT: https://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/journal.pcbi.1011465

Joe and Rolf talk to psychedelic researcher Robin Carhart-Harris. Robin is at the cutting edge of research on the therapeutic benefits of psychedelics such as psilocybin (magic mushrooms), LSD, and DMT. He discusses psychotherapy and the unconscious mind, models of what psychedelics are doing in the brain, and many other topics. A really fascinating and in-depth conversation. You can find links to his published research as well as a series of videos on harm reduction at the following link: https://www.carhartharrislab.com/ Special Guest: Robin Carhart-Harris.

Joe and Rolf discuss new work in neural interfaces that is helping paralyzed individuals communicate. Based on the recent Nature article: Metzger, S. L., Littlejohn, K. T., Silva, A. B., Moses, D. A., Seaton, M. P., Wang, R., ... & Chang, E. F. (2023). A high-performance neuroprosthesis for speech decoding and avatar control. Nature, 1-10.

Rolf and Joe discuss two philosophical theories of the self, Bundle Theory and Ego Theory, based on a paper by Derek Parfit. They return to the topic of the teletransporter, and although Joe is happy to go through the teletransporter, Rolf is convinced it means certain death. Parfit, D. (2016). Divided minds and the nature of persons. Science Fiction and Philosophy: From Time Travel to Superintelligence, 91-98.

In this episode, CogNation goes to the Psychedelic Science conference in Denver to get in on all the excitement. We present four interviews from the conference that represent a range of ideas about the resurgent interest in psychedelics as therapeutics. Bekely Waves (https://www.beckleywaves.com/) The East Institute (https://www.theeastinstitute.com/) Balasz Szigeti (https://www.researchgate.net/scientific-contributions/Balazs-Szigeti-2142276444) Manoj Doss (https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Manoj-Doss)

Everyone has a set of beliefs. Increasingly, it seems like we wonder how so many people can hold opposite or contradictory beliefs -- puzzling if we think there's an objective reality. We have a great conversation with Mark Solomon, a clinical psychologist and the host of the Being Reasonable podcast, about Street Epistemology, a conversational method of probing why we believe what we believe. https://www.beingreasonableshow.com/ https://www.youtube.com/@BeingReasonable Special Guest: Mark Solomon.

Manesh Girn talks to us about the effects of psychedelics on the brain, based on his recent paper, "A complex systems perspective on psychedelic brain action (https://neuroscape.ucsf.edu/wp-content/uploads/publication/1-s2.0-S1364661323000219-main.pdf)". We discuss the current state of psychedelics as therapeutics, and how information theory can model changes in brain states that result from taking psychedelics. Special Guest: Manesh Girn.

We talk with Professor Gail Sahar about her new book, entitled "Blame and Political Attitudes: The Psychology of America's Culture War", where she applies social psychology to understand where and why we assign blame in the political sphere. https://www.amazon.com/Blame-Political-Attitudes-Psychology-Americas/dp/303120235X

We talk to Dr. Daniel Sternberg, head of data at Notion Labs, about how to understand new developments in AI (artificial intelligence) like DALL-E-2 and chatgpt. Topics include the possibility for general intelligence in AI, similarities between human cognition and generative AI models, and the potential for sentient AI.

Stephanie Preston (University of Michigan) returns to the show to talk about her latest research. Why do we hoard stuff? And how can we get people to care about the consequences of all that stuff on the environment? Her research has taken her from the strategies that some rats use to hide seeds (some hide in lots of small caches, while others hoard in a single location), to the cognitive/neural/emotional mechanisms of human beings with hoarding disorder. People tend to have emotional attachments to the stuff they own, and although most of us have more stuff than we need, for those with hoarding disorder it can be overwhelming. In other recent research, Stephanie and her colleagues found individual differences in how connected people felt to the environment -- impassive people were less likely to be concerned about the destructive effects on the environment, and that politically conservative people tended to be more impassive. Paper discussed: Bickel, L. A., & Preston, S. D. (2022). Environmental impassivity: Blunted emotionality undermines concern for the environment. Emotion. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1037/emo0001072 Special Guest: Stephanie Preston.

Joe and Rolf talk to Dr. Aric Prather, a clinical psychiatrist at UCSF and author of the new book "The Sleep Prescription: Seven Days to Unlocking Your Best Rest" about why sleep is important, the relationship of stress to sleep, and how to tune your body and environment to get a great night's sleep. Special Guest: Aric Prather.

Is self-control at age 4 a predictor of lifelong success? Rolf & Joe look at new studies that replicate and extend Mischel's marshmallow experiments, discussing why some kids can wait longer for a bigger treat and what the test itself means. Links: Watts, T. W., Duncan, G. J., & Quan, H. (2018). Revisiting the Marshmallow Test: A Conceptual Replication Investigating Links Between Early Delay of Gratification and Later Outcomes. Psychological Science, 29(7), 1159–1177. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797618761661 The Atlantic: Why Rich Kids are so Good at the Marshmallow Test (https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2018/06/marshmallow-test/561779/)

Our guests, Dr. Sheila Macrine and Dr. Jennifer Fugate, discuss the concept of "embodied cognition" and its implications for the classroom. They argue that traditional cognitive psychology has ignored the fact that the brain is situated in the body, and that learning happens most effectively if it is connected with our body and our environment, rather than learned abstractly.

Developmental psychologist Matthew Gingo joins to discuss his research on morality and deception. Why and under what circumstances do parents and their children lie to one another? We discuss his paper entitled "What they don't know won't hurt them: Parents' judgments about lying to their adolescents (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/jora.12503)", published in the Journal of Research on Adolescence (2019)

Joe and Rolf once again scry the future with bold and entirely accurate predictions about the year 2022

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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/

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.

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.

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).

Guest Dr. Aaron Schurger talks to us about his research on the meaning of the "readiness potential", which has been referred to as "the brain signature of the will". Although this neural signal was already famous from research in the 1960s, it was Benjamin Libet's infamous experiments in the 1980s that proportedly showed that the readiness potential preceded an act of free will by a few hundred milliseconds. More recently (in press), Dr. Schurger and his colleagues have convincingly demonstrated that the readiness potential is not in fact predictive of an act of free will, but instead comes from a lack of a proper experimental control. Resources: Here is what a classifier (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistical_classification) is (a topic that comes up that may be unfamiliar to some). For advanced readers, check out AdaBoost, a tool that increases performance in classifiers and other types of machine learning. Papers "The Time Course of Neural Activity Predictive of Impending Movement" (Basbug, Schapire, & Schurger, TO BE PUBLISHED SOON) An accumulator model for spontaneous neural activity prior to self-initiated movement (https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/109/42/E2904.full.pdf) (Schurger, Sitt, & Dehaene, 2012) Unconscious cerebral initiative and the role of conscious will in voluntary action (https://scholar.google.com/scholar_url?url=https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/behavioral-and-brain-sciences/article/unconscious-cerebral-initiative-and-the-role-of-conscious-will-in-voluntary-action/D215D2A77F1140CD0D8DA6AB93DA5499&hl=en&sa=T&oi=gsb&ct=res&cd=0&d=3152915427386887172&ei=hvP4XZHzCa3JsQKJnIaYCA&scisig=AAGBfm3MzIo2aoz66vMHr-PThZdS3F64xg) (Libet's 1985 experiments) Special Guest: Aaron Schurger.

Guest Dr. Michael Trujillo of Karuna Labs (https://karunalabs.com/) talks to us about pain perception and recent research on the management of pain. We discuss a recent article (Hird et al.) exploring the degree to which expectation can alter the perception of pain, as well as Trujillo's work in using Virtual Reality in pain management. Boundary effects of expectation in human pain perception (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-45811-x)(2019) by Hird, Charalambous, El-Deredy, Jones, & Talmi Shout out to Gareth Thompson of Digitimer

Dr. Erick Gallun joins us today to talk about the latest in audiology research, and how it can be applied to help those with a range of hearing problems. His research has focused on rehabilitation with Veteran's Association (VA) patients. Rapid-response medical care and an understanding of how hearing is affected by brain damage are critical areas in need of research. Advances in portable computing have made widespread assessment possible, and Virtual Reality applications show promise for cost-effective and standardized assessment. Resources: P.A.R.T. (Portable Automated Rapid Testing) (https://braingamecenter.ucr.edu/games/p-a-r-t/): + link on iTunes (https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/p-a-r-t/id1126512332?platform=ipad&preserveScrollPosition=true#platform/ipad) Independent impacts of age and hearing loss on spatial release in a complex auditory environment (https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnins.2013.00252/full) by Gallun, et al., 2013 Special Guest: Erick Gallun.

Evidence has mounted that high-impact sports like boxing and football can lead to later cognitive problems, and there is increasing awareness that concussions should be taken seriously. So how does this all happen, and should you be worried? We take a look at some recent studies that shed some light on the topic. Articles: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/2645104 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S104474311500041X

David Wulff, author of the comprehensive "Psychology of Religion: Classic and Contemporary", talks with us today about some of the issues that psychologists grapple with in studying religion. How can a researcher take a fair and unbiased approach to a topic so fraught with issues of personal belief and faith? How important is belief anyway -- must one sacrifice the intellect to engage in religious practice? David discusses his recent research; his measure of religious tendencies, called the "Faith Q-Sort", has been used internationally to understand how religion manifests differently across individuals. Resources: Psychology of Religion: Classic and Contemporary (https://www.amazon.com/Psychology-Religion-Contemporary-David-Wulff/dp/0471037060) Autobiography: The Evolution of a Psychologist of Religion (https://www.researchgate.net/profile/David_Wulff3/publication/302253911_The_Evolution_of_a_Psychologist_of_Religion/links/58974d3b4585158bf6f59823/The-Evolution-of-a-Psychologist-of-Religion.pdf?_sg%5B0%5D=tyMGu67MDziddO0Qf4vntHcBsjaT5mRHsKcw06sJNAs68yXMX9kHYGupUz1b5An2nlu-hA2QH3UIjIpVe0jnlQ.s6Edn7xfAXxH9nI8uUaSOWx2UZKcL0UjAjUI3t9Maf-Tv0PcH2A5QpDremlhClVqbMGXpLQ72hGkMvPtBLiOfw&_sg%5B1%5D=W3znLOTx_JtR1tHu31kVY9SV5TYxY-WB1jrjqDtKIr1cegI7MTJIedNZk20jqkTEhAjPxWonWbVAFQz0Wu9YwiIhZBOyjiHNzU2dNn2PYlMD.s6Edn7xfAXxH9nI8uUaSOWx2UZKcL0UjAjUI3t9Maf-Tv0PcH2A5QpDremlhClVqbMGXpLQ72hGkMvPtBLiOfw&_iepl=)

In the 1960s, the social psychologist Stanley Milgram performed some of the most famous experiments in psychology history, demonstrating that ordinary people could do terrible things in certain circumstances. Joe and Rolf look into the meaning of these experiments from a contemporary view. How are they holding up over 50 years later, and what else have we learned about obedience? Milgram's experiments (http://psyc604.stasson.org/Milgram1.pdf) Milgram in Virtual Reality (Gonzalez-Franco et al., 2018) (https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0209704)

Dr. Michael Frank of Brown University talks to us about dopamine -- how it works in the brain, what his research has done to elucidate the function of dopamine circuits, and some of the genetics behind it. A really fascinating dive into a great topic! Papers: Dopamine and free will (http://ski.clps.brown.edu/papers/CockburnEtAl_ChoiceBias.pdf): Dopamine and learning (http://ski.clps.brown.edu/papers/CollinsFrank_OpAL_psyrev.pdf):

Joe and Rolf discuss recent research finding that recordings from the brain can be used to reconstruct the speech that is being thought about. Getting into the prospects of mind-reading and other futuristic possibilities, they discuss some of the limitations of research in the area and what makes progress so difficult. Source material: Speech Synthesis from Neural Decoding of Spoken Sentences (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1119-1) by G. Anumanchipalli et al. (2019) YouTube video of the model (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbX9FLJ6WKw)

Our guest is Karen Schloss, who studies the way in which color is imbued with meaning through a lifetime of associations with objects (like bananas and fire trucks) and concepts (like love and politics). We discuss her research, including topics such as: 1. What color should recycling bins be? 2. A tool that can help designers use color-concept associations in their work 3. The "blueberry problem" (why is is that blueberries aren't very blue?) 4. How to market a blue banana 5. What color heaven and hell should be Links: Dr. Karen Schloss's lab (https://wid.wisc.edu/people/karen-schloss/) at the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery Colorgorical (http://vrl.cs.brown.edu/color): A color-concept tool Our paper for discussion: "Color inference in visual communication: the meaning of colors in recycling" (https://cognitiveresearchjournal.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s41235-018-0090-y)

We examine a paper that finds sleep disruption from using tablet computers (as compared to reading a book in dim light). How much should we be worried about the effects of screens on a good night's sleep? There's good reason to believe that blue light is the main culprit -- recently discovered receptors in the eye that respond to blue light directly connect to brain areas implicated in sleep regulation. We lay out the case.... Papers: "Evening use of light-emitting eReaders.... (https://www.pnas.org/content/112/4/1232)" "Melanopsin: photoreceptors, physiology and potential (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2468867318301081)"

Joe and Rolf talk with Brent Stansfield, who is currently the director of medical education at Wayne State University, about the future of health care and the kinds of value that doctors can provide as artificial intelligence and robotic surgery come of age. We frame the discussion around the article "Medical Education Must Move From the Information Age to the Age of Artificial Intelligence (https://journals.lww.com/academicmedicine/Fulltext/2018/08000/Medical_Education_Must_Move_From_the_Information.15.aspx)" by Steven Wartman & Donald Combs. Special Guest: Brent Stansfield.

We talk about the history of research on intelligence. Is intelligence a real thing? What does it actually refer to, and can it be measured? Joe and Rolf discuss.

We discuss the article: Augmentation of Brain Function: Facts, Fiction, and Controversy (https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/1563/augmentation-of-brain-function-facts-fiction-and-controversy) ...a collection that explores recent research and opinion on ways of enhancing brain functioning, from classroom learning to the use of electrical and laser stimulation on the brain.

Is self-control something that we an think of as a resource that can be depleted and replenished? It's been a popular model in psychology for years, but it has come under question recently. We discuss "Why self-control seems like (but may not be) limited", a paper by Inzlicht and colleagues that proposes an alternate model.

Can we create life artificially? What would that even mean? Rolf and Joe talk about the field of Artificial Life, or "A-Life", which has worked toward the goal from a number of academic disciplines for the past thirty or so years. They think about different approaches, such as software, hardware, and biological artificial life, and consider what it might take to convince us that we have created something that would be considered life.

Dr. Stephanie Preston is our guest for this great conversation about the neural and evolutionary underpinnings of heroic behaviors. She proposes that heroism can be found across the phylogenetic spectrum, and acts of human heroism may have significant roots in conserved behavior patterns -- for example, the instinct for mother rats to retrieve and protect their young even at the risk of great personal danger. We discuss what qualifies as heroism, how situations can cue (or inhibit) heroic behavior, and what the evolutionary advantage might be to put one's own genes at risk to save the life of another. We also discuss the field of evolutionary psychology as a whole, and the way in which researchers think about it differently than it is often represented in popular press. Special Guest: Stephanie Preston.

The psychologist Dan Wegner (1948-2013) had a lot of influential work. One of his most popular (and controversial) claims was that conscious will is an illusion. He wanted to sidestep the issue of whether or not "free will" in a metaphysical sense exists, and get to the more psychological issue of why human beings have such a strong feeling that their conscious intention is what causes their actions. Can this be right? What exactly does Wegner mean, and does this mean we should abandon moral responsibility? Rolf and Joe get into the weeds sorting out how psychological insights can inform how we think about philosophical issues.

We talk with Adrian Nestor, a professor and researcher at the University of Toronto, Scarsborough, about his recent research, the state of current brain imaging technology, and some speculations about where the field is headed. Can mental images and thoughts be captured, decoded, and understood by a combination of electroencephalography and machine learning techniques? What is the hype and what is the reality?