Unpopular Neuroscience

Slug Fest

This week on Unpopular Neuroscience, Katie and Patrick welcome special guest Matt Baumann with a deep question from his son, Calvin. When a slug remembers something, is i

I, Robot.

Large attentional transformers like ChatGPT generate text that seems surprisingly human-like. On this episode Katie and Patrick ask which bits of the brain work like larg

Lots of People in Your Head

Neuroscientists don't believe in Artificial General Intelligence because they don't believe in General Intelligence. Instead they think the brain has multiple, specialize

Consciousness, Man.

What is consciousness? To the general public it's one of the most profound and enduring mysteries of the human psyche. To specialists it's something we don't worry about

Cognitive Biases: Why Everyone Is Stupid Except Me!

On this episode Katie & Patrick discuss why cognitive biases are so popular—at least when applied to other people—even though these reasoning foibles are not exclusive to

Learning Science, Learning Magic

Everyone knows that learning takes hard work, deep reading, study, and repeated practice. But wouldn't it be rad if it didn't? On this episode Katie and Patrick talk abou

AI Winter is Coming

AI oscillates between impressive breakthroughs and laughable failures. In this episode Katie & Patrick discuss AI booms and winters and what makes the technology so britt

Hat Trick

What's so great about having a "normal" brain? Katie & Patrick discuss a trio of patients from Oliver Sacks' iconic book The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat who have a

All the brains I've loved before.

We sometimes talk about "the brain" as if there's only one of them, but there's tremendous diversity in nervous systems between species, and even between individuals. On

Weird Little Guys: Vehicles by Valentino Braitenberg

How hard is it to build a working, thinking brain from simple parts like wires, sensors, and motors? According to Valentino Braitenberg, author of this week's Book Vehicl

Why Study Unpopular Neuroscience?

Everyone is curious about the brain, but what would understanding the brain even look like? On the first episode of Unpopular Neuroscience, neuroscientists Katie and Patr