biocomputing

Michael Levin's NeurIPS 2018 talk on bioelectric computation outside the nervous system, showing how cell electrical networks shape development and regeneration. It covers morphological information processing in living tissue.

Gary Wilson's TEDxGlasgow talk argues that internet pornography hyperstimulates the brain's reward system and can cause symptoms that reverse when people stop. TED notes that several claims are not supported by respected academic studies.

A Google Tech Talk by sleep researcher Dr. William Dement on healthy sleep and performance. He argues sleep debt must be repaid and describes the three characteristics of healthy sleep.

Geoffrey Hinton's Google Tech Talk linking machine learning to biology, explaining dropout as a form of model averaging and why sexual reproduction and stochastic spiking neurons may prevent overfitting.

Dr. Howard Schubiner presents his research that much chronic pain comes from learned neural pathways rather than structural damage, and outlines a treatment approach based on that view.

Neuroscientist Jill Bolte Taylor describes watching her own brain functions shut down during a massive stroke. She gives a first-person account of losing speech, motion and self-awareness.

Cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman argues in this TED talk that evolution shaped perception to track fitness rather than truth. He uses evolutionary simulations and the Australian jewel beetle as examples.

Berkeley sleep scientist Matthew Walker presents the science of sleep and dreams and how sleep affects health and lifespan, based on his book Why We Sleep.

Developmental and synthetic biologist Michael Levin speaks at a Harvard Extension student event on bioelectricity, body intelligence and regenerative medicine. He discusses how cell electrical networks guide growth and form.

Sebastian Seung's TED talk introduces the connectome, the map of neural connections he argues defines each person. He explains how mapping it could change how we understand brains and minds.

UCLA professor Dario Nardi presents brain-imaging research suggesting that different Myers-Briggs personality types use their brains in different ways. He discusses how each type can reach a state of creative flow. It is aimed at a general audience.

David Rock gives a Google Tech Talk based on his book Your Brain at Work, using neuroscience to explain why focus and productivity are hard at the office. He gives strategies for managing mental energy and distraction.

Psychiatrist Daniel Amen discusses lessons from 83,000 brain scans, arguing that brain activity patterns relate to psychological symptoms and that you can improve your brain.

Neurologist Dr. Matthew Phillips talks at Low Carb Gold Coast 2022 about fasting and ketogenic diets as therapies for cancer and neurodegenerative disease. He focuses on mitochondrial dysfunction and brain energy metabolism.

Neuroscientist Anil Seth argues in this TED talk that perception is a controlled hallucination: the brain constantly predicts the world and our shared agreement is what we call reality. He also touches on the construction of the self.

Psychology professor Lisa Feldman Barrett presents her research on what emotions are, arguing that the brain constructs them rather than reading them off faces. She says this means we have more control over our emotions than we think.

Jeff Hawkins presents his view that the neocortex works on principles different from traditional computers. He describes sparse distributed representations and how they are learned, then shows how Numenta applies them to predict from high-velocity data streams.

Inventor Mary Lou Jepsen demonstrates using red light and sound to see inside the body and brain, aiming at tumor detection and neural activity measurement, and potentially a cheaper wearable MRI replacement.

Neuroscientist Beau Lotto runs the audience through color and pattern illusions to show that perception is shaped by context and evolutionary history rather than being a direct readout of the world. The talk is playful and hands-on, and it argues that the brain interprets ambiguous signals.

Berkeley neuroscientist Jack Gallant shows how fMRI brain mapping can be used to decode what a person sees, with visualizations of brain activity and its implications.

A five-minute C-SPAN clip of Dr. Jared Cooney Horvath testifying to a US Senate committee that screen time, including in schools, harms children's learning and cognitive development.

Ray Kurzweil presents his book How to Create a Mind at Google, on reverse engineering the brain and using that understanding to build intelligent machines. He shows his graphs of exponential technological progress.