Published by Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute at Stanford University, Nicholas Weiler
Health & Fitness
Mental Health
Science
Life Sciences
This award-winning show from Stanford’s Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute is a field manual for anyone who wants to understand their own brain and the new science reshaping how we learn, age, heal, and make sense of ourselves. Each episode, host Nicholas Weiler sits down with leading scientists to unpack big ideas from the frontiers of the field—brain-computer interfaces and AI language models; new therapies for depression, dementia, and stroke; the mysteries of perception and memory; even the debate over free will. You’ll hear how basic research becomes clinical insight and how emerging tech might expand what it means to be human. If you’ve got a brain, take a listen.
How brain imaging is transforming mental health (finally) | Leanne Williams
Back in the 1950s, doctors didn't know a whole lot about the heart. If someone came in with chest pain, clinicians would ask a few questions, then take a stab at treating what might be heartburn or a heart attack. That's where mental health care is today, according to today's guest, Leanne Williams. For example: you come into a psychiatrist’s office. The psychiatrist determines that you’ve experienced five or more depressive symptoms for at least two consecutive weeks and you get a diagnosis of major depressive disorder. Maybe you get prescribed some combination of therapy and medication. For some it works. For others it doesn’t. On average, finding an effective treatment for depression takes patients about 7 years – one of the reasons we’re in a mental health crisis. Williams says that the key issue is that psychiatry does not base its diagnoses or treatment plans on any direct test of the organ of interest: the brain. According to Leanne’s research, people with depression actually fall into clearly different categories, caused by changes in specific brain networks that can be seen using brain imaging. She’s shown that using this data can lead to much more targeted and effective therapies. Williams leads the Precision Mental Health Center at Stanford and is helming a new international task force that aims to create a road map for transforming mental health diagnosis and treatment based on biological data and brain imaging. We invited Leanne on the show to tell us about a sea change she sees happening in psychiatry. Learn more Stanford Center for Precision Mental Health Stanford PanLab: Personalized and Translational Neuroscience Lab Reimagining mental health: Stanford Medicine experts chosen to lead precision task force (Stanford Medicine, 2026) Depression's distinctive fingerprints in the brain (From Our Neurons To Yours, 2024) Cognitive behavioral therapy for depression can lead to lasting changes in the brain (Stanford Report, 2024) A study identified 6 types of depression. Here’s why that matters (CNN, 2024) Leanne Williams receives $18 million NIH grant to diagnose and treat depression (Stanford Report, 2024) Brain scans could help personalize treatment for people who are depressed or suicidal (Science, 2019) The Precision Mental Health Commission: transforming mental health through brain circuit science (Nature Mental Health, 2026) Personalized Treatment Selection in Depression Using Clinically Interpretable Neuroimaging Biotypes (Biological Psychiatry, 2026) Personalized brain circuit scores identify clinically distinct biotypes in depression and anxiety (Nature Medicine, 2024) Send us a text! Thanks for listening! If you're enjoying our show, please take a moment to give us a review on your podcast app of choice and share this episode with your friends . That's how we grow as a show and bring the stories of the frontiers of neuroscience to a wider audience. We want to hear from your neurons! Email us at at neuronspodcast@stanford.edu Learn more about the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute at Stanford and follow us on Twitter , Facebook , and LinkedIn .
Is chronic fatigue a gut-brain reflex? (Big Ideas in Neuroscience) | Julia Kaltschmidt
Why does being sick make you so exhausted – and why does that exhaustion sometimes outlast the illness itself? Today, neuroscientist Julia Kaltschmidt returns to the podcast to talk about the body's hidden "sickness reflex," the gut-brain circuitry behind it, and what those things might reveal about chronic fatigue. Kaltschmidt , a Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute faculty scholar and professor of neurosurgery at Stanford Medicine, is an expert on the enteric nervous system — the gut's own semi-independent network of 200 to 600 million neurons. She's leading a new Big Ideas in Neuroscience project mapping out exactly how the body tells the brain it's sick, alongside Luis de Lecea , an expert in the brain circuitry of sleep, and Christoph Thaiss , who studies communication between the gut, the immune system, and the brain. The team believes that understanding the "reflex" of sickness fatigue could eventually lead to something patients with chronic fatigue and long COVID don't currently have: a real biomarker, and a path to treatment, for a condition that's too often been dismissed as "all in your head." Learn More Big Ideas in Neuroscience tackle brain science of everyday life and more (Wu Tsai Neuro, 2026) Your gut – the second brain? (Our first conversation with Julia Kaltschmidt) The gut's 'second brain' (Stanford Medicine, 2026) Discovery sheds light on earliest development of gut motility (Wu Tsai Neuro, 2024) Neuroscience sheds light on childhood gut disorders (Wu Tsai Neuro, 2024) Could boosting gut–brain communication prevent memory loss? (Podcast episode with Christoph Thaiss) Why sleep keeps us young (Podcast episode with Luis De Lecea) New Science Shows Immune "Memory" in the Brain (Quanta Magazine, 2021) Insular cortex neurons encode and retrieve specific immune responses (Cell, 2021) Send us a text! Thanks for listening! If you're enjoying our show, please take a moment to give us a review on your podcast app of choice and share this episode with your friends . That's how we grow as a show and bring the stories of the frontiers of neuroscience to a wider audience. We want to hear from your neurons! Email us at at neuronspodcast@stanford.edu Learn more about the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute at Stanford and follow us on Twitter , Facebook , and LinkedIn .
Is neurodegeneration a waste-management problem? | Monther Abu-Remaileh
For decades, the field focused on the plaques and tangles of misfolded proteins that show up in the brains of patients with Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and other disorders. The natural assumption was that if you could design a drug to clear out that gunk, you could save the brain. But so far, that bet hasn't paid off. Now, researchers are taking a big step back and asking whether the plaques aren't a culprit, but rather a clue pointing to something more fundamental going wrong in our brain cells as we age? Put another way, why do our brains get jammed up with these junk proteins in the first place? Today’s guest, chemical engineer and geneticist Monther Abu-Remaileh , is one of the researchers working hard to answer that question. His research goes deep on a tiny cellular structure called the lysosome, little sacs filled with acid and enzymes that break down worn-out proteins and cellular debris. The lysosome is like a sustainable recycling center for a major city, managing waste streams, recycling raw materials, and coordinating with the rest of the cell to keep things running – and when it breaks down, the whole cell starts to fail. Among other accomplishments, Abu-Remaileh, a member of the Knight Initiative for Brain Resilience Steering Committee, has developed clever techniques for probing the lysosome that have put him at the frontier of a transformation in how we think about the lysosome, a transformation that could point the way to slow all manner of neurodegeneration – or even prevent it from happening in the first place. Learn More From humble beginnings to unlocking lysosomal secrets (ASBMB Today, 2026) ‘You can literally lose who you are’ (Stanford Report, 2025) Driver of neurodegenerative diseases revealed (Stanford Engineering, 2023) New atlas could help researchers studying neurological disease (Knight Initiative for Brain Resilience, 2026) Sifting through cellular recycling centers (Stanford Engineering, 2022) Lysosomal metabolomics reveals V-ATPase- and mTOR-dependent regulation of amino acid efflux from lysosomes (Science, 2017) CLN3 is required for the clearance of glycerophosphodiesters from lysosomes (Nature, 2022) The Batten disease gene product CLN5 is the lysosomal bis(monoacylglycero)phosphate synthase (Science, 2023) The Bis(monoacylglycero)-phosphate Hypothesis: From Lysosomal Function to Therapeutic Avenues (Annual Review of Biochemistry, 2024) PLA2G15 is a BMP hydrolase and its targeting ameliorates lysosomal disease (Nature, 2025) Cell-type resolved protein atlas of brain lysosomes identifies SLC45A1-associated disease as a lysosomal disorder (Cell, 2026) Send us a text! Thanks for listening! If you're enjoying our show, please take a moment to give us a review on your podcast app of choice and share this episode with your friends . That's how we grow as a show and bring the stories of the frontiers of neuroscience to a wider audience. We want to hear from your neurons! Email us at at neuronspodcast@stanford.edu Learn more about the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute at Stanford and follow us on Twitter , Facebook , and LinkedIn .
A new precision neuroscience of language (Big Ideas in Neuroscience) | Cory Shain
Right now, as you're reading this sentence, something remarkable is happening in your brain. Light waves from your screen hit your eyes, transform into electrical signals, and take on meaning. You understand what you're reading. This is language — our human superpower. But despite 150 years of intensive research, we still do not have a complete picture of how the brain actually accomplishes all of this. We don't even have a good answer to a seemingly simple question: Where in the brain does language happen? It turns out, the answer may be different in different people. Today we'll hear from neuro-linguist Cory Shain , one of the leaders of a new Big Ideas in Neuroscience project here at Wu Tsai Neuro that is combining multiple brain recording techniques to build individualized maps of the language network—and use these insights to improve brain implants for people who've lost the ability to speak or write due to brain injury or illness. Learn more Laboratory for Computation & Language in Minds & Brains Laboratory of Speech Neuroscience Neural Prosthetics Translational Lab BrainGate How the Brain Processes Different Components of Language (Psychology Today, 2024) Big Ideas in Neuroscience tackle brain science of everyday life and more (Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute, 2026) Study of promising speech-enabling interface offers hope for restoring communication (Stanford Medicine, 2025) The neuroscience of understanding (Stanford Momentum, 2025) Distributed Sensitivity to Syntax and Semantics throughout the Language Network (Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 2025) Hierarchical dynamic coding coordinates speech comprehension in the brain (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2025) Send us a text! Thanks for listening! If you're enjoying our show, please take a moment to give us a review on your podcast app of choice and share this episode with your friends . That's how we grow as a show and bring the stories of the frontiers of neuroscience to a wider audience. We want to hear from your neurons! Email us at at neuronspodcast@stanford.edu Learn more about the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute at Stanford and follow us on Twitter , Facebook , and LinkedIn .
Today's episode is all about how childhood literally shapes the brain. Our most important experiences – from learning to read, to the growing complexity of our social lives at school, and even the video games we play – leave physical traces in how our brains get organized that shape how we see the world as adults. But how does the brain actually know what parts of our lives are actually important enough to reorganize around? How do particular experiences get under the hood to leave their mark on the developing brain? Today's guest, Stanford psychology professor Kalanit Grill-Spector , has spent her career trying to answer these questions. She's has been imaging children's brains – from infants to teenagers – to watch this reorganization unfold. Her work focuses on how our visual experience as children shapes our brains and how we see the world – what she and her team have found is not always what they expected. Learn More The Vision and Perception Neuroscience Lab at Stanford Humanities and Sciences Brain's face recognition area grows much bigger as we get older (New Scientist, 2017) Neuroscientists use AI to simulate how the brain makes sense of the visual world (Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute, 2025) Bridging nature and nurture: The brain's flexible foundation from birth (Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute, 2025) Extensive childhood experience with Pokémon suggests eccentricity drives organization of visual cortex (Nature Human Behavior, 2019) Cortical recycling in high-level visual cortex during childhood development (Nature Human Behaviour, 2021) A unifying framework for functional organization in early and higher ventral visual cortex (Neuron, 2024) The emergence of visual category representations in infants' brains (eLife, 2024) White matter connections of human ventral temporal cortex are organized by cytoarchitecture, eccentricity and category-selectivity from birth (Nature Human Behaviour, 2025) Send us a text! Thanks for listening! If you're enjoying our show, please take a moment to give us a review on your podcast app of choice and share this episode with your friends . That's how we grow as a show and bring the stories of the frontiers of neuroscience to a wider audience. We want to hear from your neurons! Email us at at neuronspodcast@stanford.edu Learn more about the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute at Stanford and follow us on Twitter , Facebook , and LinkedIn .
The FDA's psychedelic sea-change: what accelerated clinical trials for psilocybin, methylone, and ibogaine mean for mental health and neuroscience research | Boris Heifets
Last month we saw a big shift in the federal government’s approach to psychedelic medicine. Specifically, following an executive order by President Trump, the FDA announced it is fast-tracking its review of several clinical trials of psychedelic drugs for patients with mental health disorders. The executive order also directed more funds towards psychedelic research and a review of psychedelics’ status as highly restricted Schedule 1 substances. To help us understand what all this means for the future of psychedelic medicine and the neuroscience of psychedelics, we’re joined by Boris Heifets , an anesthesiologist at Stanford Medicine who runs a lab studying how psychedelics affect the nervous system and their impact on patients with psychiatric conditions. Learn More The Heifets Lab at Stanford Medicine FDA plans ultra-fast review of three psychedelic drugs following Trump directive (Associated Press, 2026) Trump’s order on psychedelics could have far-reaching science consequences (Scientific American, 2026) Psychedelics, placebo, and anesthetic dreams (From Our Neurons to Yours, 2024) Pychedelics inside out — how do LSD and psilocybin alter perception? (From Our Neurons to Yours, 2024) The power of psychedelics meets the power of placebo (From Our Neurons to Yours, 2024) Magnesium–ibogaine therapy in veterans with traumatic brain injuries (Nature, 2024) Magnesium–ibogaine therapy effects on cortical oscillations and neural complexity in veterans with traumatic brain injury (Nature Mental Health, 2025) Send us a text! Thanks for listening! If you're enjoying our show, please take a moment to give us a review on your podcast app of choice and share this episode with your friends . That's how we grow as a show and bring the stories of the frontiers of neuroscience to a wider audience. We want to hear from your neurons! Email us at at neuronspodcast@stanford.edu Learn more about the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute at Stanford and follow us on Twitter , Facebook , and LinkedIn .
Today’s episode is about the neuroscience of hard work—or maybe more specifically, the value we place on hard work. There’s something different about hiking to the top of a mountain versus taking a helicopter. The view from the top is exactly the same, but if you’ve done the hard slog to get there, the payoff is going to be much more rewarding. The question is, how does the brain know the difference? To answer this, we need to take a deep dive into the brain’s reward system, and one of our favorite neurotransmitters, dopamine. And it turns out, the way dopamine operates is more complicated than we thought. Our guest today, Stanford Medicine psychiatrist Neir Eshel , tells us about new research that’s starting to reveal exactly how the brain pushes us to work hard for the things that matter to us. Learn More Eshel's Stanford Translational Addiction and Aggression Research (STAAR) Lab Why we value things more when they cost us more (Stanford Medicine, 2026) Cholinergic modulation of dopamine release drives effortful behaviour ( Nature , 2026) Striatal dopamine integrates cost, benefit, and motivation ( Neuron , 2023) Dopamine and serotonin work in opposition to shape learning (Wu Tsai Neuro, 2024) Why we do what we do (From Our Neurons to Yours, 2024) Send us a text! Thanks for listening! If you're enjoying our show, please take a moment to give us a review on your podcast app of choice and share this episode with your friends . That's how we grow as a show and bring the stories of the frontiers of neuroscience to a wider audience. We want to hear from your neurons! Email us at at neuronspodcast@stanford.edu Learn more about the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute at Stanford and follow us on Twitter , Facebook , and LinkedIn .
Could Parkinson's start in the gut? | Kathleen Poston
Traditionally, we think of Parkinson's as a movement disorder—defined by slowed movement, stiff muscles, and involuntary shaking. But it turns out there are other symptoms that appear years or even decades before movement problems bring patients to the clinic: sleep disturbances, chronic constipation, and loss of smell. For today's guest, these early symptoms represent an incredible opportunity to understand where Parkinson's begins and to identify patients much earlier in the disease. Kathleen Poston is a neurologist and division chief for movement disorders at Stanford Medicine. She's also a member of the steering committee for the Knight Initiative for Brain Resilience at Wu Tsai Neuro, and advises the Michael J. Fox Foundation and pharmaceutical companies on Parkinson's research. We discuss why non-motor symptoms might hold the key to early diagnosis, how new biomarkers are redefining the disease, and whether Parkinson's might actually start in the gut. Learn More Learn about Poston's research on her lab site Learn about the Stanford Lewy Body Dementia Research Center of Excellence Redefining Parkinson's Disease | Our previous conversation with Poston, in which we learned about a sea change in our understanding of Parkinson's Disease. Neuroscientists dive into the gut (Wu Tsai Neuro, 2025) | Our 2025 Symposium explored how our brains and bodies communicate—and what that means for our health and well-being Parkinson’s comes in many forms. New biomarkers may explain why (Knight Initiative, 2025) | Blood and cerebrospinal fluid markers tied to inflammation and metabolism sort some patients into subgroups, a step toward predicting progression and tailoring care. A biological definition of neuronal α-synuclein disease: towards an integrated staging system for research ( The Lancet - Neurology , 2024) International Working Group Proposes New Framework for Defining Parkinson Disease Based on Biology, Not Symptoms (Neurology Live article) Send us a text! Thanks for listening! If you're enjoying our show, please take a moment to give us a review on your podcast app of choice and share this episode with your friends . That's how we grow as a show and bring the stories of the frontiers of neuroscience to a wider audience. We want to hear from your neurons! Email us at at neuronspodcast@stanford.edu Learn more about the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute at Stanford and follow us on Twitter , Facebook , and LinkedIn .
How see-through brains could transform neuroscience (Big Ideas in Neuroscience) | Guosong Hong
What if we could make the brain see-through? It sounds like science fiction, but it could revolutionize how we study the brain. Today on the show, we're talking with Guosong Hong , a faculty scholar here at the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute who has a unique reputation for developing creative techniques that literally shed light on the brain—from using fluorescent nanomaterials and focused ultrasound to create a virtual flashlight inside the skull , to discovering a common food dye that temporarily makes skin, muscle, and even parts of the brain transparent . Now, Guosong and colleagues are taking this work to the next level through a Wu Tsai Neuro Big Ideas grant , genetically engineering mice to have see-through brains from birth . Learn More Q&A: 'To see is to believe' (Wu Tsai Neuro, 2026) Big Ideas in Neuroscience tackle brain science of everyday life and more (Wu Tsai Neuro, 2026) Researchers turn mouse scalp transparent to image brain development (Stanford Report, 2026) The future of transparent tissue (Stanford Engineering's The Future of Everything Podcast, 2025) Non-invasive brain stimulation opens new ways to study and treat the brain (Wu Tsai Neuro, 2025) Researchers make mouse skin transparent using a common food dye (Stanford Report, 2024) Note: Episode transcript will be uploaded within 24-48 hours of publication Send us a text! Thanks for listening! If you're enjoying our show, please take a moment to give us a review on your podcast app of choice and share this episode with your friends . That's how we grow as a show and bring the stories of the frontiers of neuroscience to a wider audience. We want to hear from your neurons! Email us at at neuronspodcast@stanford.edu Learn more about the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute at Stanford and follow us on Twitter , Facebook , and LinkedIn .
Our memories and senses are deeply connected—like how a favorite song can recreate a whole glorious teenage summer. It turns out this relationship might extend beyond our five external senses to include our internal senses: the signals telling us what's happening inside our bodies, sometimes beyond the veil of conscious perception. New research by Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute affiliate Christoph Thaiss suggests that losing these internal signals as we age — in part due to changes in our gut microbiome — could one reason why our memories decline as we get older. Today we're talking with Thaiss about his new study in Nature that traces a surprising path from gut microbes to memory formation in the mouse brain. Learn More Enhancing gut-brain communication reversed cognitive decline, improved memory formation in aging mice (Stanford Medicine, 2026) Intestinal interoceptive dysfunction drives age-associated cognitive decline . ( Nature , 2026) Christoph's presentation at Wu Tsai Neuro's 2025 Annual Symposium Neuroscientists Dive into the Gut (Wu Tsai Neuro, 2025) The Thaiss Lab at the Arc Institute Thaiss Lab publications Send us a text! Thanks for listening! If you're enjoying our show, please take a moment to give us a review on your podcast app of choice and share this episode with your friends . That's how we grow as a show and bring the stories of the frontiers of neuroscience to a wider audience. We want to hear from your neurons! Email us at at neuronspodcast@stanford.edu Learn more about the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute at Stanford and follow us on Twitter , Facebook , and LinkedIn .
Why do some of us age faster than others? | Claire Bedbrook and Ravi Nath
Today on the show, why do some of us age faster than others? Why do some of us grow old and die before our time while others seem to simply endure? And most of us have probably wondered at one point or another, which track am I on? Turns out it might be possible to predict the whole trajectory of an animal's life at a surprisingly young age, just by looking closely at subtle patterns of behavior. That's the conclusion of a new study from researchers at the Knight Initiative for Brain Resilience here at Wu Tsai Neuro, out March 12, 2026 in the journal Science . The study focused on the African turquoise killifish, a little fish that lives fast and dies young. This species has one of the shortest lifespans of any vertebrate, which makes it ideal for studying the entire arc of a life in the laboratory setting. The important point here is that even short-lived killifish are dealt different lots by the fates. Even when you control for genetics and the environment, some killifish only live a month or two, while others can live as long as a year. So the big question is, what drives this difference in longevity? To learn more, we're joined today by the study's two lead researchers, Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute Postdoctoral Scholars, Claire Bedbrook and Ravi Nath , who performed the research in the labs of Anne Brunet and Karl Deisseroth here at Stanford. Learn More To study aging, researchers give killifish the CRISPR treatment (Knight Initiative for Brain Resilience, 2023) Study pinpoints key mechanism of brain aging (Stanford Report, 2025) Killifish project explores the genetic foundation of longevity (Stanford Medicine 2015) Multi-tissue transcriptomic aging atlas reveals predictive aging biomarkers in the killifish (Nature, 2026) Send us a text! Thanks for listening! If you're enjoying our show, please take a moment to give us a review on your podcast app of choice and share this episode with your friends . That's how we grow as a show and bring the stories of the frontiers of neuroscience to a wider audience. We want to hear from your neurons! Email us at at neuronspodcast@stanford.edu Learn more about the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute at Stanford and follow us on Twitter , Facebook , and LinkedIn .
We know shockingly little about what goes on in a mother’s brain during pregnancy. For example, we know only a handful of the hormones involved—out of hundreds scientists think may exist—and very little about how they might impact the brain. This gap in our understanding is one of the reasons we don’t have great treatments for pregnancy-related maladies, whether it’s extreme nausea, or anxiety and depression. Closing this gap is the mission of the new Stanford Neuro-Pregnancy Initiative , part of the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute's Big Ideas in Neuroscience Program. Today on the show, we speak with initiative leaders Nirao Shah , a neuroscientist who studies sex differences in animal behavior, and Katrin Svensson is an expert in how our tissues use hormones to communicate in health and disease. Together with Longzhi Tan , an expert in gene regulation and 3d genome structure, the team aims to chart the cellular and molecular transformation that occurs in a mother's brain during pregnancy, in hopes of better understanding this fundamental event in a person's life and improving health outcomes for both mothers and infants. Learn more: Big Ideas in Neuroscience tackle brain science of everyday life and more (Wu Tsai Neuro, 2026) Nirao Shah lab Katrin Svensson lab Longzhi Tan lab References: Hoekzema, E., et al. (2017) Pregnancy leads to long-lasting changes in human brain structure . Nat Neurosci 20, 287–296. This is the landmark neuroimaging study discussed in the episode that provided evidence of long-lasting, pregnancy-induced changes in the structure of the human brain. Fejzo, M., et al. (2024) GDF15 linked to maternal risk of nausea and vomiting during pregnancy . Nature 625, 760–767. This recent paper provides strong evidence that the hormone GDF15 acts on the brainstem to cause nausea and vomiting in pregnancy. Knoedler J, et al. A functional cellular framework for sex and estrous cycle-dependent gene expression and behavior. Cell. 185, e1–e18 (2022). This is the work from Dr. Shah’s lab mentioned in the episode, identifying a specific circuit in the hypothalamus that changes its connectivity across the estrous cycle to control female mating behavior. Ladyman S.R., et al. (2021) A reduction in voluntary physical activity in early pregnancy in mice is mediated by prolactin eLife 10:e62260 This is the research mentioned from Dr. Grattan’s lab showing that the hormone prolactin acts on the hypothalamus to reduce locomotor activity and anxiety-like behavior in pregnant mice. Send us a text! Thanks for listening! If you're enjoying our show, please take a moment to give us a review on your podcast app of choice and share this episode with your friends . That's how we grow as a show and bring the stories of the frontiers of neuroscience to a wider audience. We want to hear from your neurons! Email us at at neuronspodcast@stanford.edu Learn more about the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute at Stanford and follow us on Twitter , Facebook , and LinkedIn .
Here’s a question for you that may at first seem trivial, but is actually profound: Why do our minds drift? If you have ever dabbled in mindfulness or meditation, you know this mind wandering has an almost gravitational pull. In fact, researchers now think we spend as much as 50 percent of our waking time in this state, which cognitive scientists have dubbed the brain’s “default mode.” Today’s guest is Vinod Menon. He’s a giant in the field of cognitive science who played a central role in defining the brain “default mode network” back in 2003. In our conversation, he argues our tendency to daydream may be at the core of our self-identities, our creativity – and also many of our most troubling psychiatric disorders, from Alzheimer’s to ADHD. Vinod Menon is Rachel L. and Walter F. Nichols, MD., Professor of Psychiatry & Behavioral Science at Stanford Medicine, and an affiliate of the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute. Learn More Menon's " Stanford Cognitive & Systems Neuroscience Laboratory " Stanford Medicine study identifies distinct brain organization patterns in women and men (Stanford Medicine, 2024) Children with autism have broad memory difficulties, Stanford Medicine-led study finds (Stanford Medicine, 2023) Interactions between attention-grabbing brain networks weak in ADHD (Stanford Medicine, 2015) Send us a text! Thanks for listening! If you're enjoying our show, please take a moment to give us a review on your podcast app of choice and share this episode with your friends . That's how we grow as a show and bring the stories of the frontiers of neuroscience to a wider audience. We want to hear from your neurons! Email us at at neuronspodcast@stanford.edu Learn more about the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute at Stanford and follow us on Twitter , Facebook , and LinkedIn .
For decades, Alzheimer's research has focused on clearing amyloid plaques from the brain. But new drugs that successfully remove plaques have proven clinically "underwhelming", leaving the field searching for alternative approaches. Stanford neurologist Katrin Andreasson has spent twenty years pursuing a different path—investigating how aging triggers an energy crisis in the brain's immune and support cells. Her work reveals that inflammation and metabolic dysfunction in microglia and astrocytes may be the real drivers of Alzheimer's pathology. Most remarkably, her recent research— supported by the Knight Initiative for Brain Resilience here at the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute—shows that targeting inflammation in the peripheral immune system—outside the brain entirely—can restore memory in mouse models of the disease. While human trials are still needed, Andreasson's findings offer fresh hope and demonstrate the critical importance of supporting curiosity-driven science, even when it challenges prevailing dogma. Learn More: Alzheimer's Association honors Katrin Andreasson Research links age-related inflammation, microglia and Alzheimer’s Disease Q&A: How the aging immune system impacts brain health Rethinking Alzheimer's: Could it begin outside the brain? Why new Alzheimer's drugs may not work for patients Parkinson’s comes in many forms. New biomarkers may explain why. Send us a text! Thanks for listening! If you're enjoying our show, please take a moment to give us a review on your podcast app of choice and share this episode with your friends . That's how we grow as a show and bring the stories of the frontiers of neuroscience to a wider audience. We want to hear from your neurons! Email us at at neuronspodcast@stanford.edu Learn more about the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute at Stanford and follow us on Twitter , Facebook , and LinkedIn .
"The Emergent Mind: How Intelligence Arises in People and Machines" | Jay McClelland
The AI revolution of the past few years is built on brain-inspired neural network models originally developed to study our own minds. The question is, what should we make of the fact that our own rich mental lives are built on the same foundations as the seemingly soulless chat-bots we now interact with on a daily basis? Our guest this week is Stanford cognitive scientist Jay McClelland , who has been a leading figure in this field since the 1980s, when he developed some of the first of these artificial neural network models. Now McClelland has a new book, co-authored with SF State University computational neuroscientist Gaurav Suri , called " The Emergent Mind: How Intelligence Arises in People and Machines ." We spoke with McClelland about the entangled history of neuroscience and AI, and whether the theory of the emergent mind described in the book can help us better understand ourselves and our relationship with the technology we've created. Learn More New book sheds light on human and machine intelligence | Stanford Report How Intelligence – Both Human and Artificial – Happens | KQED Forum From Brain to Machine: The Unexpected Journey of Neural Networks | Stanford HAI Wu Tsai Neuro's Center for Mind, Brain, Computation and Technology McClelland, J. L. & Rumelhart, D. E. (1981). An interactive activation model of context effects in letter perception: Part 1. An account of basic findings. Psychological Review, 88, 375-407. [ PDF ] Rumelhart, D. E., McClelland, J. L., & the PDP research group. (1986). Parallel distributed processing: Explorations in the microstructure of cognition. Volumes I & II. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. McClelland, J. L. & Rogers, T. T. (2003). The parallel distributed processing approach to semantic cognition. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 4, 310-322. [ PDF ] McClelland, J. L., Hill, F., Rudolph, M., Baldridge, J., & Schuetze, H. (2020). Placing language in and integrated understanding system: Next steps toward human-level performance in neural language models. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 117 (42), 25966-25974. [ PDF ] Send us a text! Thanks for listening! If you're enjoying our show, please take a moment to give us a review on your podcast app of choice and share this episode with your friends . That's how we grow as a show and bring the stories of the frontiers of neuroscience to a wider audience. We want to hear from your neurons! Email us at at neuronspodcast@stanford.edu Learn more about the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute at Stanford and follow us on Twitter , Facebook , and LinkedIn .
Imagine what it’s like to lose your ability to speak. You know what you want to say, but the connection between your brain and the muscles that form words is no longer functioning. For people with conditions like ALS, or who experience a severe stroke, this is a devastating reality. Today's guest is Erin Kunz , a postdoctoral researcher in the Neural Prosthetics Translational Laboratory at Stanford, who is part of a global community of scientists working towards the vision of a brain–computer interface — or BCI — to bypass those broken circuits and restore the ability to speak to people with paralysis. We discuss how these BCIs work and the inspiring progress the tech has made in recent years, as well as the troubling question of whether a technology designed to decode what people intend to say from their brain activity could one day read out thoughts they never intended to communicate? Learn More Study of promising speech-enabling interface offers hope for restoring communication (Stanford Medicine, 2025) For Some Patients, the ‘Inner Voice’ May Soon Be Audible (The New York Times, 2025) These brain implants speak your mind — even when you don't want to (NPR, 2025) A mind-reading brain implant that comes with password protection (Nature, 2025) How neural prosthetics could free minds trapped by brain injury (From Our Neurons to Yours, 2024) Brain implants, software guide speech-disabled person’s intended words to computer screen (Stanford Medicine, 2023) Software turns ‘mental handwriting’ into on-screen words, sentences (Stanford Medicine, 2021) Send us a text! Thanks for listening! If you're enjoying our show, please take a moment to give us a review on your podcast app of choice and share this episode with your friends . That's how we grow as a show and bring the stories of the frontiers of neuroscience to a wider audience. We want to hear from your neurons! Email us at at neuronspodcast@stanford.edu Learn more about the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute at Stanford and follow us on Twitter , Facebook , and LinkedIn .
Neuroscientists have spent the past few decades tracing the network of brain systems—some deep and emotional, and others more analytical and deliberate— that work together as we make tough choices like where to invest our money as well as more everyday decisions like which videos to watch online—or, for that matter, which podcast to listen to. You can imagine that the ability to listen in on the brain systems that guide our choices might start to let scientists predict our decisions. But today's guest has taken this a step further, showing that measuring brain activity in just a few individuals can actually forecast widespread social behaviors, like which stock prices are likely to go up or down on the market, or which videos are likely to go viral. Join us as we talk with Brian Knutson , a professor of psychology in Stanford's School of Humanities and Sciences, about the frontiers of neuroeconomics, bridging psychology, economics, and neuroscience. Learn More SPANlab (Symbiotic Project on Affective Neuroscience) NeuroChoice: Eight years of forging connections to illuminate and empower choice (Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute, 2024) Brain imaging links stimulant-use relapse to distinct nerve pathway (Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute, 2022) Brain activity data may improve stock market forecasts, study shows (The Guardian, 2021) Your brain knows whether a video will go viral online (Stanford Report, 2020) Odds are good that risky gambling choices are influenced by a single brain connection, Stanford research shows (Stanford Report, 2016) Smile boosts chances of getting a microloan, say Stanford psychologists (Stanford Report, 2015) Stanford scientists see how the brain makes environmental decisions (Stanford Report, 2015) Send us a text! Thanks for listening! If you're enjoying our show, please take a moment to give us a review on your podcast app of choice and share this episode with your friends . That's how we grow as a show and bring the stories of the frontiers of neuroscience to a wider audience. We want to hear from your neurons! Email us at at neuronspodcast@stanford.edu Learn more about the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute at Stanford and follow us on Twitter , Facebook , and LinkedIn .
We are more isolated from one another than ever before — by our technology, by our political divides, and most of all, by our choices. This week on the show, we talk with neuroscientist Ben Rein about why this social isolation is terrible for our health — implicated in not only rising rates of mental illness, but also heart disease, dementia and more. We discuss Ben's new book, "Why Brains Need Friends: The Neuroscience of Social Connection" , published earlier this week, and try to work out a plan for an improved social diet to restore our brains — and our society — to good health. Learn More: Ben Rein's website Publisher's website References from the book Social Journaling template --- We are honored to have won a silver Signal Award for best science and education podcast of 2025 , as well as an audience choice award — thanks so much to everyone who voted for the show! --- We want to hear from your neurons! Email us at at neuronspodcast@stanford.edu Send us a text! Thanks for listening! If you're enjoying our show, please take a moment to give us a review on your podcast app of choice and share this episode with your friends . That's how we grow as a show and bring the stories of the frontiers of neuroscience to a wider audience. We want to hear from your neurons! Email us at at neuronspodcast@stanford.edu Learn more about the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute at Stanford and follow us on Twitter , Facebook , and LinkedIn .
Before the written word — and possibly even before speech — humans have communicated through drawing. From crude scratches in the dirt or on cave walls to the arcane symbology of the laboratory whiteboard, our instinct for conveying our thoughts visually is pretty extraordinary. We see or understand something in the world, we build an idea in our mind of what we think we see, and then using our hand and the utensil we re-create it to communicate the share our perception with others. Along the way, we add in our own understanding and experience to craft that communication in ways that might not correspond with a specific object in the world at all. How we do this — and how we can learn to be better visual communicators — is at the heart of our conversation with Judy Fan , who runs the Cognitive Tools Lab in Stanford University's Department of Psychology. We've been nominated for a 2025 Signal Award for Best Science & Education Podcast! Vote for us in the "Listener's Choice" category by October 9. Learn More: Cognitive Tools Lab , Stanford Department of Psychology Fan, J., et al. (2023) "Drawing as a versatile cognitive tool." Nature Reviews Psychology . ( pdf ) Hawkins, R., Sano, M., Goodman, N., and Fan, J. (2023). Visual resemblance and interaction history jointly constrain pictorial meaning. Nature Communications. [ pdf ] Fan, J., et al. (2020). Relating visual production and recognition of objects in human visual cortex. Journal of Neuroscience. [ pdf ] Fan, J., Yamins, D., and Turk-Browne, N. (2018). Common object representations for visual production and recognition. Cognitive Science. [ pdf ] More recent papers We want to hear from your neurons! Email us at at neuronspodcast@stanford.edu Send us a text! Thanks for listening! If you're enjoying our show, please take a moment to give us a review on your podcast app of choice and share this episode with your friends . That's how we grow as a show and bring the stories of the frontiers of neuroscience to a wider audience. We want to hear from your neurons! Email us at at neuronspodcast@stanford.edu Learn more about the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute at Stanford and follow us on Twitter , Facebook , and LinkedIn .
What is psychosis? Navigating an altered reality | Jacob Ballon & Shannon Pagdon
Imagine if you couldn't distinguish between dreams and reality. If you couldn't tell whether what you were seeing or hearing was really there in front of you. What if you discovered you couldn't trust your own perceptions? Psychosis is something three out of every a hundred people will experience at some point in their lifetimes. But what exactly is it, and is it something people can learn to live with? Today we're fortunate to have on the show Dr. Jacob Ballon , the founding co-director of Stanford Medicine's Inspire Clinic, and Shannon Pagdon , a doctoral student, peer counselor, and advocate for those living with psychosis. Learn More: Learn about the Inspire 360 Program at Stanford Medicine Explore Pagdon's Psychosis Outside the Box project and additional stories of the lived experience of psychosis from the Hearing Voices Network Read: "Psychosis 101: Unmasking one of the brain's most mysterious Malfunctions" (Stanford Medicine, 2024) Watch: "Demystifying Psychosis" (Stanford Medicine, 2024) Read: "Two key brain systems are central to psychosis, Stanford Medicine-led study finds" (Stanford Medicine, 2024) Watch: "Schizophrenia: Early signs and treatment options" (Stanford Center for Health Education, 2022) We want to hear from your neurons! Email us at at neuronspodcast@stanford.edu Send us a text! Thanks for listening! If you're enjoying our show, please take a moment to give us a review on your podcast app of choice and share this episode with your friends . That's how we grow as a show and bring the stories of the frontiers of neuroscience to a wider audience. We want to hear from your neurons! Email us at at neuronspodcast@stanford.edu Learn more about the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute at Stanford and follow us on Twitter , Facebook , and LinkedIn .
