Dive into the complete episode list for BJKS Podcast. Each episode is cataloged with detailed descriptions, making it easy to find and explore specific topics. Keep track of all episodes from your favorite podcast and never miss a moment of insightful content.
Rows per page:
50
1–50 of 119
Title
Pub. Date
Duration
100. Tom Chivers: Thomas Bayes, Bayesian statistics, and science journalism
16 Aug 2024
01:19:46
Tom Chivers is a journalist who writes a lot about science and applied statistics. We talk about his new book on Bayesian statistics, the biography of Thomas Bayes, the history of probability theory, how Bayes can help with the replication crisis, how Tom became a journalist, and much more.
BJKS Podcast is a podcast about neuroscience, psychology, and anything vaguely related, hosted by Benjamin James Kuper-Smith.
Timestamps 0:00:00: Tom's book about Bayes & Bayesian statistics relates to many of my previous episodes and much of my own research 0:03:12: A brief biography of Thomas Bayes (about whom very little is known) 0:11:00: The history of probability theory 0:36:23: Bayesian songs 0:43:17: Bayes & the replication crisis 0:57:27: How Tom got into science journalism 1:08:32: A book or paper more people should read 1:10:05: Something Tom wishes he'd learnt sooner 1:14:36: Advice for PhD students/postdocs/people in a transition period
Bayes (1731). Divine benevolence, or an attempt to prove that the principal end of the divine providence and government is the happiness of his creatures. Being an answer to a pamphlet entitled Divine Rectitude or an inquiry concerning the moral perfections of the deity with a refutation of the notions therein advanced concerning beauty and order, the reason of punishment and the necessity of a state of trial antecedent to perfect happiness. Bayes (1763). An essay towards solving a problem in the doctrine of chances. Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Bellhouse (2004). The Reverend Thomas Bayes, FRS: a biography to celebrate the tercentenary of his birth. Project Euclid. Bem (2011). Feeling the future: experimental evidence for anomalous retroactive influences on cognition and affect. Journal of personality and social psychology. Chivers (2024). Everything is Predictable: How Bayesian Statistics Explain Our World. Chivers & Chivers (2021). How to read numbers: A guide to statistics in the news (and knowing when to trust them). Chivers (2019). The Rationalist's Guide to the Galaxy: Superintelligent AI and the Geeks Who Are Trying to Save Humanity's Future. Clarke [not Black, as Tom said] (2020). Piranesi. Goldacre (2009). Bad science. Goldacre (2014). Bad pharma: how drug companies mislead doctors and harm patients. Simmons, Nelson & Simonsohn (2011). False-positive psychology: Undisclosed flexibility in data collection and analysis allows presenting anything as significant. Psychological Science.
99. Laura Luebbert: gget, hunting viruses, and questionable honeybee dances
02 Aug 2024
01:51:48
Laura Luebbert just finished her PhD in computational biology and will soon be a postdoc with Pardis Sabeti, to hunt some viruses. We talk about how she got into biology, how she created a widely-used software project (gget) with no prior coding experience, her recent reports when she discovered questionable data in key papers about honeybee dances, and much more.
BJKS Podcast is a podcast about neuroscience, psychology, and anything vaguely related, hosted by Benjamin James Kuper-Smith.
Timestamps 0:00:00: Why Laura studied biology in Leiden/the Netherlands (and the importance of early scientific training) 0:13:41: How Laura ended up doing a PhD at Caltech with Lior Pachter (and how to choose one project if you're interested in many things) 0:22:00: gget: Developing and maintaining a software tool with no prior programming experience 0:54:07: Laura's future postdoc (with Pardis Sabeti): global virus-hunter 0:59:34: Finding and reporting questionable data in published papers about honeybee dances 1:36:43: A book or paper more people should read 1:38:55: Something Laura wishes she'd learnt sooner 1:40:38: Advice for PhD students/postdocs 1:44:02: Bonus: should I learn Catalan?
Aaronovitch (2014-). Rivers of London series. Frisch (1927). Aus dem Leben der Bienen. Luebbert, Sullivan, Carilli, Hjörleifsson, Winnett, Chari & Pachter (2023). Efficient and accurate detection of viral sequences at single-cell resolution reveals putative novel viruses perturbing host gene expression. bioRxiv. Luebbert & Pachter (2023). Efficient querying of genomic reference databases with gget. Bioinformatics. Luebbert & Pachter (2024). The miscalibration of the honeybee odometer. arXiv. https://liorpachter.wordpress.com/2024/07/02/the-journal-of-scientific-integrity/
90. Brian Boyd: The life & works of Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita, and writing biographies
19 Jan 2024
01:40:38
Brian Boyd is a Distinguished Professor in English and Drama at the University of Auckland. We talk mainly about Vladimir Nabokov: Brian wrote the defining biography on Nabokov (in addition to books on more specific aspects about Nabokov), so we discuss Nabokov's life & work, Brian's approachh to writing biographies, with some hints of the new biography Brian is writing about Karl Popper.
BJKS Podcast is a podcast about neuroscience, psychology, and anything vaguely related, hosted by Benjamin James Kuper-Smith.
Timestamps 0:00:00: Why this is a special episode for me 0:07:02: Nabokov's family & childhood 0:15:54: The Russian Revolution, starting in 1917 0:19:52: Nabokov's study years in Cambridge and emigre years in Berlin in the 1920s and 30s 0:30:19: Nabokov's early American years: teaching and butterflies 0:35:56: Nabokov's Russian vs English works, and the problem of translations 0:41:48: Lolita 0:50:13: Pale Fire 1:02:46: Nabokov's writing process 1:07:26: Nabokov's reception 1:10:00: Writing Nabokov's biography: how it started, meeting Nabokov's family, researching and writing, and the responsibility of writing the defining work on someone 1:28:26: Which Nabokov book should new readers read first? 1:30:58: A book or paper more people should read 1:35:03: Something Brian wishes he'd learnt sooner 1:38:47: Advice for PhD students/postdocs
Boyd (1985/2001). Nabokov's Ada: The Place of Consciousness. Boyd (1990). Vladimir Nabokov: The Russian Years. Boyd (1991). Vladimir Nabokov: The American Years. Boyd & Pyle (eds) (2000). Nabokov’s Butterflies . Boyd (2001). Nabokov's Pale Fire: The Magic of Artistic Discovery. Grass (1959). Die Blechtrommel. James (1897). What Maisie Knew. Machado de Assis (1882). The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas. [The 2 new translations are by Thomson-DeVeaux (Penguin Classics), and by Jull Costa & Patterson (Liveright)] Nabokov (1929). The (Luzhin) Defense. Nabokov (1936). Invitation to a Beheading. Nabokov (1947). Bend Sinister. Nabokov (1955). Lolita. Nabokov (1957). Pnin. Nabokov (1962). Pale Fire. Nabokov (1967). Speak, Memory. Nabokov (1969). Ada or Ardor. Tarnowsky (1908). Les femmes homicides. [Nabokov's great-aunt; see also: Huff-Corzine & Toohy (2023). The life and scholarship of Pauline Tarnowsky: Criminology's mother. Journal of Criminal Justice] Vila, Bell, Macniven, Goldman-Huertas, Ree, Marshall, ... & Pierce (2011). Phylogeny and palaeoecology of Polyommatus blue butterflies show Beringia was a climate-regulated gateway to the New World. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.
89. Camillo Padoa-Schioppa: Value in the brain, orbitofrontal cortex, and causality in neuroscience
13 Jan 2024
01:52:19
Camillo Padoa-Schioppa is a Professor of Neuroscience at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. In this conversation, we talk about Camillo's work on economic values in the brain, whether it is causally involved in choice, Camillo's career, working with different species, and much more.
BJKS Podcast is a podcast about neuroscience, psychology, and anything vaguely related, hosted by Benjamin James Kuper-Smith.
Timestamps 0:00:00: The historic background of economic value 0:12:31: How Camillo became a neuroeconomist 0:38:50: What does neuroscience add to our understanding of behaviour? 0:47:52: Value in the brain / discussing Camillo's 2006 Nature paper 1:05:47: Does the brain even need to compute value? 1:11:59: Causality in neuroscience / discussing Camillo's 2020 Nature paper 1:27:19: Trivial decisions 1:31:26: Is it wise to do neuroscience in humans and in animals, or should I focus on one approach? 1:40:15: A book or paper more people should read 1:43:19: Something Camillo wishes he'd learnt sooner 1:45:53: Advice for PhD students/postdocs
References Ballesta ... & Padoa-Schioppa (2020). Values encoded in orbitofrontal cortex are causally related to economic choices. Nature. Bentham (1780). An introduction to the principles of morals and legislation. Gigerenzer & Gaissmaier (2011). Heuristic decision making. Annual review of psychology. Hayden & Niv (2021). The case against economic values in the orbitofrontal cortex (or anywhere else in the brain). Behavioral Neuroscience. Homer. Iliad. Homer. Odyssey. Padoa-Schioppa (2009). Range-adapting representation of economic value in the orbitofrontal cortex. Journal of Neuroscience. Padoa-Schioppa (2011). Neurobiology of economic choice: a good-based model. Annual review of neuroscience. Padoa-Schioppa & Assad (2006). Neurons in the orbitofrontal cortex encode economic value. Nature. Padoa-Schioppa & Conen (2017). Orbitofrontal cortex: a neural circuit for economic decisions. Neuron. Padoa-Schioppa ... & Visalberghi (2006). Multi-stage mental process for economic choice in capuchins. Cognition. Padoa-Schioppa, Li & Bizzi (2002). Neuronal correlates of kinematics-to-dynamics transformation in the supplementary motor area. Neuron. Smith (1759). The theory of moral sentiments. Salzman ... & Newsome (1990). Cortical microstimulation influences perceptual judgements of motion direction. Nature. Salzman ... & Newsome (1992). Microstimulation in visual area MT: effects on direction discrimination performance. Journal of Neuroscience. Visalberghi & Trinca (1989). Tool use in capuchin monkeys: Distinguishing between performing and understanding. Primates.
88. Juliana Schroeder: Talking to strangers, undersociality, and replicable field studies
05 Jan 2024
01:02:24
Juliana Schroder is a professor at the UC Berkeley Haas School of Business. In this conversation, we talk about her research in which she asks people to talk to strangers, and how this experience is usually a lot more pleasant than people expect. We talk about how the research came to be, what they found, how culture and norms affect the results, how to create robust and replicable field studies, and much more.
BJKS Podcast is a podcast about neuroscience, psychology, and anything vaguely related, hosted by Benjamin James Kuper-Smith.
Timestamps 00:00: The origin of Juliana's studies on talking to strangers 02:15: Why don't people talk to strangers (during commutes)? 05:46: What happens when strangers are forced to talk to each other? 08:47: How to start a conversation 13:31: Cultural differences in talking to strangers 31:19: How to create robust and replicable field studies 48:04: What's next for this line of research? 54:14: A book or paper more people should read 55:26: Something Juliana wishes she'd learnt sooner 57:13: Advice for PhD students/postdocs
References Boothby, Cooney, Sandstrom & Clark (2018). The liking gap in conversations: Do people like us more than we think? Psychological Science. Epley (2015). Mindwise: Why we misunderstand what others think, believe, feel, and want. Epley, Kardas, Zhao, Atir & Schroeder (2022). Undersociality: Miscalibrated social cognition can inhibit social connection. Trends in Cognitive Sciences. Epley & Schroeder (2014). Mistakenly seeking solitude. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. Kardas, Schroeder & O'Brien (2022). Keep talking: (Mis) understanding the hedonic trajectory of conversation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Roy (1997). The god of small things. Sandstrom, Boothby & Cooney (2022). Talking to strangers: A week-long intervention reduces psychological barriers to social connection. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. Sandstrom & Boothby (2021). Why do people avoid talking to strangers? A mini meta-analysis of predicted fears and actual experiences talking to a stranger. Self and Identity. Schroeder, Lyons & Epley (2022). Hello, stranger? Pleasant conversations are preceded by concerns about starting one. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General.
87. Rick Betzel: Network neuroscience, generative modeling, and collaborations
01 Jan 2024
01:23:30
Rick Betzel is an Associate professor at India University Bloomington. We talk about his research on network neuroscience, how to find good collaborators, Rick's path to network neuroscience, and much more.
Timestamps 0:00:00: What's the purpose of connectomics if understanding a species' entire connectome (as in C elegans) doesn't allow us to fully understand its behaviour? 0:03:57: Rick's very very linear path to network neuroscience 0:19:41: Multi-scale brain networks 0:43:40: Collaborations (between people who collect data and people who analyse data) 0:52:33: The future of network neuroscience: generative modeling, network control, and edge-centric connectomics 1:13:15: A book or paper more people should read 1:15:55: Something Rick wishes he'd learnt sooner 1:18:01: Advice for PhD students/postdocs
References Akarca ... (2021). A generative network model of neurodevelopmental diversity in structural brain organization. Nat Comm. Barabási (2003). Linked. Barabási & Albert (1999). Emergence of scaling in random networks. Science. Betzel (2022). Network neuroscience and the connectomics revolution. In Connectomic deep brain stimulation. Betzel & Bassett (2017). Multi-scale brain networks. Neuroimage. Betzel & Bassett (2017). Generative models for network neuroscience: prospects and promise. Journal of The Royal Society Interface. Betzel ... (2012). Synchronization dynamics and evidence for a repertoire of network states in resting EEG. Front comp neuro. Bullmore & Sporns (2009). Complex brain networks: graph theoretical analysis of structural and functional systems. Nat Rev Neuro. Cook ... (2019). Whole-animal connectomes of both Caenorhabditis elegans sexes. Nature. Feltner & Dapena (1986). Dynamics of the shoulder and elbow joints of the throwing arm during a baseball pitch. J Appl Biomech. Lindsay (2021). Models of the mind. Nieminen ... (2022). Multi-locus transcranial magnetic stimulation system for electronically targeted brain stimulation. Brain stimulation. Oh ... (2014). A mesoscale connectome of the mouse brain. Nature. Rubinov & Sporns (2010). Complex network measures of brain connectivity: uses and interpretations. Neuroimage. Scheffer ... (2020). A connectome and analysis of the adult Drosophila central brain. Elife. Sporns (2016). Networks of the Brain. Van Den Heuvel & Sporns (2011). Rich-club organization of the human connectome. J Neuro. Watts & Strogatz (1998). Collective dynamics of ‘small-world’networks. Nature. White ... (1986). The structure of the nervous system of the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B. Winding ... (2023). The connectome of an insect brain. Science. Yan ... (2017). Network control principles predict neuron function in the Caenorhabditis elegans connectome. Nature.
86. Elisabeth Bik: Reporting scientific misconduct, the arms race between fraud & fraud detection, and the microbiome of dolphins
22 Dec 2023
01:32:49
Elisabeth Bik is a science integrity consultant. In this conversation, we talk about her work on reporting scientific errors and misconduct, how one becomes a full-time scientific integrity consultant, her postdoc work on the microbiome of dolphins, reactions to her work (both positive and negative), how to deal with online abuse, the arms race between fraudsters and fraud detectors, and much more.
BJKS Podcast is a podcast about neuroscience, psychology, and anything vaguely related, hosted by Benjamin James Kuper-Smith.
Timestamps 0:00:00: How Elisabeth became a full-time science integrity consultant 0:04:45: The microbiome of dolphins 0:12:02: What should I do if Ifind errors or fraud in a paper? 0:28:58: Reactions to Elisabeth's work: awards, online abuse, and lots of silence from journals 0:52:23: Should you report misconduct if you're in a vulnerable position? 0:58:19: What problems are worth reporting? 1:05:51: How does one become a (full-time) research integrity consultant? 1:13:21: The arms race between people commiting fraud and people detecting fraud 1:22:49: A book or paper more people should read 1:25:26: Something Elisabeth wishes she'd learnt sooner 1:29:09: Advice for PhD students/postdocs
Bik, Casadevall & Fang (2016). The prevalence of inappropriate image duplication in biomedical research publications. MBio. Bik, Costello, Switzer, Callahan, Holmes, Wells, ... & Relman (2016). Marine mammals harbor unique microbiotas shaped by and yet distinct from the sea. Nature Communications. Brown & Heathers (2017). The GRIM test: A simple technique detects numerous anomalies in the reporting of results in psychology. Social Psychological and Personality Science. Reich (2009): Plastic fantastic: How the Biggest Fraud in Physics Shook the Scientific
85. Peter Bandettini: The history, present, and future of fMRI
15 Dec 2023
01:23:44
Peter Bandettini is director of the fMRI core facility at the National Institute of Mental Health. In this episode, we talk about the history, present, and future of fMRI, alongside Peter's career.
Timestamps 0:00:00: How Peter got started working on fMRI in the early 1990s 0:05:48: What was possible in neuroimaging in the late 80s 0:18:44: Major advances in fMRI in the 1990s 0:26:39: History of structural MRI 0:29:02: Major advances in fMRI since 2000 0:40:11: The future of fMRI 0:58:19: What is Peter working on? 1:06:31: A book or paper more people should read 1:14:36: Something Peter wishes he'd learnt sooner 1:21:52: Advice for PhD students/postdocs
This episode broke the character limit of show notes, couldn't include all references.
Bandettini ... (1992). Time course EPI of human brain function during task activation. Magnetic resonance in medicine. Belliveau ... (1991). Functional mapping of the human visual cortex by magnetic resonance imaging. Science. Biswal ... (1995). Functional connectivity in the motor cortex of resting human brain using echo‐planar MRI. Magnetic resonance in medicine. Blamire ... (1992). Dynamic mapping of the human visual cortex by high-speed magnetic resonance imaging. PNAS. Engel ... (1994). fMRI of human visual cortex. Nature. Finn ... (2015). Functional connectome fingerprinting: identifying individuals using patterns of brain connectivity. Nat Neuro. Gordon ... (2017). Precision functional mapping of individual human brains. Neuron. Gordon ... (2023). A somato-cognitive action network alternates with effector regions in motor cortex. Nature. Hasson ... (2004). Intersubject synchronization of cortical activity during natural vision. Science. Huber ... (2017). High-resolution CBV-fMRI allows mapping of laminar activity and connectivity of cortical input and output in human M1. Neuron. Huth ... (2012). A continuous semantic space describes the representation of thousands of object and action categories across the human brain. Neuron. Kamitani ... (2005). Decoding the visual and subjective contents of the human brain. Nat Neuro. Kwong ... (1992). Dynamic magnetic resonance imaging of human brain activity during primary sensory stimulation. PNAS. Newbold ... (2020). Plasticity and spontaneous activity pulses in disused human brain circuits. Neuron. Norman ... (2006). Beyond mind-reading: multi-voxel pattern analysis of fMRI data. TiCS. Ogawa ... (1990). Brain magnetic resonance imaging with contrast dependent on blood oxygenation. PNAS. Ogawa ... (2000). An approach to probe some neural systems interaction by functional MRI at neural time scale down to milliseconds. PNAS. Sereno ... (1995). Borders of multiple visual areas in humans revealed by functional magnetic resonance imaging. Science. Toi ... (2022). In vivo direct imaging of neuronal activity at high temporospatial resolution. Science.
84. Brian Nosek: Improving science, the past & future of the Center for Open Science, and failure in science
08 Dec 2023
01:02:09
Brian Nosek is a professor of psychology at the University of Virginia, and Co-founder and Executive Director of the Center for Open Science. In this conversation, we discuss the Center for Open Science, Brian's early interest in improving science, how COS got started, what Brian would like to do in the future, and how to figure out whether ideas are working.
BJKS Podcast is a podcast about neuroscience, psychology, and anything vaguely related, hosted by Benjamin James Kuper-Smith.
Timestamps 00:00: Brian's early interest in improving science 15:24: How the Center for Open Science got funded (by John and Laura Arnold) 26:08: How long is COS financed into the future? 29:01: What if COS isn't benefitting science anymore? 35:42: Is Brian a scientist or an entrepreneur? 40:58: The future of the Center for Open Science 51:13: A book or paper more people should read 54:42: Something Brian wishes he'd learnt sooner 58:53: Advice for PhD students/postdocs
Cohen (1994). The earth is round (p<. p05). American psychologist. Greenwald (1975). Consequences of prejudice against the null hypothesis. Psychological bulletin. Greenwald, McGhee & Schwartz (1998). Measuring individual differences in implicit cognition: the implicit association test. Journal of personality and social psychology. Hardwicke & Ioannidis (2018). Mapping the universe of registered reports. Nature Human Behaviour. Meehl (1967). Theory-testing in psychology and physics: A methodological paradox. Philosophy of science. Nosek, Banaji & Greenwald (2002). Harvesting implicit group attitudes and beliefs from a demonstration web site. Group Dynamics: Theory, research, and practice. Nosek & Bar-Anan (2012). Scientific utopia: I. Opening scientific communication. Psychological Inquiry. Nosek, Spies & Motyl (2012). Scientific utopia: II. Restructuring incentives and practices to promote truth over publishability. Perspectives on Psychological Science. Rosenthal (1979). The file drawer problem and tolerance for null results. Psychological bulletin. Open Science Collaboration (2015). Estimating the reproducibility of psychological science. Science. Schwartz (2008). The importance of stupidity in scientific research. Journal of Cell Science. Uhlmann, Ebersole, Chartier, Errington, Kidwell, Lai, McCarthy, Riegelman, Silberzahn & Nosek (2019). Scientific utopia III: Crowdsourcing science. Perspectives on Psychological Science.
83. Rachel Bedder: Rumination, teaching without grades, and managing yourself as a PhD student
03 Dec 2023
01:36:05
Rachel Bedder is a postdoc with Yael Niv at Princeton. In this conversation, we talk about her research on rumination and repetitive negative thinking (in the context of a partially observable Markov decision process), her work as a curator, why she enjoys teaching without grades, how to manage yourself as a PhD student, and much more.
BJKS Podcast is a podcast about neuroscience, psychology, and anything vaguely related, hosted by Benjamin James Kuper-Smith.
Timestamps 0:00:00: Teaching maths in prison 0:06:40: Teaching without grades 0:15:42: Working as a full-time research assistant (after BSc) and dealing with lots of rejections 0:25:51: How Rachel ended up doing a postdoc with Yael Niv 0:32:08: Discussing Rachel's conference proceedings 'Modelling Rumination as a State-Inference Process' (featuring partially observable Markov decision processes) 0:56:49: Rachel's background in art and curation 1:10:58: How to not turn hobbies into a stressful thing you need to get done 1:14:46: A book or paper more people should read 1:16:47: Something Rachel wishes she'd learnt sooner 1:19:05: Advice for PhD students/postdocs, with a twist: 5 tips for managing yourself during a PhD
Bedder, Pisupati & Niv (2023) Modelling Rumination as a State-Inference Process. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/tfjqn Burkeman (2021). Four thousand weeks: Time management for mortals. McCullers (1940). The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. Montague, Dolan, Friston & Dayan (2012). Computational psychiatry. Trends in cognitive sciences.
82. Geoff Cumming: p-values, estimation, and meta-analytic thinking
24 Nov 2023
01:12:41
Geoff Cumming is an Emeritus Professor at La Trobe University. In this conversation, we discuss his work on New Statistics: estimation instead of hypothesis testing, meta-analytic thinking, and many related topics.
Timestamps 0:00:00: A brief history of statistics, p-values, and confidence intervals 0:32:02: Meta-analytic thinking 0:42:56: Why do p-values seem so random? 0:45:59: Are p-values and estimation complementary? 0:47:09: How do I know how many participants I need (without a power calculation)? 0:50:27: Problems of the estimation approach (big data) 1:00:08: A book or paper more people should read 1:02:50: Something Geoff wishes he'd learnt sooner 1:04:52: Advice for PhD students and postdocs
Coulson, ...(2010). Confidence intervals permit, but don't guarantee, better inference than statistical significance testing. Front in Psychol. Cumming & Calin-Jageman (2016/2024). Introduction to the new statistics: Estimation, open science, and beyond. Cumming (2014). The new statistics: Why and how. Psychol Sci. Cumming & Finch (2005). Inference by eye: confidence intervals and how to read pictures of data. American Psychol. Errington, ... (2021) Reproducibility in Cancer Biology: Challpenges for assessing replicability in preclinical cancer biology. eLife. Errington, ... (2021) Investigating the replicability of preclinical cancer biology. eLife. Finch & Cumming (2009). Putting research in context: Understanding confidence intervals from one or more studies. J of Pediatric Psychol. Hedges (1987). How hard is hard science, how soft is soft science? The empirical cumulativeness of research. American Psychologist. Hunt (1997). How science takes stock: The story of meta-analysis. Ioannidis (2005). Why most published research findings are false. PLoS Medicine. Loftus (1996). Psychology will be a much better science when we change the way we analyze data. Curr direct psychol sci. Maxwell, ... (2008). Sample size planning for statistical power and accuracy in parameter estimation. Annu Rev Psychol. Oakes (1986). Statistical inference: A commentary for the social and behavioural sciences. Pennington (2023). A Student's Guide to Open Science: Using the Replication Crisis Reform Psychology. Rothman (1986). Significance questing. Annals of Int Med. Schmidt (1996). Statistical significance testing and cumulative knowledge in psychology: Implications for training of researchers. Psychol Methods.
81. Brooke Macnamara: Growth mindset, deliberate practice, and the benefits of diverse experiences
17 Nov 2023
01:06:02
Brooke Macnamara is an associate professor at Case Western Reserve University. In this conversation, we talk about her research on growth mindset and deliberate practice, whether deliberate practice is falsifiable, the benefits of diverse experiences, and much more.
BJKS Podcast is a podcast about neuroscience, psychology, and anything vaguely related, hosted by Benjamin James Kuper-Smith.
Timestamps 0:00:00: How Brooke started working on mindset and deliberate practice 0:02:10: (Growth) mindset: does it matter? 0:21:10: Mindset interventions 0:36:48: Deliberate practice 0:47:06: Benefits of diverse experiences 0:56:20: Is the theory of deliberate practice unfalsifiable? 0:59:36: What can we take practically from the growth mindset and deliberate pratice research? 1:01:06: A book or paper more people should read 1:02:10: Something Brooke wishes she'd learnt sooner 1:04:32: Advice for PhD students and postdocs
Burgoyne, Hambrick, & Macnamara (2020). How firm are the foundations of mind-set theory? The claims appear stronger than the evidence. Psychol Science. Dweck (2006). Mindset-Changing the way you think to fulfil your potential. Epstein (2021). Range: Why generalists triumph in a specialized world. Ericsson & Harwell (2019). Deliberate practice and proposed limits on the effects of practice on the acquisition of expert performance. Frontiers in Psychol. Ericsson, Krampe & Tesch-Römer (1993). The role of deliberate practice in the acquisition of expert performance. Psychol Rev. Gladwell (2008). Outliers: The story of success. Macnamara & Burgoyne (2023). Do growth mindset interventions impact students’ academic achievement? A systematic review and meta-analysis with recommendations for best practices. Psychol Bull. Macnamara, Hambrick & Oswald (2014). Deliberate practice and performance in music, games, sports, education, and professions: A meta-analysis. Psychol Science. Macnamara & Maitra (2019). The role of deliberate practice in expert performance: Revisiting Ericsson, Krampe & Tesch-Römer (1993). Royal Society Open Science. Macnamara, Moreau & Hambrick (2016). The relationship between deliberate practice and performance in sports: A meta-analysis. Perspec Psychol Science. Macnamara, Prather & Burgoyne (2023). Beliefs about success are prone to cognitive fallacies. Nat Rev Psychol. Sisk, Burgoyne, Sun, Butler & Macnamara (2018). To what extent and under which circumstances are growth mind-sets important to academic achievement? Two meta-analyses. Psychol Science.
98. Laura Wesseldijk: Behavioural genetics, music, and the importance of twins
19 Jul 2024
01:20:54
Laura Wesseldijk works at the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics in Frankfurt at the Behavioral Genetics unit in collaboration with the Department of Psychiatry at Amsterdam UMC. We talk about her research on the genetics of music and mental health, methods in behavioural genetics, the role of large samples, the importance of twins for behavioural genetics, and much more.
BJKS Podcast is a podcast about neuroscience, psychology, and anything vaguely related, hosted by Benjamin James Kuper-Smith.
Timestamps 0:00:00: Did Beethoven have bad genetics for music - or are there problems with applying (some) genetic methods to individuals? 0:11:51: Different methods in behavioural genetics 0:24:20: Gene x environment interactions and the difficulty of disentangling them 0:30:30: 23andMe in genetics research 0:37:26: Can you ask an interesting question if you need millions of people to have done a measurement? 0:42:08: How to measure musicality (at scale) 0:47:56: Geneticists really love twins 0:50:41: Do critical periods in music exist? 1:03:30: How Laura got interested in the genetics of music 1:12:07: A book or paper more people should read 1:16:17: Something Laura wishes she'd learnt sooner 1:17:49: Advice for PhD students/postdocs
References Begg, ... & Krause (2023). Genomic analyses of hair from Ludwig van Beethoven. Current Biology. Harden (2021). The genetic lottery: Why DNA matters for social equality. Hjelmborg, ... & Kaprio, J. (2017). Lung cancer, genetic predisposition and smoking: the Nordic Twin Study of Cancer. Thorax. Rutherford (2020). How to argue with a racist: History, science, race and reality. Rutherford (2022). Control: the dark history and troubling present of eugenics. Ullén, Mosing, Holm, Eriksson & Madison (2014). Psychometric properties and heritability of a new online test for musicality, the Swedish Musical Discrimination Test. Personality and Individual Differences. Wesseldijk, Ullén & Mosing (2019). The effects of playing music on mental health outcomes. Scientific reports. Wesseldijk, Mosing & Ullén (2021). Why is an early start of training related to musical skills in adulthood? A genetically informative study. Psychological Science. Wesseldijk, Ullén & Mosing (2023). Music and genetics. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews. Wesseldijk, Abdellaoui, Gordon, Ullén & Mosing (2022). Using a polygenic score in a family design to understand genetic influences on musicality. Scientific reports. Wesseldijk, ... & Fisher (2024). Notes from Beethoven’s genome. Current Biology.
80. Simine Vazire: Scientific editing, the purpose of journals, and the future of psychological science
10 Nov 2023
01:21:29
Simine Vazire is a Professor of Psychology at the University of Melbourne. In this conversation, we talk about her work on meta-science, the purpose of journals and peer review, Simine's plans for being Editor-in-Chief at Psychological Science, the hidden curriculum of scienitic publishing, and much more.
BJKS Podcast is a podcast about neuroscience, psychology, and anything vaguely related, hosted by Benjamin James Kuper-Smith.
Timestamps 0:00:00: What is SIPS and why did Simine cofound it? 0:05:10: Why Simine resigned from the NASEM Reproducibility & Replicability committee 0:13:07: Do we still need journals and peer review in 2023? 0:28:04: What does an Editor-in-Chief actually do? 0:37:09: Simine will be EiC of Psychological Science 0:59:44: The 'hidden curriculum' of scientific publishing 1:04:03: Why Siminie created a GoFundMe for DataColada 1:15:10: A book or paper more people should read 1:17:10: Something Simine wishes she'd learnt sooner 1:18:44: Advice for PhD students and postdocs
Holcombe (during dogwalk). On peer review. Personal communication to Simine. Open Science Collaboration (2015). Estimating the reproducibility of psychological science. Science. Reich (2009): Plastic fantastic: How the Biggest Fraud in Physics Shook the Scientific
79. Nanthia Suthana: Invasive brain recordings in humans, learning as a PI, and the joys of mentorship
03 Nov 2023
00:49:02
Nanthia Suthana is an Associate Professor at UCLA. In this conversation, we talk about her research using invasive brain recordings from humans, how the technologies have changed and what might happen in the future. We also talk about how she runs her lab, how to learn as a PI, and what Nanthia enjoys about mentoring students and postdocs.
We had some minor audio issues, so Nanthia switched her recording setup twice during the conversation. Sound should still be good though.
Timestamps 00:00: Was it good that Nanthia finished school so young? 01:27: How invasive recordings in humans have changed over the past 15 years 10:45: The future of invasive recordings in humans 19:29: Mentorship in academia 30:01: Learning as a PI 36:02: Book or paper more people should read 40:53: Something Nanthia wishes she'd learnt sooner 45:42: Advice for PhD students and postdocs
Boto et al (2018). Moving magnetoencephalography towards real-world applications with a wearable system. Nature. Feinsinger et al (2022). Ethical commitments, principles, and practices guiding intracranial neuroscientific research in humans. Neuron. Gill et al (2023). A pilot study of closed-loop neuromodulation for treatment-resistant post-traumatic stress disorder. Nature Communications. Hafting, Fyhn, Molden, Moser & Moser (2005). Microstructure of a spatial map in the entorhinal cortex. Nature. O'Keefe & Dostrovsky (1971). The hippocampus as a spatial map: preliminary evidence from unit activity in the freely-moving rat. Brain research. Preston, Kuper-Smith & Ehrsson (2015). Owning the body in the mirror: The effect of visual perspective and mirror view on the full-body illusion. Scientific Reports. Sacks (1985). The man who mistook his wife for a hat. Scoville & Milner (1957). Loss of recent memory after bilateral hippocampal lesions. Journal of neurology, neurosurgery, and psychiatry. Stangl, Topalovic, ... & Suthana (2021). Boundary-anchored neural mechanisms of location-encoding for self and others. Nature. Stangl, Maoz & Suthana (2023). Mobile cognition: imaging the human brain in the ‘real world’. Nature Reviews Neuroscience. Topalovic et al (2023). A wearable platform for closed-loop stimulation and recording of single-neuron and local field potential activity in freely moving humans. Nature Neuroscience.
78. Gillian Coughlan: Dementia, spatial navigation, and menopause
27 Oct 2023
00:57:28
Gillian Coughlan is a postdoc whose work focuses on the role of spatial navigation in dementia. In this conversation, we talk about how Gillian went from Ireland to doing a PhD in the UK, different ways for diagnosing Alzheimer's disease, what beta-amyloid and tau are, what spatial navigation has to do with dementia, and whether early menopause can affect women's spatial navigation performance and risk of getting dementia.
BJKS Podcast is a podcast about neuroscience, psychology, and anything vaguely related, hosted by Benjamin James Kuper-Smith.
Timestamps 00:00: Playing the piano 07:13: How Gillian ended up doing her PhD with Michael Hornberger in Norwich 14:02: How to find a good mentor 16:48: Sea Hero Quest 22:28: Diagnosing Alzheimer's disease 32:37: The role of Beta-Amyloid and tau in dementia 34:41: Spatial navigation, the entorhinal cortex, and dementia 44:14: Does menopause affect spatial navigation and risk of dementia? 50:31: Book or paper more people should read 52:37: Something Gillain wishes she'd learnt sooner 55:31: Advice for PhD students and postdocs
Coughlan, DeSouza, Zhukovsky, Hornberger, Grady & Buckley (2023). Spatial cognition is associated with levels of phosphorylated-tau and β-amyloid in clinically normal older adults. Neurobiology of Aging. Coughlan, ... Buckley (2023). Association of age at menopause and hormone therapy use with tau and β-amyloid positron emission tomography. JAMA Neurology. Coughlan, Coutrot, Khondoker, Minihane, Spiers & Hornberger (2019). Toward personalized cognitive diagnostics of at-genetic-risk Alzheimer’s disease. PNAS. Coughlan, Laczó, Hort, Minihane & Hornberger (2018). Spatial navigation deficits—overlooked cognitive marker for preclinical Alzheimer disease?. Nature Reviews Neurology. Eger (2017). The Choice. Pertesi, Coughlan, Puthusseryppady, Morris & Hornberger (2019). Menopause, cognition and dementia–A review. Post reproductive health.
77. Lynn Nadel: Collaboration, Hippocampal History, and clinical applications of hippocampal development
20 Oct 2023
00:48:38
Lynn Nadel is an emeritus professor at the University of Arizona, where his research focuses on the role of the hippocampus in memory. This is our second conversation. We discuss how the Hippocampus as a Cognitive Map was received, Lynn's career, including his years as head of department at the University of Arizona, how to foster collaboration, why Lynn started the Hippocampal History project, and the development and clinical aspects of the hippocampus.
BJKS Podcast is a podcast about neuroscience, psychology, and anything vaguely related, hosted by Benjamin James Kuper-Smith.
Timestamps 00:00: Who was A. Black? 03:38: How was The Hippocampus as a Cognitive Map received? 08:08: Lynn's wandering years 15:46: At the University of Arizona 21:24: How to foster collaboration 28:29: Being a head of department 38:22: The Hippocampal History project 42:56: Lynn's developmental work
Black, Nadel & O'Keefe (1977). Hippocampal function in avoidance learning and punishment. Psychological Bulletin. Edgin, Spano, Kawa & Nadel (2014). Remembering things without context: development matters. Child development. Goddard (1964). Functions of the amygdala. Psychological bulletin. Lynch (1979). Representations in the Brain: The Hippocampus as a Cognitive Map. John O'Keefe and Lynn Nadel. Science. Nadel & Moscovitch (1997). Memory consolidation, retrograde amnesia and the hippocampal complex. Current opinion in neurobiology. Nadel, Samsonovich, Ryan & Moscovitch (2000). Multiple trace theory of human memory: computational, neuroimaging, and neuropsychological results. Hippocampus. Nadel, Willner & Kurz (1986). The neurobiology of mental representations. In Myles Brand (ed.), The Representation of Knowledge and Belief. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. O'Keefe & Nadel (1978) The Hippocampus as a Cognitive Map. Free download: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10103569/ O'Keefe & Nadel (1979). Précis of O'Keefe & Nadel's The hippocampus as a cognitive map. Behavioral and Brain Sciences. Pennington, Moon, Edgin, Stedron & Nadel (2003). The neuropsychology of Down syndrome: evidence for hippocampal dysfunction. Child development. Ravindran (2022). Profile of Lynn Nadel. PNAS. Squire, Nadel & Slater (1981). Anterograde amnesia and memory for temporal order. Neuropsychologia. Sutherland & Rudy (1989). Configural association theory: The role of the hippocampal formation in learning, memory, and amnesia. Psychobiology.
76. Adam Mastroianni: Paradigms in psychology, science as a strong-link problem, and The Psychology House
13 Oct 2023
01:21:57
Adam Mastroianni is a scientist who writes the Substack 'Experimental History'. This is our second conversation. We discuss science as a strong-link problem, why everyone is allowed to do science, and some of Adam's suggestions for how science can be done differently.
Timestamps 0:00:00: Adam's Substack is now his main thing 0:05:32: Paradigms in psychology 0:16:40: Who's allowed to do science? Science as a strong-link problem 0:36:41: A fleet of ships, The Psychology House, and Dan Gilbert's supervsion 1:06:53: How to cultivate good feedback 1:13:20: A book, paper, or blog post more people should read 1:16:26: Something Adam wishes he'd learnt sooner 1:18:34: Any advice for PhD students or postdocs?
References Cosmides & Tooby (2015). Neurocognitive adaptations designed for social exchange. The handbook of evo psych. Gilbert (2006). Stumbling on happiness. Hesse (1922). Siddhartha. Mastroianni, AM & Ludwin-Peery, EJ. (2022). Things could be better. https://psyarxiv.com/2uxwk Richerson & Boyd (1978). A dual inheritance model of the human evolutionary process. J of Soc and Bio Structu
75. Paul Smaldino: Modeling Social Behavior, the value of false models, and research beyond traditional disciplines
06 Oct 2023
01:46:07
Paul Smaldino is an Associate Professor of Cognitive and Information Sciences at UC Merced, where he studies the evolution of behavior in response to social, cultural, and ecological pressures. In this conversation, we talk about his new book Modeling Social Behavior, everything related to formal models of social behaviour, and Paul's path to where he is today.
Timestamps 0:00:00: Paul's new book 'Modeling Social Behavior' 0:04:42: Paul's somewhat circuitous route to doing what he does today 0:25:54: Why so interdisciplinary? 0:36:58: The importance of (metaphorical) violence in modeling 0:46:26: Newton's model of gravitation ignores almost everything 0:52:11: Exact vs inexact sciences 1:00:02: From simple to complex models of cooperation, and the complementarity of simulations and equations 1:11:48: When is formal modeling appropriate and when is it too soon? 1:27:47: A book or paper Paul thinks more people should read 1:32:46: What Paul wishes he'd learnt sooner 1:36:20: Any advice for PhD students or postdocs?
Axelrod & Hamilton (1981). The evolution of cooperation. Science. Boyd & Richerson (1988). Culture and the evolutionary process. Friston (2012). The history of the future of the Bayesian brain. NeuroImage. Giraldeau & Caraco (2000). Social foraging theory. Princeton University Press. Giraldeau & Gillis (1985). Optimal group size can be stable: a reply to Sibly. Animal Behaviour. Gleick (2004). Isaac Newton. Glimcher (2004). Decisions, uncertainty, and the brain: The science of neuroeconomics. Hamilton (1964). The genetical evolution of social behaviour. Journal of theoretical biology. Kauffman (1970). Articulation of parts explanation in biology and the rational search for them. PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association. Kay (2010). Obliquity. Nowak & May (1992). Evolutionary games and spatial chaos. Nature. Smaldino (2023). Modeling social behavior: Mathematical and agent-based models of social dynamics and cultural evolution. Princeton University Press. Smaldino (2017). Models are stupid, and we need more of them. Computational social psychology. Smaldino, Pickett, Sherman & Schank (2012). An agent-based model of social identity dynamics. Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation. Turchin (2003). Historical dynamics: Why states rise and fall. Wimsatt (1987). False models as means to truer theories. Neutral models in biology. Wimsatt (2007). Re-engineering philosophy for limited beings: Piecewise approximations to reality. Zukav (2012). The dancing Wu Li masters: An overview of the new physics.
74. Moin Syed: Glorious PNAS, editing a journal, and masterful procrastination
11 Aug 2023
01:34:49
Moin Syed is a professor of psychology at the University of Minnesota, where he studies identity and personality development. Our conversation focuses on his work in meta-science, especially the role of journals and editors in the scientific process.
BJKS Podcast is a podcast about neuroscience, psychology, and anything vaguely related, hosted by Benjamin James Kuper-Smith.
Timestamps 0:00:00: The silliness of prestige journals (especially PNAS) 0:18:45: Deep description are necessary for science and theory 0:29:43: Where should I submit my paper? 0:35:51: Why would one want to be an editor at a journal? 0:55:27: Cover letters 1:03:44: Should I sign my peer reviews? 1:13:03: A book/paper Moin thinks more people should read 1:19:23: Something Moin wishes he'd learnt earlier 1:29:22: Moin's advice to PhD students/postdocs
Bem (1987). Writing the empirical journal article. The compleat academic: A practical guide for the beginning social scientist. Cooper (1987). Conceptualizing research on adolescent development in the family: Four root metaphors. Journal of Adolescent Research. Crüwell, ... (2023). What’s in a badge? A computational reproducibility investigation... Psychological Science. DeYoung (2015). Cybernetic big five theory. Journal of research in personality. Dougherty & Horne (2022). Citation counts and journal impact factors do not capture ... Royal Society Open Science. Forestier, ... (2022). From ego depletion to self-control fatigue: A review of criticisms along with new perspectives for the investigation and replication of a multicomponent phenomenon. Motivation Science. Hagger, ... (2016). A multilab preregistered replication of the ego-depletion effect. Perspectives on Psychological Science. Jung, ... (2014). Female hurricanes are deadlier than male hurricanes. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Palminteri (2023, February 26). How to prepare a rebuttal letter: Some advice from a scientist, reviewer and editor. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/kyfus Pepper (1942). World hypotheses: A study in evidence. Univ of California Press. Rozin (2001). Social psychology and science: Some lessons from Solomon Asch. Personality and Social Psychology Review.
73. Tom Hostler: Open science, workload, and academic capitalism
23 Jun 2023
01:18:49
Tom Hostler is a senior lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University. In this conversation, we focus on his recent article on the increased workload caused by open science.
BJKS Podcast is a podcast about neuroscience, psychology, and anything vaguely related, hosted by Benjamin James Kuper-Smith.
Timestamps 0:00:00: Start discussing Tom's paper 'The Invisible Workload of Open Research' 0:29:22: Does open science actually increase workload? 0:44:26: How open science changes the research process 0:54:02: Are open science requirements especially time consuming for labs without lots of funding? 1:01:44: What are the most effective open science practices? 1:06:31: Book or paper Tom thinks more people should read 1:09:39: Something Tom wishes he'd learnt sooner 1:13:32: Tom's advice for PhD students and postdocs
References Aczel, Szaszi, Sarafoglou et al. A consensus-based transparency checklist. Nat Hum Behav 4, 4–6 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-019-0772-6 Bozeman, Youtie & Jung (2021). Death by a thousand 10-minute tasks: Workarounds and noncompliance in university research administration. Administration & Society. https://doi.org/10.1177/0095399720947994 Costantini, Cordero, Campbell, … Pearson, R. M. (2021). Mental Health Intergenerational Transmission (MHINT) Process Manual. https://doi.org/10.31219/osf.io/s6n4h Dienes (2008). Understanding psychology as a science: An introduction to scientific and statistical inference. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Forscher, Wagenmakers, Coles, Silan, Dutra, Basnight-Brown & IJzerman (2023). The benefits, barriers, and risks of big-team science. Perspectives on Psychological Science. Hostler (2023). The Invisible Workload of Open Research. Journal of Trial & Error. https://doi.org/10.36850/mr5 Nickerson (2000). Null hypothesis significance testing: a review of an old and continuing controversy. Psychological methods. Schneider (2015). The censor's hand: The misregulation of human-subject research. MIT Press.
72. Nico Schuck: Replay, cognitive maps, and multivariate decoding with fMRI
04 Jun 2023
00:58:52
Nico Schuck is Professor and head of the research group 'Mechanisms of learning and change' at the University of Hamburg, where his research focuses on the neuroscience of learning, memory, and cognitive maps. In this conversation, we discuss his work on cognitive maps and replay in Orbitofrontal Cortex and Hippocampus, decoding even brief events with fMRI, and much more.
BJKS Podcast is a podcast about neuroscience, psychology, and anything vaguely related, hosted by Benjamin James Kuper-Smith.
Timestamps 00:00: Nico's work elicits 'limited enthusiasm' 04:36: Multivariate decoding with fMRI 13:23: Start discussing Nico's paper 'Human OFC represents a cognitive map of state space' 19:39: Weird tasks in computational neuroscience 27:30: Start discussing Nico's paper ' Sequential replay of nonspatial task states in the human hippocampus' 36:45: How can the slow fMRI signal pick up on very fast neural dynamics? 43:02: What is Orbitofrontal Cortex and what does it do? 49:24: Some books and papers more people should read 55:17: Something Nico wishes he'd learnt sooner 56:40: Advice for young scientists
References Aly & Turk-Browne (2016). Attention stabilizes representations in the human hippocampus. Cerebral Cortex. Bishop (2006). Pattern recognition and machine learning. New York: Springer. Kaplan, Schuck & Doeller (2017). The role of mental maps in decision-making. Trends in Neurosciences. Knudsen & Wallis (2022). Taking stock of value in the orbitofrontal cortex. Nature Reviews Neuroscience. Moneta, Garvert, Heekeren & Schuck (2023). Task state representations in vmPFC mediate relevant and irrelevant value signals and their behavioral influence. Nature Communications. Schuck, Cai, Wilson & Niv (2016). Human orbitofrontal cortex represents a cognitive map of state space. Neuron. Schuck & Niv (2019). Sequential replay of nonspatial task states in the human hippocampus. Science. Shepard (1987). Toward a universal law of generalization for psychological science. Science. Skaggs & McNaughton (1996). Replay of neuronal firing sequences in rat hippocampus during sleep following spatial experience. Science. Sutton & Barto (2018). Reinforcement learning: An introduction. MIT press. Tang, LeBel, Jain & Huth (2023). Semantic reconstruction of continuous language from non-invasive brain recordings. Nature Neuroscience. Todd, Nystrom & Cohen(2013). Confounds in multivariate pattern analysis: theory and rule representation case study. Neuroimage. Wilson, Takahashi, Schoenbaum & Niv (2014). Orbitofrontal cortex as a cognitive map of task space. Neuron.
71. Lynn Nadel: Memory, The Hippocampus as a Cognitive Map, and the importance of behaviour
23 Apr 2023
01:01:53
Lynn Nadel is an emeritus professor at the University of Arizona, where his research focuses on the role of the hippocampus in memory. In this conversation, we talk about the early years of Lynn's career: why he chose to do chemistry, how a course with Donald Hebb made him switch to psychology, how his postdoc was disrupted by the Soviet invasion during the Prague Spring, John O'Keefe's discovery of place cells, how Lynn and O'Keefe wrote The Hippocampus as a Cognitive Map, and much more.
BJKS Podcast is a podcast about neuroscience, psychology, and anything vaguely related, hosted by Benjamin James Kuper-Smith.
Timestamps 00:00: How Lynn went from studying chemistry to doing a PhD on memory 08:35: What was it like working Donald Hebb? 15:16: The golden era of cognitive neuroscience at McGill in the 50s and 60s 23:14: Lynn's postdoc in Prague was interrupted by the Soviet invasion during Prague Spring 36:29: The discovery of place cells and the writing of The Hippocampus as a Cognitive Map 50:59: A paper or book Lynn thinks more people should read 54:55: Something Lynn wishes he'd learnt sooner 57:38: Advice for early career scientists
Goddard (1983). The kindling model of epilepsy. Trends in Neurosciences. Káli & Dayan (2002). Replay, repair and consolidation. Adv in Neur Info Proc Sys. Klein, Cosmides, Tooby & Chance (2002). Decisions and the evolution of memory: multiple systems, multiple functions. Psych Rev. Konorski (1967). Integrative activity of the brain; an interdisciplinary approach. McClelland, McNaughton & O'Reilly (1995). Why there are complementary learning systems in the hippocampus and neocortex: insights from the successes and failures of connectionist models of learning and memory. Psych Rev. Melzack & Wall (1965). Pain Mechanisms: A New Theory: A gate control system modulates sensory input from the skin before it evokes pain perception and response. Science. Nadel & Buresova (1968). Monocular input and interhemispheric transfer in the reversible split-brain. Nature. Olds & Milner (1954). Positive reinforcement produced by electrical stimulation of septal area and other regions of rat brain. J comp & phys psychol. O'Keefe & Dostrovsky (1971). The hippocampus as a spatial map: preliminary evidence from unit activity in the freely-moving rat. Brain research. O'Keefe & Nadel (1978) The Hippocampus as a Cognitive Map. Oxford University Press. Rao & Ballard (1999). Predictive coding in the visual cortex: a functional interpretation of some extra-classical receptive-field effects. Nat Neuro. Ravindran (2022). Profile of Lynn Nadel. PNAS.
97. Arne Ekstrom: Spatial navigation, memory, and invasive recordings in humans
24 May 2024
01:17:01
Arne Ekstrom is a professor of psychology at the University of Arizona, where he studies spatial navigation and memory. We talk about how he got into psychology, his unusual path to getting a PhD, his work on using single-cells recordings from people, the relationship between memory and spatial navigation, why he uses multiple methods, and much more.
Timestamps 0:00:00: How Arne ended up studying psychology and neuroscience 0:06:23: Arne's route to a PhD recording single-cells in humans (via political activism in Central America) 0:20:18: The state of using VR-like tasks in the early 2000s 0:24:32: The status of spatial navigation research in the early 2000s 0:29:45: Collecting data from unusual populations 0:33:59: Why record from amygdala for a spatial navigation task? 0:41:35: Combining memory and navigation in hippocampus 1:02:04: Should I use one method or many? 1:11:29: A book or paper more people should read 1:13:51: Something Arne wishes he'd learnt sooner 1:14:51: Advice for PhD students/postdocs
Argyropoulos ... & Butler (2019). Network-wide abnormalities explain memory variability in hippocampal amnesia. Elife. Ekstrom, .. & Fried (2003). Cellular networks underlying human spatial navigation. Nature. Ekstrom ... & Kahana (2005). Human hippocampal theta activity during virtual navigation. Hippocampus. Ekstrom ... & Bookheimer (2009). Correlation between BOLD fMRI and theta-band local field potentials in the human hippocampal area. J neurophys. Ekstrom ... & Starrett (2017). Interacting networks of brain regions underlie human spatial navigation: a review and novel synthesis of the literature. J neurophys. Ekstrom & Ranganath (2018). Space, time, and episodic memory: The hippocampus is all over the cognitive map. Hippocampus. Hassabis ... & Maguire (2009). Decoding neuronal ensembles in the human hippocampus. Current Biology. Iaria & Burles (2016). Developmental topographical disorientation. TiCS. Kunz ... & Axmacher (2015). Reduced grid-cell–like representations in adults at genetic risk for Alzheimer’s disease. Science. Logothetis ... & Oeltermann (2001). Neurophysiological investigation of the basis of the fMRI signal. Nature. Watrous ... & Ekstrom (2013). Frequency-specific network connectivity increases underlie accurate spatiotemporal memory retrieval. Nat Neuro. Zhang & Ekstrom (2013). Human neural systems underlying rigid and flexible forms of allocentric spatial representation. Human brain mapping.
70. Mona Garvert: Cognitive maps, fMRI adaptation, and computational psychiatry
08 Apr 2023
01:06:28
Mona Garvert is Lead Research Scientist at Alena where she uses her background in cognitive neuroscence to advance computational psychiatry. In this episode, we talk about her academic research on the neural basis of cognitive maps, how she got into this topic, fMRI adaptation , and her recent move from academia to working at Alena.
BJKS Podcast is a podcast about neuroscience, psychology, and anything vaguely related, hosted by Benjamin James Kuper-Smith.
Timestamps 00:00: How Mona started working on cognitive maps 15:28: Repetition suppression/fMRI adaptation 28:49: Start discussing Mona's paper 'A map of abstract relational knowledge in the human hippocampal-entorhinal cortex' 40:07: Are discrete and continuous maps different in the brain? 43:37: Start discussing Mona's paper ' Hippocampal spatio-predictive cognitive maps adaptively guide reward generalization' 55:50: Mona now works for Alena, doing computational psychiatry
Barron, Garvert & Behrens (2016). Repetition suppression: a means to index neural representations using BOLD? Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. Clark & Wells (1995). A cognitive model of social phobia. In Heimberg, Liebowitz, Hope, & Schneier (Eds.), Social phobia: Diagnosis, assessment, and treatment. Constantinescu, O’Reilly & Behrens (2016). Organizing conceptual knowledge in humans with a gridlike code. Science. Doeller, Barry & Burgess (2010). Evidence for grid cells in a human memory network. Nature. Garvert, Dolan & Behrens (2017). A map of abstract relational knowledge in the human hippocampal–entorhinal cortex. eLife. Garvert & Gollisch (2013). Local and global contrast adaptation in retinal ganglion cells. Neuron. Garvert, Moutoussis, Kurth-Nelson, Behrens & Dolan (2015). Learning-induced plasticity in medial prefrontal cortex predicts preference malleability. Neuron. Garvert, Saanum, Schulz, Schuck & Doeller (2023). Hippocampal spatio-predictive cognitive maps adaptively guide reward generalization. Nature Neuroscience. Klein-Flügge, Barron, Brodersen, Dolan & Behrens (2013). Segregated encoding of reward–identity and stimulus–reward associations in human orbitofrontal cortex. Journal of Neuroscience. Knudsen & Wallis (2022). Taking stock of value in the orbitofrontal cortex. Nature Reviews Neuroscience. Schapiro, Rogers, Cordova, Turk-Browne & Botvinick (2013). Neural representations of events arise from temporal community structure. Nature Neuroscience. Stachenfeld, Botvinick & Gershman (2017). The hippocampus as a predictive map. Nature Neuroscience.
69. Peter Gärdenfors: Conceptual spaces, knowledge representation, and semantics
01 Apr 2023
01:06:37
Peter Gärdenfors is an Emeritus Professor at Lund University at the Department of Philosophy. His work is at the intersection of philosophy, cognitive, psychology, and linguistics. In this conversation, we discuss his book Conceptual spaces and many of the topics discussed therein (convexity, prototypes, metrics), whether the theory is falsifiable, how it can explain aspects of semantics and of how children learn, and much more.
BJKS Podcast is a podcast about neuroscience, psychology, and anything vaguely related, hosted by Benjamin James Kuper-Smith.
Timestamps 0:00:04: Where is the neuroscience (especially about spatial navigation) in Conceptual Spaces? 0:04:54: What are conceptual spaces? 0:14:53: How Peter went from decision theory to knowledge representation 0:20:25: Dimensions and metrics in conceptual spaces 0:35:29: Is the theory of conceptual spaces falsifiable? 0:38:41: Conceptual spaces of semantics 0:51:54: 3 levels of representation across evolution 0:55:41: The future of conceptual spaces 1:01:09: Something Peter wishes he'd learned sooner 1:04:31: A paper or book Peter thinks more people should read
Bellmund, Gärdenfors, Moser & Doeller (2018). Navigating cognition: Spatial codes for human thinking. Science. Gardenfors (2004). Conceptual spaces: The geometry of thought. MIT press. Gardenfors (2014). The geometry of meaning: Semantics based on conceptual spaces. MIT press. Marr (1982). Vision: A computational investigation into the human representation and processing of visual information. MIT press. Zwarts & Gärdenfors (2016). Locative and directional prepositions in conceptual spaces: The role of polar convexity. Journal of Logic, Language and Information.
68. Isabel Thielmann: Economic games, personality, and affordances
19 Mar 2023
01:51:44
Isabel Thielmann is a research group leader at the Max Planck Institute for the study of crime, security and law. In this conversation, we talk about her background as a competitive sprinter, her research on prosocial behaviour and personality, the role of affordances, how game theory and interdependence theory can helpus understand human social behaviour, and Isa's experiences in having started a lab.
BJKS Podcast is a podcast about neuroscience, psychology, and anything vaguely related, hosted by Benjamin James Kuper-Smith.
Timestamps 0:00:04: Isa used to be a pretty good sprinter 0:11:03: Lessons from athletics 0:16:40: How Isa got into psychology and doing science 0:26:47: Breadth vs depth in research topics 0:33:32: Start discussing Isa's review article 'Economics Games: an introduction and guide for research' 0:46:06: What are game theory and interdependence theory? 0:59:06: Affordances and economic games 1:10:44: Personality and economic games 1:34:20: Isa's experiences starting her lab and becoming a PI
References Amir, Rand & Gal (2012). Economic games on the internet: The effect of $1 stakes. PloS one. Cameron (1999). Raising the stakes in the ultimatum game: Experimental evidence from Indonesia. Econ Inquiry. Columbus, Münich & Gerpott (2020). Playing a different game: Situation perception mediates framing effects on cooperative behaviour. J Exp Soc Psych. Diehl, Thielmann, Thiel, Mayer, Zipfel & Schneider (2014). Possibilities to support elite adolescent athletes in improving performance: Results from a qualitative content analysis. Science & sports. Galizzi & Navarro-Martinez (2019). On the external validity of social preference games: a systematic lab-field study. Management Science. Halevy, Chou & Murnighan (2012). Mind games: the mental representation of conflict. J perso and soc psych. Kuper-Smith, Voulgaris, Briken, Fuss & Korn (2022). Social preferences and psychopathy in a sample of male prisoners. PsyArXiv. Liebrand (1984). The effect of social motives, communication and group size on behaviour in an N‐person multi‐stage mixed‐motive game. Eur J soc psych. Peysakhovich, Nowak & Rand (2014). Humans display a ‘cooperative phenotype’that is domain general and temporally stable. Nat Comm. Thielmann, Böhm, Ott & Hilbig (2021). Economic games: An introduction and guide for research. Collabra: Psych. Thielmann & Hilbig (2015). Trust: An integrative review from a person–situation perspective. Review of Gen Psych. Thielmann, Spadaro & Balliet (2020). Personality and prosocial behavior: A theoretical framework and meta-analysis. Psych Bull.
67. Daniela Schiller: Social spaces, cognitive maps, and clinical applications
12 Feb 2023
00:51:58
Daniela Schiller is a Professor of Neuroscience and Psychiatry at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, where she studies the neural mechanisms of emotional control and flexibility. In this conversation, we talk about her work on cognitive maps for social behaviour, the importance of power and affiliation for our social lives, the difficulties of measuring spatial navigation with fMRI, and potential psychiatric applications of cognitive maps.
BJKS Podcast is a podcast about neuroscience, psychology, and anything vaguely related, hosted by Benjamin James Kuper-Smith. You can find the podcast on all podcasting platforms (e.g., Spotify, Apple/Google Podcasts, etc.).
Timestamps 00:04: Daniela's drumming 03:31: How Daniela started working on (social) cognitive maps 08:42: The 2 perspectives on the hippocampus: spatial navigation and episodic memory for relational learning and cognitive maps 15:22: Power and affiliation as fundamental social dimensions 19:24: Start discussing Daniela's paper 'A map for social navigation in the human brain' 28:45: The difficulty of measuring spatial navigation with fMRI 42:51: Clinical applications of cognitive maps
Bellmund, De Cothi, Ruiter, Nau, Barry & Doeller (2020). Deforming the metric of cognitive maps distorts memory. Nature Human Behaviour. Constantinescu, O’Reilly & Behrens (2016). Organizing conceptual knowledge in humans with a gridlike code. Science. Doeller, Barry & Burgess (2010). Evidence for grid cells in a human memory network. Nature. Jacobs, ... & Kahana (2013). Direct recordings of grid-like neuronal activity in human spatial navigation. Nature Neuroscience. Montagrin, Saiote & Schiller (2018). The social hippocampus. Hippocampus. Schafer & Schiller (2018). Navigating social space. Neuron. Schafer, Kamilar-Britt, Sahani, Bachi & Schiller (2022). Hippocampal Place-like Signal in Latent Space. bioRxiv. Schiller, Eichenbaum, Buffalo, Davachi, Foster, Leutgeb & Ranganath (2015). Memory and space: towards an understanding of the cognitive map. Journal of Neuroscience. Tavares, Mendelsohn, Grossman, Williams, Shapiro, Trope & Schiller (2015). A map for social navigation in the human brain. Neuron. Tolman (1948). Cognitive maps in rats and men. Psychological Review. Yartsev, Witter & Ulanovsky (2011). Grid cells without theta oscillations in the entorhinal cortex of bats. Nature.
66. Rafael Pérez y Pérez: Story Machines, Creative AI, and Mexian serenades
05 Feb 2023
01:01:32
Rafael Pérez y Pérez is a professor at the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, Cuajimalpa, where he studies computational creativity, in particular in relation to computer programs that can write stories. In this conversation, we talk about MEXICA, the story generator he has been working on for most of his career, his newly released book Story Machines (with Mike Sharples), the advantages and disadvantages of different approaches to creating stories with AI, what the future holds, whether large companies like Amazon are working on these topics, and much more.
BJKS Podcast is a podcast about neuroscience, psychology, and anything vaguely related, hosted by Benjamin James Kuper-Smith. You can find the podcast on all podcasting platforms (e.g., Spotify, Apple/Google Podcasts, etc.).
Timestamps 00:05: How Rafael ended up doing his PhD on artificial creativity in Sussex 07:00: Why did Rafael create MEXICA? / A more human system for generating stories 24:45: Many approaches of generating stories 30:46: Is a combination of symbolic and connectionist approaches (neuro-symbolic AI) the solution to creating machines that write stories? 33:23: Why might GPT-3 not work for stories or The risk of singing a Mexican sereneade to a Norwegian 43:38: Are there fundamental barries for AI writing convincing fiction without actually living in the real world? 47:54: Is Amazon developing AI to write fiction? 53:59: What will happen in the next 5-10 years of AI writing stories?
Mnih, Kavukcuoglu, Silver, ... & Hassabis (2015). Human-level control through deep reinforcement learning. Nature. Mueller (1990). Daydreaming in humans and machines: a computer model of the stream of thought. Intellect Books. Pérez y Pérez & Sharples (2004). Three computer-based models of storytelling: BRUTUS, MINSTREL and MEXICA. Knowledge-based systems. Propp (1968). Morphology of the Folktale. University of Texas Press. Sharples & Pérez y Pérez (2022). Story Machines: How Computers Have Become Creative Writers. Routledge. Sharples & Pérez y Pérez (2023). Introduction to narrative generators. Oxford University Press Turner (1993). MINSTREL: A computer model of creativity and storytelling, PhD Dissertation, University of California LA.
65. Adam Mastroianni: Conversational doorknobs, improv comedy, and a very dumb academic revolution
10 Dec 2022
01:34:26
Adam Mastroianni is a postdoctoral research scholar at Columbia Business School. In this conversation, we talk about his work on conversations, his Substack/blog, his article Things Could Be Better and why he chose to publish it this way, improv comedy, and much more.
BJKS Podcast is a podcast about neuroscience, psychology, and anything vaguely related, hosted by Benjamin James Kuper-Smith. In 2022, episodes will appear irregularly, roughly twice per month. You can find the podcast on all podcasting platforms (e.g., Spotify, Apple/Google Podcasts, etc.).
Timestamps 0:01:20: Did Adam fake having a girlfriend when he appeared on Come Dine With Me? 0:08:51: Adam's Substack called 'Experimental History' 0:10:51: Good conversations have lots of doorknobs 0:15:33: What can people learn from improv comedy? 0:23:10: Why did Adam start his Substack? / A discussion of academia, alternative ways of doing science, and the problems with academic publishing 1:12:26: Start discussing Adam's paper 'Do conversations end when people want them to?' 1:27:28: What makes for a good conversation? 1:29:59: Some words of advice from Adam
References Gilbert (2009). Stumbling on happiness. Mastroianni, Gilbert, Cooney, & Wilson (2021). Do conversations end when people want them to? PNAS. Mastroianni, AM & Ludwin-Peery, EJ. (2022). Things could be better. https://psyarxiv.com/2uxwk Schwartz (2008). The importance of stupidity in scientific research. Journal of Cell Science.
64. Gareth Barnes: MEG, OPM-MEG and the beauty of tinkering
17 Nov 2022
01:25:55
Gareth Barnes is a professor at University College London, where he is Head of Magnetoencephalography. We talk about how Gareth randomly stumbled into working on MEG, what MEG is, and some of his recent projects, including the exciting new generation of MEG scanners: OPM-MEG.
BJKS Podcast is a podcast about neuroscience, psychology, and anything vaguely related, hosted by Benjamin James Kuper-Smith. In 2022, episodes appear roughly twice per month. You can find the podcast on all podcasting platforms (e.g., Spotify, Apple/Google Podcasts, etc.).
Timestamps 0:00:03: How I found out about Gareth's work 0:02:31: What is MEG? 0:07:04: Flexible headcasts for MEG 0:19:49: How Gareth accidentally started working on MEG (after writing fiction in France) 0:28:46: The early days of MEG at Aston University (starting with a single channel) 0:40:58: The new generation of MEG: Optically pumped magnetometers (OPM-MEG) 1:13:33: Mouth MEG and measuring hippocampus with MEG 1:21:06: The relationship between methods development and discovery in basic science
References Boto, ... & Brookes (2018). Moving magnetoencephalography towards real-world applications with a wearable system. Nature. Boto, ... & Brookes (2019). Wearable neuroimaging: Combining and contrasting magnetoencephalography and electroencephalography. NeuroImage. Hill, ... & Brookes (2019). A tool for functional brain imaging with lifespan compliance. Nature Communications. Meyer, ... & Barnes (2017). Flexible head-casts for high spatial precision MEG. Journal of neuroscience methods. Sander, ... & Knappe (2012). Magnetoencephalography with a chip-scale atomic magnetometer. Biomedical optics express. Seymour, ... & Maguire (2021). Using OPMs to measure neural activity in standing, mobile participants. NeuroImage. Stangl, ... & Suthana (2021). Boundary-anchored neural mechanisms of location-encoding for self and others. Nature. Tierney, ... & Barnes (2019). Optically pumped magnetometers: From quantum origins to multi-channel magnetoencephalography. NeuroImage. Tierney, ... & Barnes (2021). Mouth magnetoencephalography: A unique perspective on the human hippocampus. NeuroImage. Vivekananda, ... & Walker (2020). Optically pumped magnetoencephalography in epilepsy. Annals of clinical and translational neurology.
63. Adeyemi Adetula: ManyLabs Africa, psychology should generalise from Africa, and multicultural collaborations
28 Sep 2022
01:07:15
Adeyemi Adetula is a PhD student at the University of Grenoble, where he is leading the ManyLabs Africa project. In this conversation, we talk about that project, his recent commentary 'Psychology should generalize from - not just to - Africa', how Western researchers can best collaborate with African researchers, and much more.
Timestamps 0:00:05: How Adeyemi went from psychology student in Nigeria to PhD student in France 0:13:27: ManyLabs Africa 0:18:54: Synergy between the Credibility Revolution and research development in Africa 0:25:26: How and why Adeyemi crowdfunded his PhD 0:36:42: Psychology should generalize from - not just to - Africa 0:54:47: How can Western researchers test their theories in more diverse samples? 1:03:47: Pounded yam with Egusi soup and bushmeat
Adetula, ... IJzerman (2022). Psychology should generalize from—not just to—Africa. Nat Rev Psych. Adetula, ... IJzerman (2021). Synergy Between the Credibility Revolution and Human Development in Africa. AfricArXive. Adetula, … IJzerman, H. (2021). The Evaluation of Harm and Purity Transgressions in Africans: A Paradigmatic Replication of Rottman and Young (2019). AfricArXive Klein, ... Nosek (2014). Investigating variation in replicability: A “many labs” replication project. Soc Psych. Rottman & Young (2019). Specks of dirt and tons of pain: Dosage distinguishes impurity from harm. Psych Sci.
The 5 shortlisted African papers for the ManyLabs Africa replication: Bevan-Dye & Akpojivi (2016). South African Generation Y students’ self-disclosure on Facebook. South African J of Psych. Kombo, S. (n.d.). Using behavioural informed communication to drive civic engagement. [Unpublished paper] https://busaracenter.org/case_studies/behaviorally-informed-communication-to-drive-civic-engagement/ Mgbokwere, Esienumoh & Uyana (2015). Perception and attitudes of parents towards teenage pregnancy in a rural community of Cross river state, Nigeria. Global J of Pure & Applied Sci. Ojedokun (2015). Extramarital affair as correlate of reproductive health and home instability among couples in Ibadan, Nigeria. African J of Social Work. Teye-Kwadjo, Kagee & Swart (2018). Condom use negotiation among high school adolescents in Ghana: The role of gender. South African J of Psych.
62. Nils Köbis: AI, corruption, and deepfakes
13 Sep 2022
01:34:30
Nils Köbis is a research scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development, where he studies the intersection of AI and corruption. In this conversation, we talk about how Nils got into working on this topic, and some of his recent papers on AI, corruption, deepfakes, and AI poetry.
BJKS Podcast is a podcast about neuroscience, psychology, and anything vaguely related, hosted by Benjamin James Kuper-Smith. In 2022, episodes will appear irregularly, roughly twice per month.
Timestamps 0:00:04: Moral Games 0:13:09: How Nils started working at the intersection of AI and corruption 0:30:12: Start discussing 'Bad machines corrput good morals' 1:01:00: Start discussing Nils's papers on whether people can detect AI-generated poems and videos 1:25:59: Learning to say no and to not get sidetracked 1:31:05: Writing a PhD thesis
Abdalla & Abdalla 2021. The Grey Hoodie Project: Big tobacco, big tech, .... Proc of 2021 AAAI/ACM Conf. Crandall ... 2018. Cooperating with machines. Nat Comm. Goffman 1959. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life Harari 2016. Homo Deus: A brief history of tomorrow. Hawking 2018. Brief answers to the big questions. Kehlmann 2021: Mein Algorithmus und ich. Köbis ... 2021. Bad machines corrupt good morals. Nat Hum Behav. Köbis ... 2021. Fooled twice: People cannot detect deepfakes but think they can. Iscience. Köbis & Mossink, 2021. Artificial intelligence versus Maya Angelou... . Comp in hum behav. Köbis ... 2022. The promise and perils of using artificial intelligence to fight corruption. Nat Mach Intell. Leib ... 2021. The corruptive force of AI-generated advice. arXiv. Leib ... 2021. Collaborative dishonesty: A meta-analytic review. Psych Bull. Mnih ... 2015. Human-level control through deep reinforcement learning. Nature. Rahwan ... 2019. Machine behaviour. Nature. Silver ... 2016. Mastering the game of Go with deep neural networks and tree search. Nature. Tegmark 2017. Life 3.0: Being human in the age of artificial intelligence.
61. Eva Krockow: Social dilemmas, antimicrobial resistance, and the value of qualitative studies
13 Aug 2022
01:13:59
Eva Krockow is a lecturer in psychology at the University of Leicester, where her research focusses on the psychology of antimicrobial resistance. We talk about her educational background, her work on the Centipede Game, social dilemmas, antimicrobial resistance, and the value of qualitative studies.
BJKS Podcast is a podcast about neuroscience, psychology, and anything vaguely related, hosted by Benjamin James Kuper-Smith. In 2022, episodes will appear irregularly, roughly twice per month.
Timestamps 0:00:04: How Eva ended up studying psychology in Leicester 0:07:16: Before her PhD, Eva worked in international relations 0:13:06: The Centipede Game/Eva's PhD work 0:23:49: What is 'antimicrobial resistance' and why is it a problem? 0:41:52: The social dilemma of antimicrobial resistance 0:52:05: The benefits of qualitative studies 1:04:53: What can we do about antimicrobial resistance?
Colman, ... (2019). Medical prescribing and antibiotic resistance: a game-theoretic analysis of a potentially catastrophic social dilemma. PloS one. Flood (1958). Some experimental games. Management Sci. Hardin (1968). The tragedy of the commons. Science. Harring & Krockow (2021). The social dilemmas of climate change and antibiotic resistance: an analytic comparison and discussion of policy implications. Humanities and Soc Sci Comm. Krockow, ... (2022). Prosociality in the social dilemma of antibiotic prescribing. Cur Op in Psych. Krockow (2020). Nomen est omen: why we need to rename ‘antimicrobial resistance’. JAC-Antimicrobial Resistance. Krockow, ... (2016). Exploring cooperation and competition in the Centipede game through verbal protocol analysis. Euro J of Soc Psych. Krockow, ... (2016). Cooperation in repeated interactions: A systematic review of Centipede game experiments, 1992–2016. Euro Rev of Soc Psych. Pulford, ... (2016). Social value induction and cooperation in the Centipede game. PloS one. Pulford, ... (2017). Reasons for cooperating in repeated interactions: Social value orientations, fuzzy traces, reciprocity, and activity bias. Decision. Pulford, ... (2021). A five-factor integrative model of strategic reasoning in dyadic games. Eur J of Soc Psych. Rosenthal (1981). Games of perfect information, predatory pricing and the chain-store paradox. J of Econ theo. Tarrant, ... (2021). Drivers of Broad-Spectrum Antibiotic Overuse across Diverse Hospital Contexts—A Qualitative Study of Prescribers in the UK, Sri Lanka and South Africa. Antibiotics. Tarrant, ... (2020). Moral and contextual dimensions of “inappropriate” antibiotic prescribing in secondary care: a three-country interview study. Front
96. Benjamin Ehrlich: Santiago Ramon y Cajal, the neuron doctrine, and combining art & science
16 Apr 2024
01:06:09
Benjamin Ehrlich is the author of the recent biography of Santiago Ramon y Cajal (The brain in search of itself), and The Dreams of Santiago Ramon y Cajal. We talk about Cajal's life and work, Cajal's unlikely beginnings in a rural Spain, how he discovered that neurons were separate from each other, leading to the neutron doctrine, how Cajal became famous seemingly overnight, Cajal's rivalry with Camillo Golgi, the relationship between art and science, how to write a biography of someone whose autobiographical writings were heavily influenced by picaresque novels, and much more.
BJKS Podcast is a podcast about neuroscience, psychology, and anything vaguely related, hosted by Benjamin James Kuper-Smith.
Timestamps 0:00:00: Why Cajal is worth talking about 0:01:42: Cajal's father 0:04:48: Cajal's childhood 0:17:22: Cajal's early work on the brain, and the status of neuroscience in the 1880s 0:23:45: The conference that made Cajal famous 0:29:42: Cajal's years as a famous scientist 0:35:33: Cajal's personality 0:41:14: Cajal & Golgi's rivalry 0:45:48: del Rio and the discovery of glia cells 0:49:13: Picaresque novels and the difficulty of trusting Cajal's stories of himself 1:02:52: A book or paper more people should read 1:04:14: Something Ben wishes he'd learnt sooner 1:04:57: Advice for PhD students/postdocs - people in a transitory period
Calvino (1972). Invisible cities. Ehrlich (2017). The Dreams of Santiago Ramón y Cajal. Ehrlich (2022). The brain in search of itself: Santiago Ramón y Cajal and the story of the neuron. Pitlor & Lee (editors). The Best American Short Stories 2023 .
Ricky Patel is a postdoc at Lund University, where he studies the neural basis of navigation behaviours in arthropods. In this conversation, we talk about his work on spatial navigation in Mantis Shrimp and bumblebees, the difficulty of recording from moving insects, science communication, and scientific illustrations.
BJKS Podcast is a podcast about neuroscience, psychology, and anything vaguely related, hosted by Benjamin James Kuper-Smith. In 2022, episodes will appear irregularly, roughly twice per month. You can find the podcast on all podcasting platforms (e.g., Spotify, Apple/Google Podcasts, etc.).
Timestamps 00:04: What is a Mantis Shrimp? 09:53: How Ricky started studying Mantis Shrimp navigation 16:00: Start discussing Ricky's 2020 Current Biology paper on path integration in Mantis Shrimp 25:03: A hierarchy of compass cues 34:10: Start discussing Ricky's 2020 Proceedings B paper on landmark navigation in Mantis Shrimp 38:11: Complex behaviour doesn't require a large brain 40:16: Start discussing Ricky's 2022 Current Biology paper about path integration in walking bumblebees 46:14: How well can we record neural activity from moving insects? 49:54: Twitter in academia 53:51: Rickesh's work as a scientific illustrator 57:57: There really has been a rich history of studying navigation in non-mammals
References Beetz, Kraus, Franzke, Dreyer, Strube-Bloss, Rössler, Warrant, Merlin, & El Jundi, B. (2022). Flight-induced compass representation in the monarch butterfly heading network. Current Biology. O'Keefe & Dostrovsky (1971). The hippocampus as a spatial map: Preliminary evidence from unit activity in the freely-moving rat. Brain research. Patel, Kempenaers & Heinze. (2022). Vector navigation in walking bumblebees. Current Biology. Patel & Cronin (2020). Mantis shrimp navigate home using celestial and idiothetic path integration. Current Biology. Patel & Cronin (2020). Landmark navigation in a mantis shrimp. Proceedings of the Royal Society B. Patel & Cronin (2020). Path integration error and adaptable search behaviors in a mantis shrimp. Journal of Experimental Biology. Santschi (1911). Obervations et remarques critiques sur le mécanisme de l'orientation chez les fourmis. Rév Suisse Zool. Tolman (1948). Cognitive maps in rats and men. Psychological review. Wehner (1990). On the brink of introducing sensory ecology: Felix Santschi (1872–1940) — Tabib-en-Neml. Behav Ecol Sociobiol .
59. Chris Frith: Two Heads, social neuroscience, and the history of the FIL
19 Jun 2022
01:02:59
Chris Frith is an Emeritus Professor of Neuropsychology at University College London. His research has spanned several topics, including social cognition, schizophrenia, volition, and consciousness. We talk about Two Heads (a book co-written with his wife and son), his career, and the history of the FIL.
BJKS Podcast is a podcast about neuroscience, psychology, and anything vaguely related, hosted by Benjamin James Kuper-Smith. In 2022, episodes will appear irregularly, roughly twice per month. You can find the podcast on all podcasting platforms (e.g., Spotify, Apple/Google Podcasts, etc.).
Timestamps 00:04: Why did Chris not become a musician? 06:14: How Chris became a comic book hero 14:31: Collaborating with economists (as a neuroscientist or psychologist) 22:34: A triple history of Chris's career, neuroimaging, and the FIL at UCL 47:14: Career advice: explorers and exploiters in science, and skills to learn 57:00: Was all the effort worth it? 1:00:10: Sci-fi and detective story recommendations
References Blakemore ... (1998). Central cancellation of self-produced tickle sensation. Nature neuroscience. Cook ... (2012). Automatic imitation in a strategic context ... Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. Corcoran ... (1995). Schizophrenia, symptomatology and social inference ... Schizophrenia research. Feinberg ... (1999). Schizophrenia–a disorder of the corollary discharge ... The British Journal of Psychiatry. Fletcher ... (1995). Other minds in the brain ... Cognition. Frith ... (2022). Two Heads: A Graphic Exploration of How Our Brains Work with Other Brains. Frith (2013). Making up the mind: How the brain creates our mental world. Frith ... (1991). Willed action and the prefrontal cortex in man: a study with PET. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B. Haruno ... (2010). Activity in the amygdala elicited by unfair divisions predicts social value orientation. Nature neuroscience. Haruno ... (2014). Activity in the nucleus accumbens and amygdala ... Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience. Helmholtz (1867). Treatise on physiological optics. Johnstone ... (1976). Cerebral ventricular size and cognitive impairment in chronic schizophrenia. The Lancet. Medwed (2007). The innocent prisoner's dilemma: ... Iowa Law Review. Posner ... (1988). Localization of cognitive operations in the human brain. Science. Shelley (1818). Frankenstein. Wegner (2004). Précis of the illusion of conscious will. Behavioral and Brain Sciences.
Links Seiber: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6pqqfWfwRlQ Ma mère l'oye: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEC_XGjgluo Dolly Suite: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vA-VOOVN2XQ Chris's interview with the BPS: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjku9ASscis https://interactingminds.au.dk/ https://www.fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_K._Dick https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agatha_Christie
58. Cameron Brick: climate change, pro-environmental behaviour, and illusory essences
12 Jun 2022
01:10:39
Cameron Brick is an Assistant Professor in Social Psychology at the University of Amsterdam. His research focuses on the psychological aspects of climate change. In this conversation, we talk about climate change, the psychological aspects behind it, the difficulty of defining pro-environmental behaviour, and his recent article on Illusory Essences in psychological (and neuroscientific) research.
BJKS Podcast is a podcast about neuroscience, psychology, and anything vaguely related, hosted by Benjamin James Kuper-Smith. In 2022, episodes will appear irregularly, roughly twice per month. You can find the podcast on all podcasting platforms (e.g., Spotify, Apple/Google Podcasts, etc.).
Timestamps 0:00:04: How Cameron started working on the psychology of climate change 0:06:24: What is the actual problem of climate change? And what can we do about it? 0:21:47: What actually is "pro-environmental behaviour" and how can we measure it? 0:32:35: What kind of person is pro-environemtnal, and why? 0:38:54: Start discussing Illusory Essences 0:45:20: Formal models in psychology 0:47:23: Are the Big-5 in personality an illusory essence? 1:01:17: How to solve the problem of illusory essences
References Brick, Hood, Ekroll & De-Wit (2022). Illusory essences: A bias holding back theorizing in psychological science. Perspectives on Psychological Science. Brick & van der Linden (2018). Yawning at the Apocalypse. The Psychologist. Brick, Sherman & Kim (2017). “Green to be seen” and “brown to keep down”: Visibility moderates the effect of identity on pro-environmental behavior. Journal of Environmental Psychology. Brick & Lewis (2016). Unearthing the “green” personality: Core traits predict environmentally friendly behavior. Environment and Behavior. Smaldino (2017). Models are stupid, and we need more of them. Computational social psychology. Spence, Poortinga & Pidgeon (2012). The psychological distance of climate change. Risk Analysis: An International Journal. Srivastava (2010). The five-factor model describes the structure of social perceptions. Psychological Inquiry. Updegraff, Brick, Emanuel, Mintzer & Sherman (2015). Message framing for health: moderation by perceived susceptibility and motivational orientation in a diverse sample of Americans. Health Psychology. Wittgenstein (1953). Philosophical investigations.
57. Peter Vuust: music in the brain, predictive coding, and jazz
28 May 2022
01:02:23
Peter Vuust is a Professor at the Center for Music in the Brain in Aarhus, a jazz musician, and composer. In this conversation , we talk about his recent review in Nature Reviews Neuroscience, how he got to where he is, active inference in music, jazz improvisation, and much more.
BJKS Podcast is a podcast about neuroscience, psychology, and anything vaguely related, hosted by Benjamin James Kuper-Smith. In 2022, episodes will appear irregularly, roughly twice per month. You can find the podcast on all podcasting platforms (e.g., Spotify, Apple/Google Podcasts, etc.).
Timestamps 00:05: How Peter became a jazz musician 04:54: How Peter became professor of neuroscience 08:20: How to combine two different professions practically? 11:50: Start discussing 'Music in the brain' 24:53: How do prediction errors change with familiarty of a piece of music? 38:18: How does moving to the beat (active inference) reduce prediction errors? 46:48: The 3 dynamics in musical synchronisation 55:10: How does Peter compose for improvisation in jazz?
Heggli, Konvalinka, ..., & Vuust (2021). Transient brain networks underlying interpersonal strategies during synchronized action. Social cognitive and affective neuroscience. Heggli, Konvalinka, Kringelbach, & Vuust (2019). Musical interaction is influenced by underlying predictive models and musical expertise. Scientific reports. Heggli, Cabral, ..., & Kringelbach. (2019). A Kuramoto model of self-other integration across interpersonal synchronization strategies. PLoS computational biology. Morillon, & Baillet (2017). Motor origin of temporal predictions in auditory attention. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Rosso, Maes, & Leman (2021). Modality-specific attractor dynamics in dyadic entrainment. Scientific Reports. Vuust, Heggli, Friston, & Kringelbach (2022). Music in the brain. Nature Reviews Neuroscience.
56. Mary Elizabeth Sutherland: scientific editing, behavioural sciences at Nature, and how to improve submissions
21 May 2022
01:09:51
Mary Elizabeth Sutherland is senior editor at Nature, where she edits submissions in the behavioural sciences and cognitive neuroscience. In this conversation, we talk about how she became an editor, what editors do all day, how to improve your submissions, the future of publishing at Nature, the harp, and much more.
BJKS Podcast is a podcast about neuroscience, psychology, and anything vaguely related, hosted by Benjamin James Kuper-Smith. In 2022, episodes will appear irregularly, roughly twice per month. You can find the podcast on all podcasting platforms (e.g., Spotify, Apple/Google Podcasts, etc.).
Timestamps 0:00:00: Introduction 0:05:51: How Mary Elizabeth started playing the harp 0:11:19: Harp music recommendations 0:13:09: How Mary Elizabeth became senior editor at Nature 0:18:11: What do editors do all day? 0:31:04: What's the difference between Nature, Nature Communications, and Scientific Reports? 0:38:53: How representative do samples need to be for Nature? 0:44:12: What exactly is a cover letter for? 0:50:43: Common errors in submissions 0:56:11: Why do the official PDFs of papers have unidentifiable names? 0:59:11: Do we still need journals? 1:04:07: Will Nature offer Registered Reports?
Papers mentioned Aiken, E., Bellue, S., Karlan, D. et al. Machine learning and phone data can improve targeting of humanitarian aid. Nature (2022). Camerer, C. F., Dreber, A., Holzmeister, F., Ho, T. H., Huber, J., Johannesson, M., ... & Wu, H. (2018). Evaluating the replicability of social science experiments in Nature and Science between 2010 and 2015. Nature Human Behaviour. Coutrot, A., Manley, E., Goodroe, S. et al. Entropy of city street networks linked to future spatial navigation ability. Nature (2022). Douaud, G., Lee, S., Alfaro-Almagro, F. et al. SARS-CoV-2 is associated with changes in brain structure in UK Biobank. Nature (2022).
55. Angelika Stefan: p-hacking, simulations, and Shiny Apps
01 May 2022
00:54:17
Angelika Stefan is a PhD student at the University of Amsterdam in the Psychological Methods group (lead by Eric-Jan Wagenmakers). In this conversation, we talk about her preprint 'Big little lies: A Compendium and Simulation of p-Hacking Strategies', which she just uploaded to PsyArXiv. We also discuss how she created the Shiny App that allows users to play around with the simulations and run simulations that didn't make it into the paper.
BJKS Podcast is a podcast about neuroscience, psychology, and anything vaguely related, hosted by Benjamin James Kuper-Smith. In 2022, episodes will appear irregularly, roughly twice per month. You can find the podcast on all podcasting platforms (e.g., Spotify, Apple/Google Podcasts, etc.).
Timestamps 00:05: How did Angelika start working on her paper 'Big little lies' 05:22: P-hacking and human error 07:47: Different p-hacking strategies 29:34: What are good solutions against p-hacking? 40:56: Future directions for this kind of research 45:32: How to make a Shiny Apps
Stefan, A., & Schönbrodt, F. D. (2022, March 16). Big Little Lies: A Compendium and Simulation of p-Hacking Strategies. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/xy2dk
Wicherts, J. M., Veldkamp, C. L. S., Augusteijn, H. E. M., Bakker, M., van Aert, R. C. M., & van Assen, M. A. L. M. (2016). Degrees of freedom in planning, running, analyzing, and reporting psychological studies: A checklist to avoid p-hacking. Frontiers in Psychology, 7. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01832
54. Jessica Kay Flake: Schmeasurement, making stats engaging, and the Psychological Science Accelerator
07 Apr 2022
01:33:31
Jessica Flake is Assistant Professor for quantitative psychology and modeling at McGill University, where she studies measurement. In this conversation, we talk about her recent paper 'Measurement Schmeasurement: Questionable measurement practices and how to avoid them' (with former guest of the podcast Eiko Fried), how she makes stats lectures interesting, and her work on the Psychological Science Accellarator.
BJKS Podcast is a podcast about neuroscience, psychology, and anything vaguely related, hosted by Benjamin James Kuper-Smith. In 2022, episodes will appear irregularly, roughly twice per month. You can find the podcast on all podcasting platforms (e.g., Spotify, Apple/Google Podcasts, etc.).
Timestamps 0:00:04: Eiko Fried is maybe not that good at p-hacking 0:02:03: How Jessica got into researching measurement 0:10:42: The title of 'Measurement Schmeasurement' 0:16:15: So what is Schmeasurement? 0:24:47: How does Jessica ('literally the best prof ever') make statistics engaging? 0:43:02: Is transparency the solution to schmeasurement? 0:49:56: Was I measuring or schmeasuring in my recent paper? 1:03:39: The next generation of the open science movement 1:15:15: What's it like working on large collaborative projects like The Psychological Science Accelerator?
Axelrod (1980). Effective choice in the prisoner's dilemma. Journal of conflict resolution. Flake & Fried (2020). Measurement schmeasurement: Questionable measurement practices and how to avoid them. Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science. Flake, Pek, & Hehman (2017). Construct validation in social and personality research: Current practice and recommendations. Social Psychological and Personality Science. Flake, Davidson, Wong, & Pek (2022). Construct validity and the validity of replication studies: A systematic review. Kuper-Smith, Doppelhofer, Oganian, Rosenblau, & Korn (2021). Risk perception and optimism during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. Royal Society open science. Moshontz, ... & Chartier, C. R. (2018). The Psychological Science Accelerator: Advancing psychology through a distributed collaborative network. Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science. Nosek, Beck, Campbell, Flake, Hardwicke, Mellor, ... & Vazire (2019). Preregistration is hard, and worthwhile. Trends in cognitive sciences. Simmons, Nelson, & Simonsohn (2011). False-positive psychology: Undisclosed flexibility in data collection and analysis allows presenting anything as significant. Psychological science.
53. Chris Chambers: Registered Reports, scheduled peer-review, and science without journals
16 Mar 2022
00:58:04
Chris Chambers is professor at Cardiff University where he is Head of Brain Stimulation. He is also one of the pioneers behind Registered Reports, a type of article where researchers receive peer review and in-principle acceptance before the results are known. In this conversation, we focus on Registered Reports and talk about how Chris got Registered Reports started at Cortex, how the review process differs between Registered Reports and regular papers, whether they are suited for scientists on short-term contracts, and what the future holds for Registered Reports and scientific publishing in general.
BJKS Podcast is a podcast about neuroscience, psychology, and anything vaguely related, hosted by Benjamin James Kuper-Smith. In 2022, episodes will appear irregularly, roughly twice per month. You can find the podcast on all podcasting platforms (e.g., Spotify, Apple/Google Podcasts, etc.).
Timestamps 01:51: What are Registered Reports? 07:24: How Chris got Registered Reports started 16:33: Reviewing Registered Reports and regular papers 25:23: Evaluating whether Registered Reports work 28:52: Are Registered Reports feasible on short-term contracts / scheduled reviews 38:50: Peer Community In Registered Reports / authors can choose which journal to publish their Registered Report in 50:25: Do we even need journals? 54:18: Does Chris ever get tired talking about Registered Reports?
In this conversation, I talk with Toby Wise about applying for postdoc fellowships. Toby has received and completed the Sir Henry Wellcome Postdoctoral Fellowship, where he worked with Ray Dolan and Dean Mobbs. He answers some of the questions I have about applying for postdoc fellowships in general, such as how to write a proposal, how to contact potential supervisors/sponsors for your application, when to start, and what kind of scientist a fellowship is even for.
BJKS Podcast is a podcast about neuroscience, psychology, and anything vaguely related, hosted by Benjamin James Kuper-Smith. In 2022, episodes will appear irregularly, roughly twice per month. You can find the podcast on all podcasting platforms (e.g., Spotify, Apple/Google Podcasts, etc.).
Deisseroth, K. (2011). Optogenetics. Nature methods.
Friston, K. J., Stephan, K. E., Montague, R., & Dolan, R. J. (2014). Computational psychiatry: the brain as a phantastic organ. The Lancet Psychiatry.
Montague, P. R., Dolan, R. J., Friston, K. J., & Dayan, P. (2012). Computational psychiatry. Trends in cognitive sciences.
Steinmetz, N. A., Koch, C., Harris, K. D., & Carandini, M. (2018). Challenges and opportunities for large-scale electrophysiology with Neuropixels probes. Current opinion in neurobiology.
Wang, X. J., & Krystal, J. H. (2014). Computational psychiatry. Neuron.
51. Hugo Spiers: Taxi Brains, cognitive maps in humans, and working with humans and non-human animals
19 Feb 2022
01:30:20
Hugo Spiers is professor of cognitive neuroscience at University College London. His research explores how our brain constructs representations of the world and uses them to recall the past, navigate the present and imagine the future. In this episode, we talk about his work on Sea Hero Quest (with Michael Hornberger, former guest of this podcast), his new research project Taxi Brains, the difficulties and joys of working with more than one species, and cognitive maps in humans.
Time stamps 0:00:05: Dealing with email 0:04:42: Sea Hero Quest 0:25:53: Taxi Brains project 0:55:18: The difficulties and benefits of working with humans and non-human animals in the same lab 1:11:48: Discussing Hugo's review "The cognitive map in humans: spatial navigation and beyond"
References Bellmund, Gärdenfors, Moser, & Doeller (2018). Navigating cognition: Spatial codes for human thinking. Science. Constantinescu, O’Reilly, & Behrens (2016). Organizing conceptual knowledge in humans with a gridlike code. Science. Doeller, Barry, & Burgess (2010). Evidence for grid cells in a human memory network. Nature. Epstein, Patai, Julian, & Spiers (2017). The cognitive map in humans: spatial navigation and beyond. Nature neuroscience. Gardenfors (2004). Conceptual spaces: The geometry of thought. MIT press. Gardner, Hermansen, Pachitariu, Burak, Baas, Dunn, ... & Moser (2022). Toroidal topology of population activity in grid cells. Nature. Griesbauer, Manley, Wiener, & Spiers (2022). London taxi drivers: A review of neurocognitive studies and an exploration of how they build their cognitive map of London. Hippocampus. Jacobs, Weidemann, ... & Kahana (2013). Direct recordings of grid-like neuronal activity in human spatial navigation. Nature neuroscience. Lever, ... & Burgess (2009). Boundary vector cells in the subiculum of the hippocampal formation. Journal of Neuroscience. Maguire, ... & Frith (2000). Navigation-related structural change in the hippocampi of taxi drivers. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Newport (2021). A World Without Email: Find Focus and Transform the Way You Work Forever. Penguin UK. O'keefe, & Nadel (1978). The hippocampus as a cognitive map. Oxford university press. Solomon, Lega, Sperling, & Kahana (2019). Hippocampal theta codes for distances in semantic and temporal spaces. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Solstad, Boccara, Kropff, Moser, & Moser. (2008). Representation of geometric borders in the entorhinal cortex. Science. Spiers (2020). The hippocampal cognitive map: one space or many? Trends in Cognitive Sciences. Tolman (1948). Cognitive maps in rats and men. Psychological review.
95. Emily Finn: Neural fingerprinting, 'naturalistic' stimuli, and taking time before starting a PhD
02 Mar 2024
01:43:43
Emily Finn is an assistant professor at Dartmouth College. We talk about her research on neural fingerprinting, naturalistic stimuli, how Emily got into science, the year she spent in Peru before her PhD, advice for writing well, and much more.
There are occasional (minor) audio disturbances when Emily's speaking. Sorry about that, still trying to figure out where they came from so that it won't happen again.
BJKS Podcast is a podcast about neuroscience, psychology, and anything vaguely related, hosted by Benjamin James Kuper-Smith.
Timestamps 0:00:00: Supportive peer review 0:03:25: Why study linguistics? 0:11:05: Uncertainties about doing a PhD/taking time off 0:18:05: Emily's year-and-a-half in Peru 0:25:17: Emily's PhD 0:29:34: Neural fingerprints 0:49:25: Naturalistic stimuli in neuroimaging 1:24:01: How to write good scientific articles 1:30:55: A book or paper more people should read 1:34:58: Something Emily wishes she'd learnt sooner 1:39:20: Advice for PhD students/postdocs
Byrge & Kennedy (2019). High-accuracy individual identification using a “thin slice” of the functional connectome. Network Neuroscience. Burkeman (2021). Four thousand weeks: Time management for mortals. Finn, ... & Constable (2014). Disruption of functional networks in dyslexia: a whole-brain, data-driven analysis of connectivity. Biological psychiatry. Finn, Shen, ... & Constable (2015). Functional connectome fingerprinting: identifying individuals using patterns of brain connectivity. Nature Neuroscience. Finn, ... & Constable (2018). Trait paranoia shapes inter-subject synchrony in brain activity during an ambiguous social narrative. Nature Communications. Finn, ... & Bandettini (2020). Idiosynchrony: From shared responses to individual differences during naturalistic neuroimaging. NeuroImage. Finn & Bandettini (2021). Movie-watching outperforms rest for functional connectivity-based prediction of behavior. NeuroImage. Finn (2021). Is it time to put rest to rest?. Trends in cognitive sciences. Finn & Rosenberg (2021). Beyond fingerprinting: Choosing predictive connectomes over reliable connectomes. NeuroImage. Grall & Finn (2022). Leveraging the power of media to drive cognition: A media-informed approach to naturalistic neuroscience. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience. Hasson, ... & Malach (2004). Intersubject synchronization of cortical activity during natural vision. Science. Hedge, Powell & Sumner (2018). The reliability paradox: Why robust cognitive tasks do not produce reliable individual differences. Behavior research methods. Sava-Segal, ... & Finn (2023). Individual differences in neural event segmentation of continuous experiences. Cerebral Cortex.
50th episode special: reviewing one year of the podcast, lessons learnt, and plans for the future
31 Dec 2021
01:39:59
This is the 50th episode of this podcast and we're doing something a little different: Cody Kommers, PhD student, fellow podcaster, and one of the first guests of my podcast, interviewed me about the first year of my podcast: what did I learn, what went differently than expected, and what do I plan on changing in the future? We also discuss podcasting more generally and use Cody's experience in running his podcasts as a counterexample in our discussion.
Time stamps 0:00:05: Cody's introduction 0:01:37: Why did I start the podcast? 0:04:32: Expectation vs reality of running a podcast 0:12:05: Other podcasts I enjoy and that influenced me 0:26:50: What am I trying to do when I'm interviewing someone? 0:36:03: Who's the target audience for this podcast? 0:43:22: The podcast's format 0:47:19: How could I save time doing the podcast? 1:02:52: Distribution and marketing of podcasts 1:15:35: Focussing the scope of my topics 1:31:25: The future of this podcast
49. Book club: Conceptual Spaces by Peter Gärdenfors, chapters 7 & 8, & general discussion
24 Dec 2021
00:50:43
This is the fourth and final episode of a book club series on Peter Gärdenfors's book Conceptual Spaces. In this episode, we will discuss chapters 7 and 8, in which Gärdenfors discusses computational aspects his theory of conceptual spaces, and provides a general discussion of the topics covered in the book.
For this series, I'm joined by Koen Frolichcs, who was already my cohost for the books club series on Lee Child's Killing Floor. Koen and I are PhD students in the same lab.
Bauby, J. D. (2008). The diving bell and the butterfly. Vintage. Bellmund, J. L., Gärdenfors, P., Moser, E. I., & Doeller, C. F. (2018). Navigating cognition: Spatial codes for human thinking. Science, 362(6415). Churchland, P. S., & Sejnowski, T. J. (1994). The computational brain. MIT press. Gärdenfors, P. (2004). Conceptual spaces: The geometry of thought. MIT press. Hafting, T., Fyhn, M., Molden, S., Moser, M. B., & Moser, E. I. (2005). Microstructure of a spatial map in the entorhinal cortex. Nature, 436(7052), 801-806. Kriegeskorte, N., & Kievit, R. A. (2013). Representational geometry: integrating cognition, computation, and the brain. Trends in cognitive sciences, 17(8), 401-412. Kriegeskorte, N., Mur, M., & Bandettini, P. A. (2008). Representational similarity analysis-connecting the branches of systems neuroscience. Frontiers in systems neuroscience, 2, 4. LeCun, Y., Bengio, Y., & Hinton, G. (2015). Deep learning. Nature, 521(7553), 436-444. O'Keefe, J., & Dostrovsky, J. (1971). The hippocampus as a spatial map: preliminary evidence from unit activity in the freely-moving rat. Brain research. Quiroga, R. Q. (2012). Concept cells: the building blocks of declarative memory functions. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 13(8), 587-597. Rumelhart, D. E., Hinton, G. E., & Williams, R. J. (1986). Learning representations by back-propagating errors. Nature, 323(6088), 533-536. Silver, D., Schrittwieser, J., Simonyan, K., Antonoglou, I., Huang, A., Guez, A., ... & Hassabis, D. (2017). Mastering the game of go without human knowledge. Nature, 550(7676), 354-359.
48. Book club: Conceptual Spaces by Peter Gärdenfors, chapters 5 & 6
17 Dec 2021
00:23:36
This is the third episode of a book club series on Peter Gärdenfors's book Conceptual Spaces. In this episode, we will discuss chapters 5 and 6, in which Gärdenfors explains how semantics and induction fit into his theory of conceptual spaces.
For this series, I'm joined by Koen Frolichcs, who was already my cohost for the books club series on Lee Child's Killing Floor. Koen and I are PhD students in the same lab.
References Gärdenfors, P. (2004). Conceptual spaces: The geometry of thought. MIT press. Hohwy, J. (2013). The predictive mind. Oxford University Press. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_economicus
47. Book club: Conceptual Spaces by Peter Gärdenfors, chapters 3 & 4
10 Dec 2021
00:44:57
This is the second episode of a book club series on Peter Gärdenfors's book Conceptual Spaces. In this episode, we will discuss chapters 3 and 4, in which Gärdenfors explains how properties and concepts fit into his theory of conceptual spaces.
For this series, I'm joined by Koen Frolichcs, who was already my cohost for the books club series on Lee Child's Killing Floor. Koen and I are PhD students in the same lab.
References Gärdenfors, P. (2004). Conceptual spaces: The geometry of thought. MIT press. Kahneman, D, & Tversky, A (1979). Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision under Risk. Econometrica. 47 (2): 263–291. Kriegeskorte, N., Mur, M., & Bandettini, P. A. (2008). Representational similarity analysis-connecting the branches of systems neuroscience. Frontiers in systems neuroscience, 2, 4. Montague, P. R., Dayan, P., Person, C., & Sejnowski, T. J. (1995). Bee foraging in uncertain environments using predictive hebbian learning. Nature, 377(6551), 725-728. Murphy, R. O., & Ackermann, K. A. (2014). Social value orientation: Theoretical and measurement issues in the study of social preferences. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 18(1), 13-41. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monotonic_function