Podcasts about Neuron

What if uncertainty isn't a temporary problem science will eventually solve, but a fundamental feature of reality? Neuroscientist Stuart Firestein joins Michael Shermer to make the case that the universe may be far less deterministic—and the future far less predictable—than we like to imagine. Firestein and Shermer discuss chaos and complexity, Darwin and randomness, free will, scientific progress, the replication crisis, COVID and the problem of communicating uncertainty, why humans are so bad at probability, and why even enormous amounts of data can fail to predict individual people or events. Stuart Firestein is a professor of neuroscience at Columbia University and a member of the Santa Fe Institute. He has published over one hundred scientific papers in journals such as Nature, Science, Cell, and Neuron. He is a Guggenheim fellow, a member of the advisory committee for the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and an elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. His new book is It Could Be Otherwise: Science in the Age of Uncertainty.

Links For The Occult Rejectshttps://linktr.ee/theoccultrejectsOccult Research Institutehttps://www.occultresearchinstitute.org/Substackhttps://substack.com/@theoccultrejects?r=7auau0&utm_campaign=profile&utm_medium=profile-pageCash Apphttps://cash.app/$theoccultrejectsVenmo@TheOccultRejectsBuy Me A Coffeebuymeacoffee.com/TheOccultRejectsPatreonhttps://www.patreon.com/TheOccultRejectsBibliographyCurses, Blessings, and Ritual HarmCannon, Walter B. “‘Voodoo' Death.” American Anthropologist 44, no. 2 (1942): 169–181.Faraone, Christopher A. Ancient Greek Love Magic. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999.Gager, John G., ed. Curse Tablets and Binding Spells from the Ancient World. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.Graf, Fritz. Magic in the Ancient World. Translated by Franklin Philip. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997.Ogden, Daniel. Magic, Witchcraft, and Ghosts in the Greek and Roman Worlds: A Sourcebook. 2nd ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.Stratton, Kimberly B., and Dayna S. Kalleres, eds. Daughters of Hecate: Women and Magic in the Ancient World. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014.Tambiah, Stanley Jeyaraja. “The Magical Power of Words.” Man 3, no. 2 (1968): 175–208.Placebo, Nocebo, and Medical CommunicationBarsky, Arthur J., Ralph Saintfort, Malcolm P. Rogers, and Jonathan F. Borus. “Nonspecific Medication Side Effects and the Nocebo Phenomenon.” JAMA 287, no. 5 (2002): 622–627.Benedetti, Fabrizio. Placebo Effects: Understanding the Mechanisms in Health and Disease. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.Benedetti, Fabrizio, Marina Lanotte, Lorella Lopiano, and Luana Colloca. “When Words Are Painful: Unraveling the Mechanisms of the Nocebo Effect.” Neuroscience 147, no. 2 (2007): 260–271.Colloca, Luana, and Fabrizio Benedetti. “Nocebo Hyperalgesia: How Anxiety Is Turned into Pain.” Current Opinion in Anaesthesiology 20, no. 5 (2007): 435–439.Colloca, Luana, and Damien Finniss. “Nocebo Effects, Patient–Clinician Communication, and Therapeutic Outcomes.” JAMA 307, no. 6 (2012): 567–568.Colloca, Luana, and Franklin G. Miller. “The Nocebo Effect and Its Relevance for Clinical Practice.” Psychosomatic Medicine 73, no. 7 (2011): 598–603.Enck, Paul, Fabrizio Benedetti, and Manfred Schedlowski. “New Insights into the Placebo and Nocebo Responses.” Neuron 59, no. 2 (2008): 195–206.Häuser, Winfried, Ernil Hansen, and Paul Enck. “Nocebo Phenomena in Medicine: Their Relevance in Everyday Clinical Practice.” Deutsches Ärzteblatt International 109, no. 26 (2012): 459–465.Inner Speech and DevelopmentFernyhough, Charles. The Voices Within: The History and Science of How We Talk to Ourselves. New York: Basic Books, 2016.Vygotsky, Lev S. Thought and Language. Revised and expanded ed. Edited and translated by Alex Kozulin. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1986.Winsler, Adam, Charles Fernyhough, and Ignacio Montero, eds. Private Speech, Executive Functioning, and the Development of Verbal Self-Regulation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.Rumination and Repetitive Negative ThinkingBrosschot, Jos F., Bart Verkuil, and Julian F. Thayer. “Conscious and Unconscious Perseverative Cognition: Is a Large Part of Prolonged Physiological Activity Due to Unconscious Stress?” Journal of Psychosomatic Research 69, no. 4 (2010): 407–416.Ehring, Thomas, and Edward R. Watkins. “Repetitive Negative Thinking as a Transdiagnostic Process.” International Journal of Cognitive Therapy 1, no. 3 (2008): 192–205.Nolen-Hoeksema, Susan. “Responses to Depression and Their Effects on the Duration of Depressive Episodes.” Journal of Abnormal Psychology 100, no. 4 (1991): 569–582.Nolen-Hoeksema, Susan, Blair E. Wisco, and Sonja Lyubomirsky. “Rethinking Rumination.” Perspectives on Psychological Science 3, no. 5 (2008): 400–424.Smith, Jeannette M., and Lauren B. Alloy. “A Roadmap to Rumination: A Review of the Definition, Assessment, and Conceptualization of This Multifaceted Construct.” Clinical Psychology Review 29, no. 2 (2009): 116–128.Treynor, Wendy, Richard Gonzalez, and Susan Nolen-Hoeksema. “Rumination Reconsidered: A Psychometric Analysis.” Cognitive Therapy and Research 27, no. 3 (2003): 247–259.Watkins, Edward R. “Constructive and Unconstructive Repetitive Thought.” Psychological Bulletin 134, no. 2 (2008): 163–206.Watkins, Edward R. Rumination-Focused Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy for Depression. New York: Guilford Press, 2016.Self-Talk and PerformanceHardy, James. “Speaking Clearly: A Critical Review of the Self-Talk Literature.” Psychology of Sport and Exercise 7, no. 1 (2006): 81–97.Hatzigeorgiadis, Antonis, Nikos Zourbanos, Evangelos Galanis, and Yiannis Theodorakis. “Self-Talk and Sports Performance: A Meta-Analysis.” Perspectives on Psychological Science 6, no. 4 (2011): 348–356.Theodorakis, Yiannis, Antonis Hatzigeorgiadis, and Nikos Zourbanos. “Cognition: Self-Talk and Performance.” In The Oxford Handbook of Sport and Performance Psychology, edited by Shane M. Murphy. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012.Affect Labeling, Emotion, and LanguageBarrett, Lisa Feldman. “Solving the Emotion Paradox: Categorization and the Experience of Emotion.” Personality and Social Psychology Review 10, no. 1 (2006): 20–46.Lieberman, Matthew D., Naomi I. Eisenberger, Molly J. Crockett, Sabrina M. Tom, Jennifer H. Pfeifer, and Baldwin M. Way. “Putting Feelings into Words: Affect Labeling Disrupts Amygdala Activity in Response to Affective Stimuli.” Psychological Science 18, no. 5 (2007): 421–428.Lindquist, Kristen A., Lisa Feldman Barrett, Eliza Bliss-Moreau, and James A. Russell. “Language and the Perception of Emotion.” Emotion 6, no. 1 (2006): 125–138.Torre, Jared B., and Matthew D. Lieberman. “Putting Feelings into Words: Affect Labeling as Implicit Emotion Regulation.” Emotion Review 10, no. 2 (2018): 116–124.Self-Distancing and Reflective ProcessingAyduk, Özlem, and Ethan Kross. “From a Distance: Implications of Spontaneous Self-Distancing for Adaptive Self-Reflection.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 98, no. 5 (2010): 809–829.Kross, Ethan, and Özlem Ayduk. “Making Meaning out of Negative Experiences by Self-Distancing.” Current Directions in Psychological Science 20, no. 3 (2011): 187–191.Kross, Ethan, Özlem Ayduk, and Walter Mischel. “When Asking ‘Why' Does Not Hurt: Distinguishing Rumination from Reflective Processing of Negative Emotions.” Psychological Science 16, no. 9 (2005): 709–715.Kross, Ethan, Emma Bruehlman-Senecal, Jiyoung Park, Aleah Burson, Adrienne Dougherty, Holly Shablack, Ryan Bremner, Jason Moser, and Özlem Ayduk. “Self-Talk as a Regulatory Mechanism: How You Do It Matters.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 106, no. 2 (2014): 304–324.Moser, Jason S., Adrienne Dougherty, Whitney I. Mattson, Benjamin Katz, Tim P. Moran, Darwin Guevarra, Hannah Shablack, et al. “Third-Person Self-Talk Facilitates Emotion Regulation Without Engaging Cognitive Control: Converging Evidence from ERP and fMRI.” Scientific Reports 7 (2017): 4519.Affirmation and Counter-IncantationCascio, Christopher N., Matthew B. O'Donnell, Francis J. Tinney Jr., Matthew D. Lieberman, Shelley E. Taylor, Victor J. Strecher, and Emily B. Falk. “Self-Affirmation Activates Brain Systems Associated with Self-Related Processing and Reward and Is Reinforced by Future Orientation.” Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience 11, no. 4 (2016): 621–629.Cohen, Geoffrey L., and David K. Sherman. “The Psychology of Change: Self-Affirmation and Social Psychological Intervention.” Annual Review of Psychology 65 (2014): 333–371.Wood, Joanne V., W. Q. Elaine Perunovic, and John W. Lee. “Positive Self-Statements: Power for Some, Peril for Others.” Psychological Science 20, no. 7 (2009): 860–866.Implementation Intentions and ActionGollwitzer, Peter M. “Implementation Intentions: Strong Effects of Simple Plans.” American Psychologist 54, no. 7 (1999): 493–503.Gollwitzer, Peter M., and Veronika Brandstätter. “Implementation Intentions and Effective Goal Pursuit.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 73, no. 1 (1997): 186–199.Gollwitzer, Peter M., and Paschal Sheeran. “Implementation Intentions and Goal Achievement: A Meta-Analysis of Effects and Processes.” Advances in Experimental Social Psychology 38 (2006): 69–119.Schweiger Gallo, Inge, Andreas Keil, Kathleen C. McCulloch, Brigitte Rockstroh, and Peter M. Gollwitzer. “Strategic Automation of Emotion Regulation.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 96, no. 1 (2009): 11–31.Ritual, Identity, and Psychological FormationBell, Catherine. Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.Hobson, Nicholas M., Juliana Schroeder, Jane L. Risen, Dimitris Xygalatas, and Michael Inzlicht. “The Psychology of Rituals: An Integrative Review and Process-Based Framework.” Personality and Social Psychology Review 22, no. 3 (2018): 260–284.Rappaport, Roy A. Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.Xygalatas, Dimitris. Ritual: How Seemingly Senseless Acts Make Life Worth Living. New York: Little, Brown Spark, 2022.Also want to remind people about the website, if you're into reading we have tons of information by multiple contributors, and we got t-shirts up on the site if you're interested. Fun fact, the art is all based on the eyeball. 

AI companies spend enormous effort making models safer, but the model tested in the lab isn't necessarily the system a company eventually deploys. Alice CEO and co-founder Noam Schwartz joins Corey and Grant to explain why prompts, tools, memory, permissions, data, and agent-to-agent interactions create an entirely new security surface. They dig into the growing “trust gap” around enterprise AI, why prompt injection may become a permanent cat-and-mouse game, what open-weight models change for defenders, and why Schwartz believes the real security boundary has to exist at every layer of an AI system. The bigger takeaway: as AI moves from answering questions to taking actions, traditional cybersecurity may need to merge with fraud prevention, threat intelligence, and trust and safety.OpenAI security incident: https://openai.com/index/hugging-face-model-evaluation-security-incident/Alice: https://alice.io/Alice on agentic AI security: https://alice.io/blog/key-security-risks-posed-by-agentic-ai-and-how-to-mitigate-themAlice open-weight research: https://alice.io/blog/okay-here-is-how-to-build-a-bomb-millions-download-dangerous-llmsSubscribe to The Neuron newsletter: https://theneuron.aiSponsored by Dell Technologies and NVIDIA. Learn more at https://www.techrepublic.com/hubs/the-enterprise-guide-to-scalable-ai/

It's ev.news Briefly for Tuesday 18 August 2026, only todays headlines and nothing else, in just 4 minutes if you haven't got time for the full show.Patreon supporters fund this show, get the episodes ad free, as soon as they're ready and are part of the ev.news Community. You can be like them by clicking here: https://www.patreon.com/evnewsIONNA AND WALMART PRESSURE FAST-CHARGING PRICESWalmart is expanding its own network with Electrify America, ABB and 400-kW Alpitronic NACS/CCS chargers offering Walmart+ members 10% off, while automaker-backed Ionna targets 30,000 US and Canadian ports by 2030 with stores and restrooms. Paren data shows Ionna averages $0.37/kWh, the cheapest of 17 networks and about 40% below Tesla and Electrify America's $0.56, though home charging still dominates at more than 90% of sessions and $0.18/kWh.ZEEKR TO LAUNCH 8X AND 9X IN AUSTRALIAZeekr will add the 9X and 8X luxury plug-in hybrid SUVs to its all-electric Australian range from late 2026 into 2027, after passing 10,000 local sales in under two years. The three-row 8X targets the BMW X5 and Range Rover Sport below A$100,000 with 900-volt charging, while the 9X moves upmarket at around A$150,000 with six-seat luxury and Naim audio; both are heavy, road-focused monocoque vehicles rather than off-roaders.LI SHUFU LEAVES GEELY AUTO CHAIRLi Shufu has resigned as chairman of Geely Automobile after 40 years, with An Conghui succeeding him on 18 August 2026 and Li becoming honorary chairman for life while remaining controlling shareholder and chairman of Zhejiang Geely Holding. Gan Jiayue becomes CEO as the group shifts from family-centred management toward professional systems, targeting two-thirds of sales outside China and 5% market share by 2030 across Europe, the Americas and Southeast Asia.LEIPZIG PREPARES FOR NEUE KLASSEBMW halted Leipzig production for a five-and-a-half-week summer shutdown in which over 2,000 contractors replaced 240 hydraulic lifting tables, installed 160 body-shop robots and swapped roughly 1,500 tonnes of steel to handle Neue Klasse underbodies integrating the battery and powertrain. BMW spent a low three-digit million sum on top of nearly €2 billion over five years, though it has not named which models Leipzig will build, as new i3 production began in Munich this month.SPARKCHARGE EXPANDS UK ENERGY NETWORKSparkCharge is bringing its US distributed energy model to the UK, serving autonomous fleets, construction and industrial sites that cannot wait for adequate grid connections. Founded by CEO Joshua Aviv and already operating across North America, the company will combine AI-optimised software, battery storage and on-site generation under new UK managing director James Taylor.FEDERAL PACKAGE TARGETS HEAVY EV BARRIERSAustralia has committed $400 million to heavy-vehicle reforms targeting charging barriers, automated permits, curfews and weight limits, announced by Treasurer Jim Chalmers after a Productivity Commission report found road-freight productivity had stalled for over a decade. The Commission estimated wider access for high-productivity and zero-emission trucks could add up to $4 billion to GDP annually, with electric trucks currently under 1% of Australian heavy-vehicle sales.ŠKODA ADDS V2L AND CAMP MODEŠkoda has added Vehicle-to-Load bidirectional charging, which powers external devices via a 230V boot socket, and an app-activated Camp Mode that maintains overnight cabin temperature with at least 30% charge. The new Peaq will also offer a Relax Package with AGR-certified massaging seats, electric leg rests and Sonos audio, plus a Wellbeing app, ventilated Phone Box and up to four 45W USB-C ports.BEACHMAN TARGETS OLD BIKES FOR ELECTRIC CONVERSIONBeachman Bikes is seeking broken motorcycles for electric conversion, building on founders Ben Taylor and Steve Payne's first prototype, a modified 1979 Kawasaki KZ200 completed in 2020, and a production run of 30 bikes on a 1970s 125cc platform. Having sold the 45 mph '64 as a Class II e-bike, the company is moving to pedal-free low-speed motorcycles in Canada and plans to end US e-bike sales next year to become a moped and motorcycle manufacturer.BRISBANE RIVER E-SCOOTERS STAY UNDERWATERAugust low tides exposed dozens of dumped Lime, Neuron and Beam e-scooters in the Brisbane River, including 24 near the CBD, with Ocean Crusaders having collected around 150 in the past year and storing the waterlogged batteries privately. Water experts warned that lithium, copper, nickel, cobalt and manganese could accumulate in sediment and harm macroinvertebrates, while the council caps operators at 7,100 devices and reportedly earned just over AUD$5m last financial year.

AI can write code, summarize documents, and hold a conversation. But it still struggles with the structured data businesses rely on to predict churn, fraud, demand, pricing, and risk. Alexandre Pasquiou explains why language models flatten the relationships inside spreadsheets, how tabular foundation models learn from rows and columns, and why Neuralk believes one general model could replace hundreds of custom predictive systems. The conversation also covers Seldon, AI agents, enterprise adoption, and Alexandre's prediction that tabular foundation models will power every predictive workload by 2030.Learn more about Neuralk: https://www.neuralk.ai/Subscribe to The Neuron newsletter: https://theneuron.ai

(0:00) Intro: Is Sahil Adeem Creating Chaos?(1:23) Source Code Friday Live Announcement(3:30) How the Source Code Affiliate Program Works(4:32) A Plan to Collaborate With 100 Content Creators(5:45) Rookie, Intermediate, and Expert Creator Tiers(6:14) How IMS Will Pay Creators Instead of Charging Them(7:20) Testing the IMS App With 1,000 Users(7:55) Introducing the Neuron Platform(8:32) Muslim YouTube, Muslim Netflix, and Academic Content(9:20) Neuron Launch and Registration Updates(10:06) Integrating the IMS and Source Code Apps(10:34) The Goal of Bringing Together 100 Global Experts(11:05) Turning Islamic Work Into a Full-Time Career(11:37) Building Financial and Emotional Independence(12:33) Neuron as a Platform for Uploading Your Own Content(13:52) Arabic and Islamic Foundation Course Updates(14:41) The Family Quran Course Within IPS(15:12) Traditional Learning vs. Investigation-Based Learning(16:05) Core Principles for Understanding the Quran(17:09) Abdullah Andalusi's Course for Muslim Youth Overseas(18:07) Qira'at, IPS, IEF, and Arabic Course Updates(22:09) How Source Code Teams Are Working Day and Night(24:15) Responding to Accusations of Creating Chaos(27:53) Why Sahil Adeem Says He Is Not an Anarchist(28:13) The Four Types of Capital Muslim Youth Need(29:10) IQ, Science, Quran, and Research(30:25) Why Muslims Must Enter Politics and the Corridors of Power(33:47) Children, Books, IQ, and Research Papers(49:26) Fasting, Jihad, and Unanswered Religious Questions(53:00) The Final Argument and Response Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

If you enjoy this episode, we're sure you will enjoy more content like this on The Occult Rejects.  In fact, we have curated playlists on occult topics like grimoires, esoteric concepts and phenomena, occult history, analyzing true crime and cults with an occult lens, Para politics, and occultism in music. Whether you enjoy consuming your content visually or via audio, we've got you covered - and it will always be provided free of charge.  So, if you enjoy what we do and want to support our work of providing accessible, free content on various platforms, please consider making a donation to the links provided below.  Thank you and enjoy the episode!Links For The Occult Rejectshttps://linktr.ee/theoccultrejectsOccult Research Institutehttps://www.occultresearchinstitute.org/Substackhttps://substack.com/@theoccultrejects?r=7auau0&utm_campaign=profile&utm_medium=profile-pageCash Apphttps://cash.app/$theoccultrejectsVenmo@TheOccultRejectsBuy Me A Coffeebuymeacoffee.com/TheOccultRejectsPatreonhttps://www.patreon.com/TheOccultRejectsDarkness, Sensory Deprivation, Caves, and Visionary ConditionsUstinova, Yulia. Caves and the Ancient Greek Mind: Descending Underground in the Search for Ultimate Truth. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.Use for: caves, descent, darkness, ancient Greek revelation, incubation, inspired prophecy, and altered states in underground sacred settings.Lewis-Williams, David. The Mind in the Cave: Consciousness and the Origins of Art. London: Thames & Hudson, 2002.Use for: caves, prehistoric imagery, altered consciousness, visual phenomena, and symbolic environments. Use carefully because some interpretations of prehistoric religion remain debated.Eliade, Mircea. The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion. New York: Harcourt, 1959.Use for: sacred space, threshold, the difference between sacred and profane space, and the way religious environments reorganize orientation and meaning.Zuckerman, Marvin, and Nathan Cohen. “Sources of Reports of Visual and Auditory Sensations in Perceptual-Isolation Experiments.” Psychological Bulletin 61, no. 1, 1964: 1–20.Use for: sensory deprivation, perceptual isolation, visual/auditory sensations, and internally generated experiences under reduced stimulation.Wackermann, Jiří, Peter Pütz, and Carsten Allefeld. “Ganzfeld-Induced Hallucinatory Experience, Its Phenomenology and Cerebral Electrophysiology.” Cortex 44, no. 10, 2008: 1364–1378.Use for: Ganzfeld states, reduced/uniform sensory fields, pseudo-hallucinatory imagery, altered perception, and EEG findings.Metzger, Wolfgang. “Optische Untersuchungen am Ganzfeld.” Psychologische Forschung 13, 1930: 6–29.Use for: early Ganzfeld research and the effect of homogeneous visual fields on perception.Shenyan, O., et al. “Visual Hallucinations Induced by Ganzflicker and Ganzfeld Differ in Frequency, Complexity, and Content.” Scientific Reports 14, 2024.Use for: modern comparison between Ganzfeld and flicker-induced visual phenomena. Useful if connecting this episode back to the earlier flicker-light show.Candlelight, Firelight, Sacred Atmosphere, and the Agency of LightBille, Mikkel, and Tim Flohr Sørensen. “An Anthropology of Luminosity: The Agency of Light.” Journal of Material Culture 12, no. 3, 2007: 263–284.Use for: light as a social, material, emotional, and cultural agent; how light shapes atmosphere, social meaning, and movement.Bille, Mikkel, and Tim Flohr Sørensen, eds. Elements of Architecture: Assembling Archaeology, Atmosphere and the Performance of Building Spaces. London: Routledge, 2016.Use for: architecture, atmosphere, materiality, embodied space, and how built environments shape experience.Pallasmaa, Juhani. The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses. Chichester: Wiley, 1996; later editions.Use for: architecture as multisensory experience, not just visual design; helpful for sacred architecture, embodied space, and sensory atmosphere.Barrie, Thomas. “Sacred Space and the Mediating Roles of Architecture.” European Review 20, no. 4, 2012: 505–514.Use for: sacred architecture as a mediating threshold between ordinary and sacred worlds.Kieckhefer, Richard. Theology in Stone: Church Architecture from Byzantium to Berkeley. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.Use for: Christian sacred architecture, spatial theology, light, ritual orientation, and the way buildings teach belief through space.Do, Michael T. H. “Melanopsin and the Intrinsically Photosensitive Retinal Ganglion Cells: Biophysics to Behavior.” Neuron 104, no. 2, 2019: 205–226.Use for: melanopsin, intrinsically photosensitive retinal ganglion cells, non-image-forming vision, and the biological effects of light beyond ordinary sight.Hattar, Samer, H. W. Liao, Motoharu Takao, David M. Berson, and King-Wai Yau. “Melanopsin-Containing Retinal Ganglion Cells: Architecture, Projections, and Intrinsic Photosensitivity.” Science 295, no. 5557, 2002: 1065–1070.Use for: retinal ganglion cells that detect light for non-image-forming functions, including circadian-related pathways.Blume, Christine, Corrado Garbazza, and Manuel Spitschan. “Effects of Light on Human Circadian Rhythms, Sleep and Mood.” Somnologie 23, 2019: 147–156.Use for: light, circadian rhythms, sleep, mood, and why sunlight, darkness, dawn, and dusk matter biologically.Cajochen, Christian. “Alerting Effects of Light.” Sleep Medicine Reviews 11, no. 6, 2007: 453–464.Use for: light's alerting effects beyond image-forming vision.Stained Glass, Religious Light, and Visual TheologyBinski, Paul. Gothic Wonder: Art, Artifice, and the Decorated Style, 1290–1350. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014.Use for: Gothic visual culture, sacred display, ornament, and the emotional force of medieval religious space.Camille, Michael. Gothic Art: Glorious Visions. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1996.Use for: Gothic imagery, religious seeing, visual devotion, and sacred art as visionary environment.Kessler, Herbert L. Seeing Medieval Art. Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 2004.Use for: medieval Christian theories of seeing, devotional image use, sacred art, and vision as religious practice.Hamburger, Jeffrey F. The Visual and the Visionary: Art and Female Spirituality in Late Medieval Germany. New York: Zone Books, 1998.Use for: visionary art, devotional seeing, mystical imagery, and the relationship between images and religious experience.Freedberg, David. The Power of Images: Studies in the History and Theory of Response. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989.Use for: why images provoke emotion, devotion, fear, desire, reverence, and acts of ritual engagement.Scrying, Black Mirrors, Crystal Gazing, and Reflective VisionCaputo, Giovanni B. “Strange-Face-in-the-Mirror Illusion.” Perception 39, no. 7, 2010: 1007–1008.Use for: mirror-gazing under low light, face distortion, visual instability, and apparitional perception.Caputo, Giovanni B. “Apparitional Experiences of New Faces and Dissociation of Self-Identity During Mirror Gazing.” Perceptual and Motor Skills 110, no. 3, 2010: 1125–1138.Use for: mirror-gazing, dissociation, altered self-recognition, and strange-face experiences.Caputo, Giovanni B. “Strange-Face Illusions During Inter-Subjective Gazing.” Consciousness and Cognition 22, no. 1, 2013: 324–329.Use for: prolonged eye-to-eye gazing, face alteration, dissociative effects, and interpersonal gaze phenomena.Caputo, Giovanni B. “Visual Perception During Mirror-Gazing at One's Own Face in Patients with Depression.” The Scientific World Journal, 2014.Use for: mirror-gazing research and altered self-perception. Useful for grounding black mirror and psychomanteum discussion, but do not overgeneralize.Moody, Raymond A., with Paul Perry. Reunions: Visionary Encounters with Departed Loved Ones. New York: Villard, 1993.Use for: modern psychomanteum practice, mirror-gazing, grief, and visionary encounters. Use cautiously; this is experiential/parapsychological material, not mainstream neuroscience.Roll, William G. “Psychomanteum Research: A Pilot Study.” Journal of Near-Death Studies 22, no. 4, 2004: 251–270.Use for: psychomanteum research, bereavement visions, mirror-gazing, and altered perception. Use cautiously.Northcote, Thomas. “Scrying.” In The Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology, edited by J. Gordon Melton. Detroit: Gale, various editions.Use for: general historical overview of scrying traditions, crystal gazing, mirror gazing, and divinatory seeing.Agrippa, Heinrich Cornelius. Three Books of Occult Philosophy. Translated by James Freake; edited and annotated by Donald Tyson. St. Paul, MN: Llewellyn, 1993.Use for: Renaissance magical imagination, correspondences, planetary symbols, spirits, and visual/ritual operations.Barrett, Francis. The Magus. London, 1801.Use for: later ceremonial magic, mirrors, spirits, correspondences, and visual ritual imagination. Use historically, not as scientific evidence.Magical Gaze, Concentration, Visualization, and Ceremonial PracticeCrowley, Aleister. Liber E vel Exercitiorum. In The Equinox.Use for: concentration, posture, breath, mental discipline, and the training of attention as a magical foundation.Crowley, Aleister. Magick: Liber ABA, Book 4. York Beach, ME: Samuel Weiser, various editions.Use for: ceremonial magic, concentration, visualization, ritual method, symbols, and disciplined magical practice.Regardie, Israel. The Golden Dawn. St. Paul, MN: Llewellyn, variousAlso want to remind people about the website, if you're into reading we have tons of information by multiple contributors, and we got t-shirts up on the site if you're interested. Fun fact, the art is all based on the eyeball. 

What happens when the most capable AI lives in the cloud, but the work you want it to do is too private, expensive, or repetitive to send there every time?Dr. Olena Zhu, Head of AI Solutions & Ecosystem for Intel's Client Computing Group, joins Corey Noles and Grant Harvey to explain Intel's vision for hybrid AI: systems that route each task to the right place, whether that is a local model on a PC, a larger model on an edge server, or a frontier model in the cloud.The conversation explores why cloud-only AI may be difficult to scale, how an orchestration layer decides where work should run, and how Intel's new SuperClaw beta combines local and remote intelligence. Dr. Zhu also explains how hybrid agents could conduct deep research without exposing confidential data, why routing and auditability matter when agents fail, and why the next wave of useful AI may come from specialized agents built for specific jobs.Listen for a practical look at the tradeoffs among capability, privacy, cost, reliability, and control, and what it could mean when powerful AI agents begin running partly on the computers we already own.Try Intel SuperClaw: https://aibuilder.intel.com/#/superclawIntel AI Builder: https://aibuilder.intel.com/Intel SuperClaw GitHub: https://github.com/intel/intel-ai-builder/tree/main/superclawIntel's SuperClaw overview: https://newsroom.intel.com/opinion/solving-the-agentic-ai-trilemma-cost-scale-and-data-securitySubscribe to The Neuron for daily AI news and analysis built for humans: https://www.theneurondaily.com/Sponsored by Nerdio: Get a demo of Nerdio Manager for Enterprise today:

Parkinson's disease begins with the quiet loss of the brain cells that make dopamine, and dopamine is what carries your movement, your mood and the drive that gets you through the day. As those cells disappear, so does everything they were holding up, which is why the disease eventually shows itself in so many different ways at once. For years the central question in Parkinson's research has been whether any of that can be given back, and stem cells offer one of the more hopeful answers, since they can be turned into the very dopamine neurons the brain can no longer make on its own.

If you enjoy this episode, we're sure you will enjoy more content like this on The Occult Rejects.  In fact, we have curated playlists on occult topics like grimoires, esoteric concepts and phenomena, occult history, analyzing true crime and cults with an occult lens, Para politics, and occultism in music. Whether you enjoy consuming your content visually or via audio, we've got you covered - and it will always be provided free of charge.  So, if you enjoy what we do and want to support our work of providing accessible, free content on various platforms, please consider making a donation to the links provided below.  Thank you and enjoy the episode!Links For The Occult Rejectshttps://linktr.ee/theoccultrejectsOccult Research Institutehttps://www.occultresearchinstitute.org/Substackhttps://substack.com/@theoccultrejects?r=7auau0&utm_campaign=profile&utm_medium=profile-pageCash Apphttps://cash.app/$theoccultrejectsVenmo@TheOccultRejectsBuy Me A Coffeebuymeacoffee.com/TheOccultRejectsPatreonhttps://www.patreon.com/TheOccultRejectsBibliographyCore Eye Anatomy, Retina, Optic Nerve, and Visual PathwaysBelliveau, A. P., & Somani, A. N. “Pupillary Light Reflex.” StatPearls. Treasure Island, FL: StatPearls Publishing, updated 2023.Cleveland Clinic. “Optic Nerve: What It Is, Function, Anatomy & Conditions.” Cleveland Clinic, updated 2024.Gupta, M., & Ireland, A. C. “Neuroanatomy, Visual Pathway.” StatPearls. Treasure Island, FL: StatPearls Publishing, updated 2022.Kolb, H. “Simple Anatomy of the Retina.” Webvision: The Organization of the Retina and Visual System. University of Utah / NCBI Bookshelf.Purves, D., Augustine, G. J., Fitzpatrick, D., et al., eds. Neuroscience. Sunderland, MA: Sinauer Associates.Szabadi, E. “Functional Organization of the Sympathetic Pathways Controlling the Pupil: Light-Inhibited and Light-Stimulated Pathways.” Frontiers in Neurology 9, 2018.University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston. “Ocular Motor System.” Neuroscience Online.Pupillometry, Cognitive Load, Attention, and Mental EffortBeatty, Jackson. “Task-Evoked Pupillary Responses, Processing Load, and the Structure of Processing Resources.” Psychological Bulletin 91, no. 2, 1982: 276–292.Beatty, Jackson, and Brennis Lucero-Wagoner. “The Pupillary System.” In Handbook of Psychophysiology, edited by John T. Cacioppo, Louis G. Tassinary, and Gary G. Berntson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.Kahneman, Daniel, and Jackson Beatty. “Pupil Diameter and Load on Memory.” Science 154, no. 3756, 1966: 1583–1585.Kahneman, Daniel. Attention and Effort. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1973.Laeng, Bruno, Sylvain Sirois, and Gustaf Gredebäck. “Pupillometry: A Window to the Preconscious?” Perspectives on Psychological Science 7, no. 1, 2012: 18–27.Mathôt, Sebastiaan. “Pupillometry: Psychology, Physiology, and Function.” Journal of Cognition 1, no. 1, 2018.Piquado, Tepring, David Isaacowitz, and Arthur Wingfield. “Pupillometry as a Measure of Cognitive Effort in Younger and Older Adults.” Psychophysiology 47, no. 3, 2010: 560–569.Zekveld, Adriana A., Sophia E. Kramer, and Tammo Houtgast. “The Pupil Dilation Response to Auditory Stimuli: Current State of Knowledge.” Trends in Hearing 22, 2018.Emotion, Attraction, Arousal, and the PupilBradley, Margaret M., Laura Miccoli, Miguel A. Escrig, and Peter J. Lang. “The Pupil as a Measure of Emotional Arousal and Autonomic Activation.” Psychophysiology 45, no. 4, 2008: 602–607.de Winter, Joost C. F., et al. “Replicating Five Pupillometry Studies of Eckhard Hess.” International Journal of Psychophysiology 165, 2021: 145–161.Hess, Eckhard H. “Attitude and Pupil Size.” Scientific American 212, no. 4, 1965: 46–54.Hess, Eckhard H., and James M. Polt. “Pupil Size as Related to Interest Value of Visual Stimuli.” Science 132, no. 3423, 1960: 349–350.Lang, Peter J., Margaret M. Bradley, and Bruce N. Cuthbert. International Affective Picture System (IAPS): Affective Ratings of Pictures and Instruction Manual. Gainesville: University of Florida, 2008.Pan, J., et al. “The Effects of Emotional Arousal on Pupil Size Depend on Background Luminance and Stimulus Type.” Scientific Reports 14, 2024.Locus Coeruleus, Norepinephrine, Salience, and AttentionAston-Jones, Gary, and Jonathan D. Cohen. “An Integrative Theory of Locus Coeruleus–Norepinephrine Function: Adaptive Gain and Optimal Performance.” Annual Review of Neuroscience 28, 2005: 403–450.Joshi, Siddhartha, Yin Li, Ram M. Kalwani, and Joshua I. Gold. “Relationships Between Pupil Diameter and Neuronal Activity in the Locus Coeruleus, Colliculi, and Cingulate Cortex.” Neuron 89, no. 1, 2016: 221–234.Murphy, Peter R., Ian H. Robertson, James H. Balsters, and Redmond G. O'Connell. “Pupillometry and P3 Index the Locus Coeruleus–Noradrenergic Arousal Function in Humans.” Psychophysiology 48, no. 11, 2011: 1532–1543.Sara, Susan J. “The Locus Coeruleus and Noradrenergic Modulation of Cognition.” Nature Reviews Neuroscience 10, 2009: 211–223.Uddin, Lucina Q. “Salience Processing and Insular Cortical Function and Dysfunction.” Nature Reviews Neuroscience 16, 2015: 55–61.Memory, Emotion, Initiation, and Ritual EncodingCahill, Larry, and James L. McGaugh. “Mechanisms of Emotional Arousal and Lasting Declarative Memory.” Trends in Neurosciences 21, no. 7, 1998: 294–299.McGaugh, James L. “Memory—A Century of Consolidation.” Science 287, no. 5451, 2000: 248–251.McGaugh, James L. “The Amygdala Modulates the Consolidation of Memories of Emotionally Arousing Experiences.” Annual Review of Neuroscience 27, 2004: 1–28.Seligman, Rebecca, and Laurence J. Kirmayer. “Dissociative Experience and Cultural Neuroscience: Narrative, Metaphor and Mechanism.” Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry 32, 2008: 31–64.Seligman, Rebecca, Ryan A. Brown, and Laurence J. Kirmayer. “Theory and Method at the Intersection of Anthropology and Cultural Neuroscience.” Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience 5, no. 2–3, 2010: 130–139.Whitehouse, Harvey. Arguments and Icons: Divergent Modes of Religiosity. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.Whitehouse, Harvey. Modes of Religiosity: A Cognitive Theory of Religious Transmission. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press, 2004.Ritual, Synchrony, Social Bonding, and Embodied MeaningHobson, Nicholas M., Juliana Schroeder, Jane L. Risen, Dimitris Xygalatas, and Michael I. Norton. “The Psychology of Rituals: An Integrative Review and Process-Based Framework.” Personality and Social Psychology Review 22, no. 3, 2018: 260–284.Jackson, Joshua Conrad, Brock Bastian, and others. “Synchrony and Physiological Arousal Increase Cohesion and Cooperation in Large Naturalistic Groups.” Scientific Reports 8, 2018.McCauley, Robert N., and E. Thomas Lawson. Bringing Ritual to Mind: Psychological Foundations of Cultural Forms. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.Rappaport, Roy A. Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.Turner, Victor. The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure. Chicago: Aldine, 1969.Xygalatas, Dimitris. Ritual: How Seemingly Senseless Acts Make Life Worth Living. New York: Little, Brown Spark, 2022.Xygalatas, Dimitris, et al. “Extreme Rituals Promote Prosociality.” Psychological Science 24, no. 8, 2013: 1602–1605.Meditation, Prayer, Trance, and AbsorptionFox, Kieran C. R., Matthew L. Dixon, Savannah Nijeboer, et al. “Functional Neuroanatomy of Meditation: A Review and Meta-Analysis of 78 Functional Neuroimaging Investigations.” Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews 65, 2016: 208–228.Jerath, Ravinder, John W. Crawford, Vernon A. Barnes, and Kyler Harden. “Self-Regulation of Breathing as a Primary Treatment for Anxiety.” Applied Psychophysiology and Biofeedback 40, 2015: 107–115.Lutz, Antoine, John D. Dunne, and Richard J. Davidson. “Meditation and the Neuroscience of Consciousness.” In The Cambridge Handbook of Consciousness, edited by Philip David Zelazo, Morris Moscovitch, and Evan Thompson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.Tellegen, Auke, and Gilbert Atkinson. “Openness to Absorbing and Self-Altering Experiences (‘Absorption'), a Trait Related to Hypnotic Susceptibility.” Journal of Abnormal Psychology 83, no. 3, 1974: 268–277.Vago, David R., and David A. Silbersweig. “Self-Awareness, Self-Regulation, and Self-Transcendence: A Framework for Understanding the Neurobiological Mechanisms of Mindfulness.” Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 6, 2012.Darkness, Sensory Deprivation, Ganzfeld, and Visual InstabilityCaputo, Giovanni B. “Strange-Face-in-the-Mirror Illusion.” Perception 39, no. 7, 2010: 1007–1008.Caputo, Giovanni B. “Visual Perception During Mirror-Gazing at One's Own Face in Patients with Depression.” The Scientific World Journal, 2014.Caputo, Giovanni B. “Strange-Face Illusions During Eye-to-Eye Gazing in Dyads.” Imagination, Cognition and Personality 38, no. 1, 2018: 51–77.Metzger, Wolfgang. “Optische Untersuchungen am Ganzfeld.” Psychologische Forschung 13, 1930: 6–29.Shenyan, O., et al. “Visual Hallucinations Induced by Ganzflicker and Ganzfeld Differ in Frequency, Complexity, and Content.” Scientific Reports 14, 2024.Wackermann, Jiří, Peter Pütz, and Carsten Allefeld. “Ganzfeld-Induced Hallucinatory Experience, Its Phenomenology and Cerebral Electrophysiology.” Cortex 44, no. 10, 2008: 1364–1378.Zuckerman, Marvin, and Nathan Cohen. “Sources of Reports of Visual and Auditory Sensations in Perceptual-Isolation Experiments.” Psychological Bulletin 61, no. 1, 19Also want to remind people about the website, if you're into reading we have tons of information by multiple contributors, and we got t-shirts up on the site if you're interested. Fun fact, the art is all based on the eyeball. 

These sources evaluate the evolution of artificial intelligence through the lens of architectural innovation and computational efficiency. The first text introduces Liquid Neural Networks (LNNs) as a biologically inspired alternative to traditional Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs), emphasizing their ability to handle continuous-time data with fewer parameters and greater out-of-distribution generalization. While LNN variants like Closed-form Continuous-time (CfC) models offer superior speed and reduced memory usage, the text notes that traditional RNNs remain relevant due to their mature ecosystem. Complementing this technical analysis, the second source advocates for Green AI, a movement pushing the research community to prioritize energy efficiency and environmental sustainability alongside raw accuracy. It highlights the staggering 300,000x increase in compute used for deep learning since 2012 and proposes Floating Point Operations (FPO) as a standard metric to track the "price tag" of research. Together, these documents suggest a shift toward compact, adaptive models that lower financial barriers and reduce the carbon footprint of modern AI development.

Update! The definitive follow-along walkthrough guide is ready! Check it out here: https://theneuron.ai/explainer-articles/how-to-publish-an-ai-built-iphone-app-to-the-app-store/Building an app with AI is getting easier. Getting it through Apple's doors is still a different adventure.Join Corey Noles and Grant Harvey live on Thursday, July 30 at [10AM PT / 12PM CT / 1PM ET] as they walk through what it actually takes to move an AI-built app from a working prototype into TestFlight and the Apple App Store.In this livestream, we'll cover:

AI can now help almost anyone turn an idea into a working prototype. But what happens when that vibe-coded experiment needs to become secure, reliable software that real customers can trust—and pay for?Corey Noles and Grant Harvey speak with Deap Ubhi, Global Director of Technology for Startups at AWS, about AWS Startup Advisor, an AI-powered builder assistant designed to bring AWS architecture, security, cost, deployment, and scaling guidance directly into a founder's workflow.Deap explains why generative AI has compressed startup iteration cycles from months into days or hours, how nontechnical founders can test ideas before making major technical investments, and why human judgment, product taste, and focus matter even more when building becomes dramatically easier. The conversation also explores the crucial leap from proof of concept to production, including the infrastructure, authentication, resilience, observability, and security decisions that first-time builders may not know to ask about.Listen to hear how Startup Advisor works inside tools including Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, VS Code, and Kiro—and why the next generation of founders may start with an AI coding agent and a virtual AWS solutions architect on their shoulder.For more practical conversations about how AI is changing work, business, and technology, subscribe to The Neuron and The Neuron: AI Explained.https://www.theneurondaily.com/Explore AWS Startup Advisor:https://aws.amazon.com/aws-startups/advisor/Learn more about the launch:https://aws.amazon.com/aws-startups/from-idea-to-revenue-at-startup-speed-with-ai/The Neuron Academy helps professionals build practical AI skills they can use right away, with lessons on prompting, workflows, and real workplace use cases. Check out https://theneuronacademy.com/ today!

If you enjoy this episode, we're sure you will enjoy more content like this on The Occult Rejects.  In fact, we have curated playlists on occult topics like grimoires, esoteric concepts and phenomena, occult history, analyzing true crime and cults with an occult lens, Para politics, and occultism in music. Whether you enjoy consuming your content visually or via audio, we've got you covered - and it will always be provided free of charge.  So, if you enjoy what we do and want to support our work of providing accessible, free content on various platforms, please consider making a donation to the links provided below.  Thank you and enjoy the episode!Links For The Occult Rejectshttps://linktr.ee/theoccultrejectsOccult Research Institutehttps://www.occultresearchinstitute.org/Substackhttps://substack.com/@theoccultrejects?r=7auau0&utm_campaign=profile&utm_medium=profile-pageCash Apphttps://cash.app/$theoccultrejectsVenmo@TheOccultRejectsBuy Me A Coffeebuymeacoffee.com/TheOccultRejectsPatreonhttps://www.patreon.com/TheOccultRejectsCore Sleep Paralysis ScienceSharpless, Brian A., and Jacques P. Barber. “Lifetime Prevalence Rates of Sleep Paralysis: A Systematic Review.” Sleep Medicine Reviews 15, no. 5 (2011): 311–315.Sharpless, Brian A. “A Clinician's Guide to Recurrent Isolated Sleep Paralysis.” Neuropsychiatric Disease and Treatment 12 (2016): 1761–1767.Cheyne, J. Allan, Steve D. Rueffer, and Ian R. Newby-Clark. “Hypnagogic and Hypnopompic Hallucinations during Sleep Paralysis: Neurological and Cultural Construction of the Night-Mare.” Consciousness and Cognition 8, no. 3 (1999): 319–337.Cheyne, J. Allan. “Sleep Paralysis and the Structure of Waking-Nightmare Hallucinations.” Dreaming 13, no. 3 (2003): 163–179.Cheyne, J. Allan. “Situational Factors Affecting Sleep Paralysis and Associated Hallucinations: Position and Timing Effects.” Journal of Sleep Research 11, no. 2 (2002): 169–177.Solomonova, Elizaveta. “Sleep Paralysis: Phenomenology, Neurophysiology and Treatment.” In The Oxford Handbook of Spontaneous Thought: Mind-Wandering, Creativity, and Dreaming, edited by Kieran C. R. Fox and Kalina Christoff. Oxford University Press, 2018.Baland Jalal / Panic-Hallucination / TreatmentJalal, Baland. “How to Make the Ghosts in My Bedroom Disappear? Focused-Attention Meditation Combined with Muscle Relaxation (MR Therapy): A Direct Treatment Intervention for Sleep Paralysis.” Frontiers in Psychology 7 (2016): 28. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00028.Jalal, Baland, and V. S. Ramachandran. “Sleep Paralysis and ‘The Bedroom Intruder': The Role of the Right Superior Parietal, Phantom Pain and Body Image Projection.” Medical Hypotheses 83, no. 6 (2014): 755–757.Jalal, Baland. “The Neuropharmacology of Sleep Paralysis Hallucinations: Serotonin 2A Activation and a Novel Therapeutic Drug.” Psychopharmacology 235, no. 11 (2018): 3083–3091.Jalal, Baland, Lucia Moruzzi, Andrea Zangrandi, Matteo Filardi, Claudio Franceschini, Fabio Pizza, et al. “Meditation-Relaxation (MR Therapy) for Sleep Paralysis: A Pilot Study in Patients with Narcolepsy.” Frontiers in Neurology 11 (2020): 922. doi:10.3389/fneur.2020.00922.Folklore, Myth, and the Old HagHufford, David J. The Terror That Comes in the Night: An Experience-Centered Study of Supernatural Assault Traditions. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1982.Hufford, David J. “Sleep Paralysis as Spiritual Experience.” Transcultural Psychiatry 42, no. 1 (2005): 11–45.Adler, Shelley R. Sleep Paralysis: Night-mares, Nocebos, and the Mind-Body Connection. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2011.Davies, Owen. “The Nightmare Experience, Sleep Paralysis, and Witchcraft Accusations.” Folklore 114, no. 2 (2003): 181–203.Bond, John. An Essay on the Incubus, or Nightmare. London: Printed for D. Wilson and T. Durham, 1753.Golzari, Samad E. J., et al. “Sleep Paralysis in Medieval Persia — The Hidayat of Akhawayni (?–983 AD).” Neuropsychiatric Disease and Treatment 8 (2012): 229–234.Cross-Cultural Sleep ParalysisHinton, Devon E., Vuth Pich, Dara Chhean, and Mark H. Pollack. “‘The Ghost Pushes You Down': Sleep Paralysis-Type Panic Attacks in a Khmer Refugee Population.” Transcultural Psychiatry 42, no. 1 (2005): 46–77.Hinton, Devon E., Vuth Pich, Dara Chhean, Mark H. Pollack, and Richard J. McNally. “Sleep Paralysis among Cambodian Refugees: Association with PTSD Diagnosis and Severity.” Depression and Anxiety 22, no. 2 (2005): 47–51.Jalal, Baland, and Devon E. Hinton. “Rates and Characteristics of Sleep Paralysis in the General Population of Denmark and Egypt.” Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry 37, no. 3 (2013): 534–548.Jalal, Baland, Joseph Simons-Rudolph, Bamo Jalal, and Devon E. Hinton. “Explanations of Sleep Paralysis among Egyptian College Students and the General Population in Egypt and Denmark.” Transcultural Psychiatry 51, no. 2 (2014): 158–175.Jalal, Baland, Andrea Romanelli, and Devon E. Hinton. “Cultural Explanations of Sleep Paralysis in Italy: The Pandafeche Attack and Associated Supernatural Beliefs.” Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry 39, no. 4 (2015): 651–664.Olunu, Esther, Ruth Kimo, Esther Olufunmbi Onigbinde, Mary-Amadeus Uduak Akpanobong, and Inyene Ezekiel Enang. “Sleep Paralysis, a Medical Condition with a Diverse Cultural Interpretation.” International Journal of Applied and Basic Medical Research 8, no. 3 (2018): 137–142.Sensed Presence / Body Map / Shadow Person NeuroscienceArzy, Shahar, Margitta Seeck, Stephanie Ortigue, Laurent Spinelli, and Olaf Blanke. “Induction of an Illusory Shadow Person.” Nature 443 (2006): 287.Blanke, Olaf, Stephanie Ortigue, Theodor Landis, and Margitta Seeck. “Stimulating Illusory Own-Body Perceptions.” Nature 419 (2002): 269–270.Blanke, Olaf, Theodor Landis, Laurent Spinelli, and Margitta Seeck. “Out-of-Body Experience and Autoscopy of Neurological Origin.” Brain 127, no. 2 (2004): 243–258.Ionta, Silvio, Lukas Heydrich, Bigna Lenggenhager, Michael Mouthon, Eleonora Fornari, Dominique Chapuis, Roger Gassert, and Olaf Blanke. “Multisensory Mechanisms in Temporo-Parietal Cortex Support Self-Location and First-Person Perspective.” Neuron 70, no. 2 (2011): 363–374.Blanke, Olaf, Polona Pozeg, Masayuki Hara, Lukas Heydrich, Andrea Serino, Akio Yamamoto, Toshiro Higuchi, et al. “Neurological and Robot-Controlled Induction of an Apparition.” Current Biology 24, no. 22 (2014): 2681–2686.Alien Abduction / Modern Mythic MaskMcNally, Richard J., and Susan A. Clancy. “Sleep Paralysis, Sexual Abuse, and Space Alien Abduction.” Transcultural Psychiatry 42, no. 1 (2005): 113–122.Clancy, Susan A. Abducted: How People Come to Believe They Were Kidnapped by Aliens. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005.Blackmore, Susan. “Abduction by Aliens or Sleep Paralysis?” Skeptical Inquirer 22, no. 3 (1998): 23–28.Clinical Sleep / Narcolepsy / REM BackgroundAmerican Academy of Sleep Medicine. International Classification of Sleep Disorders. 3rd ed., text revision. Darien, IL: American Academy of Sleep Medicine, 2023.Scammell, Thomas E. “Narcolepsy.” New England Journal of Medicine 373, no. 27 (2015): 2654–2662.Saper, Clifford B., Patrick M. Fuller, Nigel P. Pedersen, Jun Lu, and Thomas E. Scammell. “Sleep State Switching.” Neuron 68, no. 6 (2010): 1023–1042.Brooks, Patricia L., and John H. Peever. “Identification of the Transmitter and Receptor Mechanisms Responsible for REM Sleep Paralysis.” Journal of Neuroscience 32, no. 29 (2012): 9785–9795.Avidan, Alon Y., and Phyllis C. Zee, eds. Handbook of Sleep Medicine. Philadelphia: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, 2011.Visual / Art HistoryFuseli, Henry. The Nightmare. 1781. Oil on canvas. Detroit Institute of Arts.Myrone, Martin. Gothic Nightmares: Fuseli, Blake and the Romantic Imagination. London: Tate Publishing, 2006.Powell, Nicolas. Fuseli: The Nightmare. London: Allen Lane, 1973.Also want to remind people about the website, if you're into reading we have tons of information by multiple contributors, and we got t-shirts up on the site if you're interested. Fun fact, the art is all based on the eyeball. 

Autonomous surgery may sound futuristic, but automation already plays an important role in procedures requiring extraordinary precision. Mathias Unberath of Inner Logic joins Grant Harvey to explain how AI could help surgical robots understand anatomy, respond to unexpected events, and gradually take on more responsibility in the operating room. They explore which procedures could be automated first, how robots can learn to recover from mistakes, and why these systems may expand access to care without eliminating the need for human surgeons.For more information please visit Inner Logic: https://semaphorsurgical.com/innerlogic/ Subscribe to The Neuron newsletter: https://theneuron.aiSponsored by Dell Technologies and NVIDIA. Learn more at https://www.techrepublic.com/hubs/the-enterprise-guide-to-scalable-ai/

Neuron Live is back and we are going deep on Microsoft's big move in AI agents.

 What if neural networks are less like mysterious black boxes and more like systems we can inspect, debug, and eventually design with intention?In this episode of The Neuron: AI Explained, Corey Noles and Grant Harvey talk with Eric Ho, Cofounder & CEO of Goodfire, an AI interpretability company working to understand what's happening inside neural networks. Eric explains why models may contain meaningful internal structures — including features, representations, circuits, and curved manifolds — and how mapping those structures could make AI systems safer, more reliable, and more useful.They discuss why models may “think in shapes,” how Goodfire uses AI to interpret other AI systems, what neural geometry can reveal about hallucinations and model behavior, and why interpretability could change how companies train and control their own models.They also get into consciousness, robotics, multimodal models, the bitter lesson, and why Eric thinks more people should be looking under the hood of the most consequential technology of our time.Subscribe to The Neuron for more grounded conversations about how AI actually works: https://www.theneuron.ai/Sponsored by SAS AI Governance: Visit https://www.sas.com/en_us/solutions/ai/governance.html?utm_source=other&utm_medium=cpm&utm_campaign=sas-vpl-gbc-gps-global#The Neuron Academy helps professionals build practical AI skills they can use right away, with lessons on prompting, workflows, and real workplace use cases. Check out https://theneuronacademy.com/ today!

AI agents are not just coming for laptops, inboxes, and office workflows. Samsara Cofounder and CTO John Bicket says they're also coming for fleets, drivers, dispatchers, safety teams, and the physical infrastructure that keeps the world moving.Recorded on-site at Samsara Beyond 2026 in Las Vegas, this conversation explores how Samsara is layering AI onto dash cams, telematics devices, asset trackers, vehicle data, and operational workflows. John explains how Agent Studio helps companies build useful AI tools without overwhelming frontline teams, why physical operations create different challenges than software-only environments, and how AI can help turn raw vehicle and safety data into coaching, risk reduction, maintenance insights, and real-time decisions.Corey, Grant, and John also dig into AI ride-alongs, privacy concerns around in-vehicle cameras, why driver safety programs need to be framed around trust instead of surveillance, and what the day-to-day work of dispatchers, drivers, and maintenance leaders could look like three years from now.Subscribe to The Neuron for more practical conversations about how AI is changing real businesses, not just demos.https://www.theneuron.ai/

Join Grant Harvey and Corey Noles from The Neuron live on Thursday, July 9 at 10AM PT as we test OpenAI's new GPT-5.6 model family in real time: Sol, Terra, and Luna.Instead of just reading benchmark charts, we're going hands-on with the use cases people should actually try first.We'll test:

Most AI image tools give you a prompt box and a result. ComfyUI gives creators the pipeline underneath - the models, parameters, nodes, and repeatable workflows that can turn visual AI from a toy into production infrastructure.In this episode of The Neuron, Corey Noles and Grant Harvey talk with Yannik Marek, co-founder and original creator of ComfyUI, about why node-based workflows matter, how open-source visual AI is moving into real creative production, and what teams gain when they can inspect, modify, and repeat every step of generation.They cover how diffusion models work in plain English, why Comfy is useful for VFX, gaming, animation, e-commerce, and creative studios, and how Comfy balances open-source values with Cloud, API, and Enterprise products. Yannik also shares practical hardware advice for running models locally, where open models are catching up fastest, and why the future of creative AI may depend less on a universal prompt box and more on visible, controllable workflows.Try ComfyUI at comfy.org, and subscribe to The Neuron for more grounded conversations about AI in practice.https://www.theneuron.ai/The Neuron Academy helps professionals build practical AI skills they can use right away, with lessons on prompting, workflows, and real workplace use cases. Check out theneuronacademy.com today!

Overview: Listen in as expert faculty explore the neuroendocrine drivers of vasomotor symptoms (VMS)—including the KNDy neuron system—and review the efficacy and safety of emerging nonhormonal treatments. Expand your toolkit to deliver more informed, up-to-date care to patients experiencing menopause.

OpenAI and Thrive Holdings built Tax AI, a Codex-powered agent that helps prepare complex tax returns while preserving evidence for accountant review. In this episode, Corey and Grant talk with OpenAI's John de Wasseige and Arthur Fernandes Araujo about how expert corrections become structured signals, how Codex turns repeated failures into evals and scoped engineering tasks, and why the best AI deployments still need humans close to the work. They also dig into what this pattern could mean for bookkeeping, audits, IT help desks, and other expert workflows where the system can measure what “right” looks like.Relevant links:OpenAI Tax AI case study: https://openai.com/index/building-self-improving-tax-agents-with-codex/OpenAI Codex: https://openai.com/codex/Harness engineering: https://openai.com/index/harness-engineering/Thrive Holdings: https://www.thriveholdings.com/Crete: https://www.cretepa.com/Subscribe to The Neuron newsletter: https://theneuron.ai

AI can write code, pass exams, and summarize the web, but ask it to reason through a real-world image, and the magic often breaks. Andrew Dai, co-founder and CEO of Elorian, joins The Neuron to explain why visual reasoning may be one of the biggest unsolved problems in AI.Andrew spent years at Google Brain and DeepMind, including work connected to Gemini and sparse mixture-of-experts systems. Now, he's building Elorian around a simple but powerful idea: if AI is going to understand the physical world, it needs more than text-based reasoning layered on top of images.In this episode, Corey and Grant talk with Andrew about why frontier models struggle with counting, navigation, design, engineering, charts, and physical reasoning; why scaling language models hasn't solved vision; what a “visual chain of thought” might look like; and how better visual reasoning could accelerate robotics, satellite analysis, product design, and mechanical engineering.Sponsored by Dell Technologies and NVIDIA. Learn more at techrepublic.com/hubs/the-enterprise-guide-to-scalable-ai/.Sponsored by Outshift: Visit https://outshift.cisco.com/?utm_campaign=fy26q3_outshift_ww_paid-media_ioc-neuronai-outshift_podcast&utm_channel=podcast&utm_source=podcast to learn more about the Internet of Cognition.Subscribe to The Neuron for more conversations with the people building the future of AI.

Wednesday, June 10, 2026 - Week 24   #NightOfImpact was 15 Days ago! Photos: https://jeaniehorton.pixieset.com/curesyngap1nightofimpact2026/ Impact: $800k+, of which $300 was our match.  Industry: Multiple Academics & Clinicians: Stanford, Berkeley & UCSF.  Cross-pollination is always good. Speakers: Ash, John, Kathryn, Helen Willsey & Me.  Only got a video of John, which was a mistake. If you took one, please share.  Here is John: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/graglia_still-reflecting-on-our-inaugural-cure-syngap1-ugcPost-7467439971294048256-cUf9/    Dr. Willsey Rocks. Willsey Press Release https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1130924 (both were at NoI). A few other points on HRW, as we call her.  Simons: https://curesyngap1.org/blog/future-research-for-syngap1-how-helen-willsey-broke-new-ground-frogs-in-hand/ Willsey in Neuron 2021: https://www.cell.com/neuron/pdf/S0896-6273(21)00002-7.pdf (Frogs) Birtele in Nature Neuroscience 2023: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41593-023-01477-3 (Confirms) McCluskey in Nature Communications 2025: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-57342-3 (GI) Kostyanovskaya in BioRxiv 2025: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39677731 (cilium)   5TH SCRAMBLE FOR SYNGAP, SC – 114 days Classic case of a small event becoming an institution! cureSYNGAP1.org/Scramble26   CURE SYNGAP1 CONFERENCE - 175 days cureSYNGAP1.org/Pre    USA: use your ICD-10, F78.A1: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/epi.70142   PUBMED Pubmed 2026 is at 35. +11 vs the week. (61 last year was +9) https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=syngap1&filter=years.2026-2026&sort=date   SOCIAL MATTERS 5,045 LinkedIn.  https://www.linkedin.com/company/curesyngap1 1.58k YouTube.  https://www.youtube.com/@CureSYNGAP1 11.1k Twitter https://twitter.com/cureSYNGAP1 45k Insta https://www.instagram.com/curesyngap1   $CAMP closed at $4.34 today. https://www.google.com/finance/beta/quote/CAMP:NASDAQ   Like and subscribe to this podcast wherever you listen. https://curesyngap1.org/podcasts/syngap10 Episode 209 of #Syngap10 #SYNGAP1 #CureSYNGAP1 #Podcast #PatientAdvocacy

In this episode of The Neuron, Corey Noles sits down with Mustafa Suleyman, CEO of Microsoft AI, at Microsoft Build 2026 to unpack Microsoft's next AI chapter: seven new MAI models, a push toward in-house model development, and the idea of Humanist Superintelligence.Mustafa explains how Microsoft is thinking about AI that can reason, code, generate images, transcribe speech, and power real products—without turning the future into a vague AGI race. The conversation gets into what “humanist” means in practice, why Microsoft is building models from the ground up, how AI agents may reshape work, and what it takes to keep increasingly capable systems useful, controlled, and aligned with human goals.You'll learn why Microsoft is investing in its own model family, how MAI-Thinking-1 and MAI-Code-1-Flash fit into the stack, why Suleyman frames superintelligence around human control, and what builders and operators should watch as agents move into real workflows.Sponsored by BeyondTrustCheck it out at: https://www.beyondtrust.com/products/identity-security-insights/assessment?campid=701Vw00000drII6IAMSubscribe to The Neuron for practical AI conversations with the people building what comes next.

If you enjoy this episode, we're sure you will enjoy more content like this on The Occult Rejects.  In fact, we have curated playlists on occult topics like grimoires, esoteric concepts and phenomena, occult history, analyzing true crime and cults with an occult lens, Para politics, and occultism in music. Whether you enjoy consuming your content visually or via audio, we've got you covered - and it will always be provided free of charge.  So, if you enjoy what we do and want to support our work of providing accessible, free content on various platforms, please consider making a donation to the links provided below.  Thank you and enjoy the episode!Links For The Occult Rejectshttps://linktr.ee/theoccultrejectsOccult Research Institutehttps://www.occultresearchinstitute.org/Substackhttps://substack.com/@theoccultrejects?r=7auau0&utm_campaign=profile&utm_medium=profile-pageCash Apphttps://cash.app/$theoccultrejectsVenmo@TheOccultRejectsBuy Me A Coffeebuymeacoffee.com/TheOccultRejectsPatreonhttps://www.patreon.com/TheOccultRejectsWORKS CITEDArnold van Gennep. The Rites of Passage. 1909; English translation, University of Chicago Press, 1960. Use for: separation, transition, incorporation, initiatory structure, and the candidate's movement through old identity, liminal state, and return.Victor Turner. “Betwixt and Between: The Liminal Period in Rites of Passage.” In The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu Ritual. Cornell University Press, 1967. Use for: liminality, threshold identity, the candidate as “betwixt and between,” and darkness as embodied transition.Victor Turner. The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure. Aldine Publishing, 1969. Use for: liminality, communitas, anti-structure, social transformation, and the ritual pressure placed on ordinary identity.Catherine Bell. Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice. Oxford University Press, 1992. Use for: ritualization, ritual power, the ritualized body, and the temple as a structured environment that trains perception and action.Catherine Bell. “The Ritual Body and the Dynamics of Ritual Power.” Journal of Ritual Studies 4, no. 2 (1990): 299–313. Use for: ritualized bodies, spatial discipline, gesture, power, and the way ritual arrangements shape action.John C. Lilly. The Deep Self: Profound Relaxation and the Tank Isolation Technique. Simon & Schuster, 1977. Use for: the isolation tank, reduced stimulation, altered consciousness, and the modern technological black room.John C. Lilly. The Center of the Cyclone: Looking into Inner Space. Julian Press, 1972. Use carefully for: Lilly's altered-state/counterculture context, isolation tank work, consciousness exploration, and the bridge between research and psychedelic-era experimentation.Justin S. Feinstein et al. “Examining the Short-Term Anxiolytic and Antidepressant Effect of Floatation-REST.” PLOS ONE 13, no. 2 (2018): e0190292. Use for: Floatation-REST, reduced environmental stimulation, anxiety reduction, mood change, and the clinical side of float tanks.Hannah Hruby et al. “Induction of Altered States of Consciousness During Floatation-REST Is Associated With the Dissolution of Body Boundaries and the Distortion of Subjective Time.” Scientific Reports 14 (2024). Use for: float tanks, altered states, body-boundary dissolution, and subjective time distortion.Madison K. M. Garland et al. “A Randomized Controlled Safety and Feasibility Trial of Floatation-REST in Anxious and Depressed Individuals.” PLOS ONE 18, no. 6 (2023): e0286899. Use for: safety, tolerability, repeated Floatation-REST, and caution against overclaiming.Lashgari et al. “Floatation-REST Systematic Review.” 2025. Use for: the broad current state of Floatation-REST research, including anxiety, pain, stress, sleep, well-being, and the need for stronger standardization and larger studies.Michael T. H. Do. “Melanopsin and the Intrinsically Photosensitive Retinal Ganglion Cells.” Neuron 104, no. 2 (2019): 205–226. Use for: ipRGCs, melanopsin, non-image-forming vision, circadian entrainment, pupil response, sleep, and light as biological timing information.Lorenzo Lazzerini Ospri, Glen Prusky, and Samer Hattar. “Mood, the Circadian System, and Melanopsin Retinal Ganglion Cells.” Annual Review of Neuroscience 40 (2017): 539–556. Use for: light, mood, circadian rhythm, melanopsin, and the biological consequences of light exposure.Charles A. Czeisler and related circadian medicine research. Use for: artificial light, circadian disruption, melatonin suppression, shift work, and modern light exposure as a biological intervention.Anne-Marie Chang, Daniel Aeschbach, Jeanne F. Duffy, and Charles A. Czeisler. “Evening Use of Light-Emitting eReaders Negatively Affects Sleep, Circadian Timing, and Next-Morning Alertness.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 112, no. 4 (2015): 1232–1237. Use for: screens, evening light, melatonin suppression, delayed circadian timing, altered sleep, and modern light's effect on the body.A. Roger Ekirch. At Day's Close: Night in Times Past. W. W. Norton, 2005. Use for: premodern night, darkness before electric light, nocturnal fear, dreams, prayer, crime, labor, and the cultural history of darkness.A. Roger Ekirch. “Sleep We Have Lost: Pre-Industrial Slumber in the British Isles.” The American Historical Review 106, no. 2 (2001): 343–386. Use for: segmented sleep, first sleep and second sleep, night waking, dreams, prayer, and premodern sleep culture.Craig Koslofsky. Evening's Empire: A History of the Night in Early Modern Europe. Cambridge University Press, 2011. Use for: early modern night culture, artificial lighting, urban night, public space, and the transformation of darkness.Elisabeth Bronfen. Night Passages: Philosophy, Literature, and Film. Columbia University Press, 2013. Use for: symbolic and cultural readings of night, dream, fear, darkness, passage, and the imagination.Robert F. Taft. The Liturgy of the Hours in East and West: The Origins of the Divine Office and Its Meaning for Today. Liturgical Press, 1993. Use for: night offices, vigils, prayer through darkness, sacred time, and Christian ritual use of night.Bernard McGinn. The Foundations of Mysticism: Origins to the Fifth Century. Crossroad, 1991. Use for: Christian mystical traditions, contemplative darkness, early mystical theology, and the development of mystical language.Pseudo-Dionysius. The Complete Works. Translated by Colm Luibheid. Paulist Press, 1987. Use for: divine darkness, apophatic theology, mystical unknowing, and darkness as a theological category.John of the Cross. Dark Night of the Soul. Various editions. Use carefully for: spiritual darkness, purification, absence, mystical trial, and transformation.“The Neophyte Initiation Ritual.” Public Golden Dawn ritual material. Use carefully for: hoodwink, darkness, “Light dawning in darkness,” staged revelation, and the candidate being brought from night into day.Chögyal Namkhai Norbu. The Crystal and the Way of Light: Sutra, Tantra and Dzogchen. Routledge, 1986. Use for: Dzogchen context, light, vision, and the broader framework around contemplative perception.Christopher Hatchell. Naked Seeing: The Great Perfection, the Wheel of Time, and Visionary Buddhism in Renaissance Tibet. Oxford University Press, 2014. Use for: visionary practice, Great Perfection, Tibetan contemplative contexts, and careful treatment of luminosity and appearance.R. Shane Burns. “Dark Retreat in Tibetan Buddhist Practice.” Use for: dark retreat, preparation, disciplined context, and the difference between contemplative practice and casual sensory deprivation.Raymond Moody. Reunions: Visionary Encounters with Departed Loved Ones. Villard, 1993. Use for: modern psychomanteum practice, grief, mirror-gazing, and encounters with the dead.Arthur Hastings. “The Psychomanteum: A Modern Oracle of the Dead.” Use for: psychomanteum procedure, grief, memory, mirror-gazing, and structured encounter.Marcia K. Johnson, Shahin Hashtroudi, and D. Stephen Lindsay. “Source Monitoring.” Psychological Bulletin 114, no. 1 (1993): 3–28. Use for: inside/outside ambiguity, origin judgments, memory, imagination, and how dark or altered environments complicate interpretation.Shahar Arzy et al. “Induction of an Illusory Shadow Person.” Nature 443 (2006): 287. Use for: sensed presence, body-self disruption, temporoparietal junction, and the feeling of another being nearby.Olaf Blanke et al. “Neurological and Robot-Controlled Induction of an Apparition.” Current Biology 24, no. 22 (2014): 2681–2686. Use for: sensorimotor conflict, apparition-like presence, body-boundary disturbance, and the embodied basis of sensed presence.Also want to remind people about the website, if you're into reading we have tons of information by multiple contributors, and we got t-shirts up on the site if you're interested. Fun fact, the art is all based on the eyeball. A

Everyone is talking about Mercury-alpha, the mystery model that many believe could be GPT-5.6.In this live discussion, we're separating fact from speculation and unpacking what would actually matter if OpenAI releases a new flagship model this week.We'll cover:

How do you prove there's a real human on the other side of the screen when AI can generate faces, IDs, accounts, agents, and entire swarms of bots?Tiago Sada, Chief Product Officer at Tools for Humanity, joins The Neuron to explain why proof of human may become one of the internet's most important trust layers. Tools for Humanity is building the technology behind World and World ID, a system designed to verify that someone is a real, unique person without requiring them to reveal their identity across the web.Tiago breaks down why CAPTCHAs, phone numbers, KYC, and AI-detection systems are starting to fail; how World ID uses in-person verification, cryptography, and zero-knowledge proofs; and why the future internet may need to distinguish between humans, bots, and agents acting on behalf of humans.We also discuss concert ticket scalping, Tinder verification, Zoom deepfake protection, enterprise fraud, gaming bots, and why AI agents may need a kind of digital “power of attorney.”Subscribe to The Neuron for clear, practical conversations about AI and the future of technology: https://www.theneuron.ai/This episode is sponsored by Guru. https://www.getguru.com/?utm_source=theneuron&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=silver-bundle-june2026

In this episode, Therese Markow and Dr. Boris Konrad discuss the striking impact of memorization on functional changes and connectivity in the brain. Dr. Konrad is a neuroscientist as well as an international Memory Champion. He not only studies brain connectivity, but also trains other memory athletes, as well as those who simply wish to improve their memories. They discuss more specific aspects of memorization and its benefits across a range of other activities and problem-solving, independent of the particular memorization training utilized. Dr. Konrad summarizes his recent study, published in the journal Neuron, and the techniques used to train the brain to improve memory.     Key Takeaways: Memorization and memory are not a part of the brain; they are functions of the brain. It is a capability of our brain and our neural system.  Without exception, memory athletes use the method of loci (colloquially called the "memory palace") as a technique to memorize and remember information.  Memory training actually decreases the brain activity needed to complete a range of tasks.   "Learning and thinking in your brain are not separate. We don't have a thinking brain and a learning brain; it's exactly one brain which does both." —  Dr. Boris Konrad   Connect with Dr. Boris Konrad: Donders Institute: https://www.ru.nl/en/people/konrad-b  Website: https://www.boriskonrad.com/en/  Memory Training: Superbrain! Memory Training with Boris Konrad - https://memory1.teachable.com/p/memory-training     TED Talks:  How to use memory techniques to improve education - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qIBe0h0-Ig  The mind and methods of a Memory Champion - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t76N00urDlU  https://www.ted.com/talks/boris_nikolai_konrad_how_to_use_memory_techniques_to_improve_learning_and_education_jan_2018   Connect with Therese: Website:  www.criticallyspeaking.net Bluesky: @CriticallySpeaking.bsky.social Instagram: @criticallyspeakingpodcast Email: theresemarkow@criticallyspeaking.net    Audio production by Turnkey Podcast Productions. You're the expert. Your podcast will prove it.  

This Week In Startups is made possible by:Deel https://deel.com/twistQuo https://quo.com/TWiSTLinkedIn Jobs https://LinkedIn.com/twistToday's show:Cortical Labs is the world's first company selling biological computers. Their CL1 fuses lab-grown human neurons (derived from stem cells, not actual folks) with silicon hardware to create Synthetic Biological Intelligence (SBI).Founder Dr. Hon Weng Chong walks us through how the system works and why neurons are more efficient than GPUs at reinforcement learning. (Also… is this computer alive?)PLUS Pyka co-founder and CEO Michael Norcia explains the various uses for his autonomous aircraft, from crop-spraying drones in Brazil to a a hybrid-electric defense UAV for the military.Guests:Cortical Labs: ****https://corticallabs.com/Dr. Hon Weng Chong on X: https://x.com/dr1337Pyka: https://www.flypyka.com/Pyka on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/flypyka/?hl=enFurther Reading:2022 Pong paper in Neuron: https://www.cell.com/neuron/fulltext/S0896-6273(22)00806-62017 Paper: “Attention is All You Need”; https://arxiv.org/abs/1706.03762The “Barista Test” for Artificial Intelligence: Chris Rourk: https://medium.com/predict/the-turing-test-is-so-last-century-the-barista-test-for-artificial-general-intelligence-faf91034fa8cNotable Links:Playing “DOOM” on CL1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRV8fSw6HaEDayOne Data Center: https://dayonedc.com/NeurIPS 2026 Conference: https://neurips.cc/Neuralink: https://neuralink.com/CliniCloud Digital Stethoscope and Thermometer: https://www.design-industry.com.au/clinicloudAir Force Research Laboratory (AFWERX): https://afwerx.com/Joby Aviation: https://www.jobyaviation.com/Prime Movers Lab: https://www.primemoverslab.com/Timestamps:0:00 What is "biological computing"?2:49 Cortical's new $30 million raise4:15 The world's first biological data center9:48 Deel - Founders scale faster on Deel. Set up payroll for any country in minutes, hire anyone anywhere, get visas handled fast, and get back to building. Visit https://deel.com/twist to learn more.10:51 Biological computers have a learning advantage19:43 Quo (formerly OpenPhone) - Quo gives you a clean, modern way to handle every customer call, text, and thread all in one place. Try it free at https://quo.com/TWiST29:15 LinkedIn Jobs - Hire right, the first time. Post your first job and get $100 off towards your job post at https://LinkedIn.com/twist38:46 From paper airplanes to Group 4 UAVs52:20 Introducing the DropShip defense drone58:28 How regulations block US drones1:00:40 Why Pyka builds everything in-houseSubscribe to the TWiST500 newsletter: https://ticker.thisweekinstartups.comCheck out the TWIST500: https://www.twist500.comSubscribe to This Week in Startups on Apple: https://rb.gy/v19fcpFollow Lon:X: https://x.com/lonsFollow Alex:X: https://x.com/alexLinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexwilhelmFollow Jason:X: https://twitter.com/JasonLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanisCheck out all our partner offers: https://partners.launch.co/Great TWIST interviews: Will Guidara, Eoghan McCabe, Steve Huffman, Brian Chesky, Bob Moesta, Aaron Levie, Sophia Amoruso, Reid Hoffman, Frank Slootman, Billy McFarlandCheck out Jason's suite of newsletters: https://substack.com/@calacanisFollow TWiST:Twitter: https://twitter.com/TWiStartupsYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/thisweekinInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisweekinstartupsTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thisweekinstartupsSubstack: https://twistartups.substack.com

What if the next big AI breakthrough is not a bigger model, but a completely different kind of computer?Jeff Shainline, co-founder and CEO of Great Sky, joins The Neuron to explain how his team is building brain-inspired AI hardware using superconductors, photonics, and analog computation. Great Sky's architecture, called Superconducting Optoelectronic Networks, or SOENs, is designed to move beyond the traditional GPU roadmap by co-locating memory and processing, communicating with light, and mimicking some of the high-connectivity dynamics found in biological brains.In this conversation, Jeff breaks down why today's chips can struggle with fast, multimodal inference; why transformers may be powerful but inefficient for some future workloads; how Great Sky's system differs from quantum computing; and why early applications could include fusion reactors, particle physics, video understanding, content moderation, and eventually new model architectures that do not map neatly onto today's hardware.Subscribe to The Neuron for grounded, practical conversations about where AI is going next—and what actually has to work before the hype becomes real.

Voice agents are moving from “cool demo” to real product infrastructure.In this livestream, we're joined by Ben Cherry of LiveKit to break down what it actually takes to build real-time AI agents that can listen, respond, interrupt, call tools, and work in production.LiveKit is an open source framework and developer platform for building voice, video, and physical AI agents in production.We'll talk through the stack behind real-time AI experiences, then build and test a live demo together on The Neuron.In this live demo, we'll cover:

Today's episode is all about how childhood literally shapes the brain.Our most important experiences – from learning to read, to the growing complexity of our social lives at school, and even the video games we play – leave physical traces in how our brains get organized that shape how we see the world as adults.But how does the brain actually know what parts of our lives are actually important enough to reorganize around? How do particular experiences get under the hood to leave their mark on the developing brain?Today's guest, Stanford psychology professor Kalanit Grill-Spector, has spent her career trying to answer these questions. She's has been imaging children's brains – from infants to teenagers – to watch this reorganization unfold. Her work focuses on how our visual experience as children shapes our brains and how we see the world – what she and her team have found is not always what they expected.Learn MoreThe Vision and Perception Neuroscience Lab at Stanford Humanities and SciencesBrain's face recognition area grows much bigger as we get older (New Scientist, 2017)Neuroscientists use AI to simulate how the brain makes sense of the visual world (Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute, 2025)Bridging nature and nurture: The brain's flexible foundation from birth (Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute, 2025)Extensive childhood experience with Pokémon suggests eccentricity drives organization of visual cortex (Nature Human Behavior, 2019)Cortical recycling in high-level visual cortex during childhood development (Nature Human Behaviour, 2021)A unifying framework for functional organization in early and higher ventral visual cortex (Neuron, 2024)The emergence of visual category representations in infants' brains (eLife, 2024)White matter connections of human ventral temporal cortex are organized by cytoarchitecture, eccentricity and category-selectivity from birth (Nature Human Behaviour, 2025)Send us a text!Thanks for listening! If you're enjoying our show, please take a moment to give us a review on your podcast app of choice and share this episode with your friends. That's how we grow as a show and bring the stories of the frontiers of neuroscience to a wider audience.We want to hear from your neurons! Email us at at neuronspodcast@stanford.eduLearn more about the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute at Stanford and follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. 

What happens when AI stops simply giving answers and starts producing proofs a computer can verify?In this episode of The Neuron, Corey Noles and Grant Harvey talk with Tudor Achim, Co-Founder and CEO of Harmonic, the company behind Aristotle — a formal reasoning system built to generate machine-checkable mathematical proofs. Tudor explains why math may be the clearest test case for moving AI from “trust me” to “check me,” and why formal verification could matter far beyond Olympiad benchmarks.They discuss what “mathematical superintelligence” actually means, why Tudor thinks solving a Millennium Prize problem would be a meaningful threshold, and how Lean-based proofs could change the way mathematicians collaborate. They also explore Aristotle's real-world use cases, from open math problems to verified software, chip design, scientific computing, and the future of AI-assisted discovery.Plus: why Tudor thinks formal math has reached a “zero to one” moment, why specs may be the bottleneck in verified software, and why humans still need to direct the questions AI systems try to solve.Subscribe to The Neuron and sign up for The Neuron Daily at theneuron.ai.

May is Mental Health Awareness Month, and as AI becomes more embedded in our daily lives, one of the biggest questions we face is whether these systems can responsibly support emotional and psychological well-being.AI chatbots are increasingly being used for emotional support, but recent lawsuits faced by OpenAI and earlier ones targeting character.ai and Google's AI Overviews, as well as clinical reports, and internal research have raised valid concerns about their impact on vulnerable users.What does it take to build an AI system specifically designed for mental health from the ground up? Is that even possible?In this LIVE episode of The Neuron Podcast, Corey Noles and Grant Harvey speak with Daniel Reid Cahn, co-founder and CEO of Slingshot AI, about Ash, an AI application purpose-built for therapeutic support. Slingshot has raised $93M from a16z, Radical Ventures, and others to develop a foundation model for psychology trained on structured therapeutic conversations across modalities such as CBT, DBT, and psychodynamic therapy.We discuss the limitations of general-purpose chatbots in mental health contexts, recent controversies surrounding AI and psychiatric risk, and what differentiates a system designed to provide structured therapeutic engagement compared to one being used in a way it was never intended to be. The conversation also explores a broader question: Can AI meaningfully expand access to high-quality mental health care, and where should clear boundaries remain? Or should we keep our counseling where we always have, on a couch with a box of Kleenex and a hug nearby?

Genspark went from AI search startup to autonomous AI agent platform, hitting $250M ARR in 12 months with no paid ads until they bought a Super Bowl spot. Co-founder and COO Wen Sang joins Corey and Grant to explain what "AI employee" actually means, demos Genspark Claw live (including buying us coffee mid-interview), and lays out his big thesis: legacy software is becoming infrastructure while AI agents become the new interface between humans and work. We get hands-on with Workspace 4.0, Claw, and a custom agent built live for the show.• Genspark Workspace 4.0 announcement: https://www.genspark.ai/blog/genspark-ai-workspace-4• Genspark sb-git: https://genspark.ai/sb-git/intro• OpenAI's customer story on Genspark: https://openai.com/index/genspark/• Forbes AI 50 (2026): https://www.forbes.com/lists/ai50/• Marc Benioff on Salesforce Headless 360 (referenced by Wen): https://x.com/Benioff • Andrej Karpathy's "wiki for agents" idea (referenced as inspiration for sb-git): https://x.com/karpathy• Wen on the DealMaker Show: https://alejandrocremades.com/wen-sang/Try Genspark for free: https://genspark.aiSubscribe to The Neuron newsletter: https://theneuron.ai

Hey rockstar,In the last piece, we explored why AI “fast money” shortcuts leave so many people feeling numb, overwhelmed, and disconnected — and why the real foundation of a sustainable business is still connection, care, and community.There's a closely related piece almost nobody is talking about:If numbness is what erodes your relationships, joy and wealth creation from the inside out, curiosity is what brings it back to life.Not just as a nice idea — but as a literal learning rate for your brain and your purpose.“Hey, before we jump in - when you get a moment, hit reply and tell me…. What's the #1 thing you're struggling with right now?The Number That Should Stop Every Purpose Driven Wealth Creation - ColdA developmental psychologist at Williams College tracked how many questions children ask per hour.At age five, the average kid asks 107 questions per hour. They're relentless. Why is the sky blue? Why do dogs have tails? Why does grandma's hair turn white? Their brains are running at full throttle, pulling in data from every direction.Then school starts.* By first grade, the entire class asks 2.3 questions per hour — combined.* By fifth grade? 0.48 questions per hour. Less than one question every two hours from a room full of eleven-year-olds.In one observation, kids were experimenting with an old-fashioned balance scale, genuinely doing science. The teacher shut it down: “Enough of that. I'll give you time to experiment at recess. There's no time for experiments now. We're doing science.”Read that again. No time for experiments… during science class.The researcher's conclusion is brutal: if you lose your curiosity by age 11, you probably don't get it back.I disagree on one thing. I think you can get it back. But you have to understand what curiosity actually is, neurologically. And that's where it gets interesting — especially for anyone trying to build something real in the AI era.Your Brain Is a Large Language Model (No, Really)The more I create custom services and learn about how advanced AI models work, the more clear it becomes: your brain is running the same basic algorithm.Consider the parallels:* Your brain has roughly 86 billion neurons connected by an estimated 100 trillion synapses.* GPT-4 has approximately 1.8 trillion parameters across its mixture-of-experts architecture.* Both are massive pattern-recognition networks.* Both learn by prediction.Here's how an LLM trains: it reads a sentence, predicts the next word, checks whether it was right, and adjusts its internal weights. Right answer? Strengthen that pathway. Wrong answer? Weaken it, try again. Billions of repetitions, trillions of adjustments.Your brain does the same thing.Every experience is a prediction. You reach for a coffee cup and predict its weight. You start a sentence and predict how the other person will react. When reality matches your prediction, your synapses strengthen. When it doesn't, your brain recalibrates. Neuroscientists call this predictive coding.A 2024 study found LLMs become more advanced, their internal representations actually become more similar to human brain activity during speech processing.Your brain is the original foundation model — pre-trained by evolution, fine-tuned by experience.But here's the critical difference:An LLM's learning rate is set by engineers. They decide how aggressively the model updates its weights in response to new data. Too high and it's unstable. Too low and it stops learning.In your brain, that learning rate has a name. It's called curiosity. And unlike an LLM, you can adjust it yourself.Curiosity as a Reward Signal: The Dopamine ConnectionUC Davis put people in an fMRI scanner and asked them trivia questions.What they found — published in the journal Neuron — changed our understanding of how curiosity works.When participants were highly curious, their ventral tegmental area (VTA) and nucleus accumbens lit up. These are the same brain regions activated by food, sex, and addictive drugs.Curiosity hijacks your reward circuitry. It's not a nice-to-have personality trait. It's a neurochemical event.But the more interesting finding was this: during the curious state, participants were shown random faces, completely unrelated to the trivia. Later, they remembered those faces significantly better than faces shown during low-curiosity moments.Curiosity didn't just help them learn the answer they wanted. It supercharged their memory for everything happening in that moment.This is exactly how reinforcement learning works in AI. When an LLM gets a reward signal through RLHF (Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback), it doesn't just strengthen the specific output — The reward ripples through the network.Curiosity is your brain's RLHF. It's the reward signal that tells 86 billion neurons: pay attention, something important is happening, encode everything.Without that signal, your brain does what an untrained model does. It defaults to cached responses. You stop updating. You become, in AI terms, a frozen model.Curiosity Literally Keeps You AliveAnd this is about much more than learning faster.In 1996, researchers Gary Swan and Dorit Carmelli at SRI International followed 1,118 older men over five years as part of the Western Collaborative Group Study. They measured curiosity at baseline and tracked who survived.The result: highly curious people had significantly higher survival rates — even after controlling for age, smoking, cardiovascular disease, and other risk factors. They replicated the finding in 1,035 older women.Curiosity was directly associated with greater cognitive reserve — the brain's buffer against age-related decline.Curious brains keep building new connections. Incurious ones atrophy.Mindset is a biological variable. Curious people don't merely think differently — their brains physically maintain themselves better.Which means in business terms:The relentless drive to learn boosts your neurons and adaptability as much as any supplement or course.How We Lose Curiosity (And Why That Kills Businesses)We aren't born numb.However, school, social conditioning, and performance culture often suppress questioning. By the time most people start or grow a business, their curiosity has nearly vanished.We learn to:* Stop experimenting unless there's a guaranteed outcome* Protect what we already “know” instead of updating* Prioritize looking competent over actually learningLayer AI “shortcuts” on top of that and the effect compounds. You can ship more, post more, automate more — without ever engaging the deeper questions:* What is really happening in my market right now?* What are my clients actually struggling with beneath the surface?* Where am I out of alignment with what I'm selling?Without those questions, your wealth stops evolving in any meaningful way. You may still be iterating on tactics, but your inner model of reality is frozen.Numbness plus speed is just a faster way to hit the wall.The most dangerous thing that can happen to your brain — or your business — is to stop being surprised.How to Crank Your Learning Rate Back Up Five strategies for creative agency:1. Create information gaps intentionally. Curiosity arises when you know enough to spot gaps but not enough to fill them. Before meetings, read halfway through an article and enter with questions, not answers.2. Schedule daily “explore time.” Dedicate 30 minutes to learning about unfamiliar fields to keep your curiosity alive without aiming for expertise.3. Ask “dumb” questions among experts. Genuine learners ask for explanations, even in rooms full of accomplished people.4. Change your physical inputs. Perceptual and intellectual curiosity; try new routes, restaurants without menus, or confusing places to stimulate dopamine.5. Teach what you learn within 24 hours. Sharing knowledge helps organize and consolidate it—similar to fine-tuning data in LLMs.Curiosity, AI, and the “Whole Human” In a world obsessed with speed and automation, the temptation is to outsource not just your tasks, but your actual thinking — your contact with reality.But the future we actually want isn't built by numbed-out operators running frozen mental models, propped up by ever-fancier tools.It's built by people who are:* Awake enough to notice when they've gone numb* Curious enough to re-open the questions about what they're building* Grounded enough to use AI as support for their nervous systems and insight — not as a mask over their disconnectionThat's the through-line from the last piece to this one:* From extraction → to contribution* From performance → to presence* From “how do I hack the algorithm?” → to “how do I keep my own learning rate high enough to truly serve?”What This Means for YouIf you're an entrepreneur: Your competitive advantage isn't your product. It's your rate of learning. Build a culture that rewards questions over answers. Hire curious people over credentialed people.If you're an executive or practitioner: Schedule one hour a week to explore a field completely outside your industry. Those who survive disruption are the ones whose mental models are still updating.If you're investing in yourself: Bet on your curiosity the way a smart investor bets on a sole proprietor founder's adaptability. Curiosity predicts adaptability — and adaptability predicts survival.If you're a parent or leader of others: Count the questions in the room. If the number is dropping, the issue isn't the people — it's the environment. Protect spaces where real learning (which is always a little messy) is allowed.The Invitation to the Deeper MindLet the FOMO cool.Keep experimenting with AI — but pair every tool with a question:* What is this teaching me about my clients, my patterns, my assumptions?* Where am I tempted to go numb instead of stay curious?Rebuild your foundation with timeless ingredients: connection, care, community, and a living curiosity that aligns you with life—not just trends. Curiosity reconnects you with reality, countering numbness.That's how I use Generative AI in Oracle work: To awaken intuition, not replace it.When you open The Light Between Oracle, you enter an immersive experience blending symbolic language, somatic regulation, and guided integration—so insights land in your body, not just your mind.Here's the process:* You arrive scattered or braced.* The Oracle helps you downshift to hear yourself.* It reflects the clearest pattern at play.* You leave with one grounded step to take that day.The goal isn't more information—it's becoming someone whose inner model continually updates through presence, questions, and authentic connection.If you felt this piece in your bones, take the next step with me:Try The Light Between Oracle here: [Insert your link to the Oracle app]What you'll get from it:* Clarity without overwhelm (a focused prompt + practical direction)* Nervous system replenishment (so your guidance doesn't get drowned out by stress)* Better decisions through curiosity (questions that reopen your learning rate)* Aligned momentum (action that feels clean, not performative)* A daily wisdom + strategy practice you can actually sustainIf you want, hit reply and tell me what you're navigating right now—and I'll tell you the best place to start inside the Oracle. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thelightbetween.substack.com/subscribe

Can AI move from predicting proteins to actually designing new drugs? Isomorphic Labs is trying to answer one of the biggest questions in science.In this episode of The Neuron, Corey Noles and Grant Harvey talk with Rebecca Paul, Head of Medicinal Drug Design at Isomorphic Labs, and Michael Schaarschmidt, Foundational AI Research Lead.They explain why drug discovery is so slow, expensive, and failure-prone—and why AI drug design is much more complicated than “generate a molecule and ship it.” The conversation covers AlphaFold, structure prediction, molecule generation, binding models, clinical failure rates, human trust in AI systems, and the long-term hope of designing drugs for targets once considered “undruggable.”In this episode:Why drug discovery can take more than a decadeWhat people misunderstand about “AI-designed drugs”How medicinal chemists actually use AI modelsWhy biology is harder than text, images, or codeWhat it would take to make drug discovery faster and cheaperThe dream of designing a drug candidate in one iterationWhy “undruggable” proteins may not stay undruggable foreverAdditional resources:Technical report blog Best resource for learning about the capabilities that we are buildingIsomorphic Labs websiteBest destination for learning more about Iso and joining our team in London, Lausanne or Cambridge, MASubscribe for more grounded conversations on how AI is changing science, work, and the world.For more practical, grounded conversations on AI systems that actually work, subscribe to The Neuron newsletter at https://theneuron.ai.

Join us Thursday as we break down OpenAI's new Workspace Agents and what they mean for the future of work.We'll cover:⚙️ What workspace agents are

Today's episode is about the neuroscience of hard work—or maybe more specifically, the value we place on hard work.There's something different about hiking to the top of a mountain versus taking a helicopter. The view from the top is exactly the same, but if you've done the hard slog to get there, the payoff is going to be much more rewarding. The question is, how does the brain know the difference? To answer this, we need to take a deep dive into the brain's reward system, and one of our favorite neurotransmitters, dopamine. And it turns out, the way dopamine operates is more complicated than we thought.Our guest today, Stanford Medicine psychiatrist Neir Eshel, tells us about new research that's starting to reveal exactly how the brain pushes us to work hard for the things that matter to us. Learn MoreEshel's Stanford Translational Addiction and Aggression Research (STAAR) LabWhy we value things more when they cost us more (Stanford Medicine, 2026)Cholinergic modulation of dopamine release drives effortful behaviour (Nature, 2026)Striatal dopamine integrates cost, benefit, and motivation (Neuron, 2023)Dopamine and serotonin work in opposition to shape learning (Wu Tsai Neuro, 2024)Why we do what we do (From Our Neurons to Yours, 2024)Send us a text!Thanks for listening! If you're enjoying our show, please take a moment to give us a review on your podcast app of choice and share this episode with your friends. That's how we grow as a show and bring the stories of the frontiers of neuroscience to a wider audience.We want to hear from your neurons! Email us at at neuronspodcast@stanford.eduLearn more about the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute at Stanford and follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. 

Google just acquired an AI startup that lets anyone create real music, music videos, and custom instruments — no experience required. In this hands-on episode, Corey sits down with Kendall Rankin from Google to demo Flow Music (formerly Producer AI), the generative music tool now living inside Google Labs. They build a garage rock song about AI from scratch, generate a music video with VEO, and dig into what "amplifying human creativity" actually looks like when the tool can do most of the lifting. Listeners walk away with a clear view of where AI music tools fit in an artist's workflow, why watermarking (SynthID) matters, and how to try it for free.Try Flow Music: https://producer.ai Google Labs: https://labs.google SynthID (watermarking): https://deepmind.google/technologies/synthid/ Subscribe to The Neuron newsletter: https://theneuron.ai

OpenAI dropped GPT-5.5, so we did the only reasonable thing: went live immediately and tried to break it.In this off-the-cuff Neuron Live, Corey and Grant walk through OpenAI's GPT-5.5 release notes, benchmark claims, rollout details, and early access reactions before testing the model live across coding, reasoning, creativity, web research, and absurd prompt challenges. We also compare a few GPT-5.5 responses against Claude Opus 4.7, test Codex, build a new version of Cat Doom, and ask the important questions, like whether a sentient vending machine that only dispenses expired tuna salad deserves to live.In this episode, we cover:• What OpenAI says is new in GPT-5.5• GPT-5.5's improvements in coding, computer use, research, and knowledge work• Early benchmark results across Terminal-Bench, GDPval, Frontier Math, BrowseComp, and scientific research tasks• Why token efficiency may matter as much as raw intelligenceGPT-5.5's rollout across ChatGPT, Codex, Plus, Pro, Business, and Enterprise• Live Codex testing with a one-shot Cat Doom game buildCreative stress tests involving palindromes, time-traveling potatoes, dystopian vending machines, and Lord of the Rings product reviews• First impressions of whether GPT-5.5 feels meaningfully different from GPT-5.4 and Claude Opus 4.7This was not a formal benchmark. It was a first-contact livestream: messy, fast, weird, and exactly the kind of test we like.Subscribe for more AI breakdowns, live model tests, beginner-friendly explainers, and weirdly useful prompt experiments from The Neuron.Sign up for The Neuron newsletter: https://www.theneuron.ai/Follow along for more AI news, analysis, and live experiments.

Grant and Kyle dive into a comprehensive review and live test of the newly released Claude Opus 4.7, a cutting-edge large language model. This session explores its capabilities for coding and game dev, specifically referencing the "Renaissance / Plan Final Fantasy Tactics RPG Game" project. Discover how this ai model performs under pressure and its potential impact on game design workflows.

Neuroscientist Paul Nuyujukian likens the brain to a stadium full of people. To eavesdrop on the crowd you could put a microphone in the middle of the stadium. But to understand the conversations you need to record individual people. He thinks about the brain the same way. To understand brain disease, he studies neurons—one at a time. And his insights are shedding light on a big global issue—stroke. The World Health Organization predicts one in four adults will have a stroke in their lifetime. Strokes can cause death, or lead to paralysis or speech problems. But there's still a lot researchers don't know about how the brain recovers from an event like a stroke. Nuyujukian directs a lab at Stanford University that studies how the brain controls movement, including after neurological events like stroke. We get into how he does this, and why he hopes his research could eventually help people who've been paralyzed. Email us your questions about the brain – or anything else to do with science at shortwave@npr.org. We may turn it into an episode in the future!Listen to every episode of Short Wave sponsor-free and support our work at NPR by signing up for Short Wave+ at plus.npr.org/shortwave.To manage podcast ad preferences, review the links below:See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

AI can reason about text and images, but it still struggles to understand the physical world. In this episode, Grant sits down with Peter Wilczynski, Chief Product Officer at Vantor (formerly Maxar Intelligence / Digital Globe), to unpack why spatial intelligence is emerging as critical AI infrastructure. Peter spent years at Palantir building ontology systems and mapping tools for defense operations before joining Vantor, where his team has built a 100M+ square kilometer 3D model of the entire Earth at 50cm resolution. We dig into how satellite imagery becomes machine-readable through embedding models, why "ground truth world models" are fundamentally different from hallucinated ones, the Raptor GPS-alternative system, simulation and digital forensics, the future of augmented reality, and why the physical world might be the most important thing AI still doesn't understand.Vantor: https://vantor.comTensorGlobe Platform: https://vantor.com/product/platform/Vantor rebrands from Maxar Intelligence (Business Wire): https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20251001760322/en/Vantor-Rebrands-from-Maxar-Intelligence-Unveils-AI-Powered-PlatformSubscribe to The Neuron newsletter: https://theneuron.ai

What actually causes cognitive decline, and how much of it can we do something about? In this episode, Michael talks with neurologist and neuroscientist Dr. Majid Fotuhi about dementia, Alzheimer's, memory loss, and the everyday habits that shape brain health over time. They discuss why Alzheimer's is only part of the story, why some people remain mentally sharp into old age, and what the evidence says about exercise, sleep, diet, stress, and cognitive activity. They also cover ADHD, attention, brain training, and the difference between ordinary forgetfulness and something more serious. At the center of it all is a simple but important idea: many people think cognitive decline is just an unavoidable part of aging, when in fact there is often more room to protect brain function than most of us realize. Majid Fotuhi, MD, PhD, is an adjunct professor of Neuroscience at Johns Hopkins's Mind/Brain Institute, an adjunct professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences at George Washington University, and is the medical director of NeuroGrow Brain Fitness Center.  His groundbreaking, proprietary research has been published in The Lancet, Nature, Neurology, Neuron, Proceedings of National Academy of Science, the Journal of Prevention of Alzheimer's Disease, Journal of Rehabilitation, and Journal of Alzheimer's Disease Reports, among others. His new book is The Invincible Brain: The Clinically Proven Plan to Age-Proof Your Brain and Stay Sharp for Life.

What does it actually take to make AI work inside a real business, where messy data, human judgment, and operational risk all collide? In this episode, I sit down with Matt Fitzpatrick, CEO of Invisible Technologies, to talk about why the biggest barrier to enterprise AI is not model quality, it is everything that comes before the model ever gets to work. Since stepping into the CEO role in January 2025, Matt has moved quickly, raising $100 million and expanding Invisible's footprint across major cities including New York, San Francisco, DC, Austin, London, and Poland. But this conversation is far less about headlines and far more about what happens in the trenches of AI adoption, where companies are trying to move from pilots and PowerPoint promises to systems that actually deliver results. A huge theme throughout our discussion is data readiness. Matt makes a compelling case that most businesses are still dealing with fragmented systems, inconsistent records, and information spread across disconnected tools. That reality makes it incredibly hard to deploy AI in a way that creates trust and value. We talk about SwissGear, where Invisible used its Neuron platform to clean and structure 750 scattered tables in just one week, a task that could have taken a large engineering team months or longer. We also discuss why that kind of work matters so much, because once the data foundation is fixed, companies can start making better decisions on forecasting, operations, and planning with a level of confidence that simply was not there before. We also spend time on Invisible's human-in-the-loop approach, which I think will resonate with a lot of listeners trying to cut through the noise around job displacement and agentic AI. Matt argues that the real opportunity is not replacing people, but giving them better tools to handle repetitive work while preserving room for human expertise, judgment, and oversight. He shares examples from commercial credit workflows, healthcare, and sports analytics, including a fascinating story about the Charlotte Hornets using AI to turn broadcast footage into detailed tracking data. What stood out to me was how practical his perspective felt. This was not theory. It was about building systems around how organizations actually work, rather than expecting businesses to reshape themselves around a generic AI product. Another part of the conversation that deserves attention is governance. As boards rush to understand agentic AI, Matt explains why trust, standards, and responsible deployment are now driving buying decisions just as much as raw capability. We talk about privacy in healthcare, the risks of scaling autonomous systems without mature governance, and why enterprise adoption still trails consumer AI by a wide margin. That gap between excitement and execution may be one of the most important stories in AI right now. If you are wondering why so many AI projects never make it into production, or what it will take for enterprise AI to finally deliver on its promise, this episode is packed with insight. It is a conversation about data, deployment, governance, and the role humans will continue to play as AI becomes part of everyday business operations. After listening, I would love to know where you stand, is the future of AI really about bigger models, or is it about making AI fit the messy reality of how work gets done?

Brandon Baum — better known as heybrandonb to his 25M+ followers — built a YouTube empire making cinematic, effects-heavy videos that look like they cost millions but were born in a bedroom during COVID. In this episode, we get into how he went from 2 views to a million followers in a month, why he shoots everything on iPhones with a custom 3D-printed dual-phone rig, how AI tools like Firefly Boards have replaced his Post-it Note wall, and why he thinks the atmosphere is "ripe for change" in Hollywood. We also talk about what content is actually performing now (hint: it's not spectacle anymore), his plan to seed original IP on social before taking it to theaters, and why he's building custom AI agents to offload his admin so he can just be creative.Brandon B's YouTube channel:https://www.youtube.com/@heybrandonbAdobe Firefly Boards: https://firefly.adobe.com/LM Studio / Ollama (referenced in OpenClaw discussion): https://lmstudio.ai/ https://ollama.com/Subscribe to The Neuron newsletter: https://theneuron.ai

Let's build with v0 in real time. We're going LIVE with Tom Occhino, Chief Product Officer at Vercel, to explore vibe coding and take a hands-on look at v0, Vercel's AI-powered development platform for building apps faster. We'll show v0 live and walk through how it turns a simple prompt into a real, shippable interface. Tom will also explain what “vibe coding” actually looks like in practice, including how teams are using it today and where it fits into modern development workflows. What we'll cover:⚡ You'll see a live build using v0, from the first prompt to a working app.

Matthew Cobb is a British zoologist and Emeritus professor of zoology at the University of Manchester.Get his book, The Idea of the Brain: A HistoryCloser to Truth's Map of Consciousness: loc.closertotruth.com/mapTIMESTAMPS:0:00 The Heart or the Head?4:13 Medicine in the Ancient World12:25 Why Don't We Accept Evidence?18:34 From Ancient to Modern Understanding29:29 When Did We Reach a Consensus on the Brain?37:41 Electricity in the Brain39:58 Our Metaphors for the Brain44:15 Is the Brain Segmented or Whole?01:05:20 Why is Speech Governed by the Left Hemisphere?01:18:55 Why is the Brain Split Into Two Hemispheres?01:23:06 Where in the Brain Does Consciousness Originate?01:32:46 The Ladybug Robot01:35:08 Back to Consciousness01:45:27 What is a Neuron?01:56:04 Why is Smell Connected to Memory So Strongly?02:02:14 Do London Cab Drivers Have Larger Hippocampi?02:10:11 The Limits of MRI and CT Scans02:19:24 Will We Ever Be Able to See Consciousness in the Brain?