split brain

CGP Grey explains split-brain patients, where severing the corpus callosum lets the two hemispheres act independently. He uses this to explore the idea of two minds in one head.

Lex Fridman interviews Bryan Johnson, founder of Kernel and previously Braintree, about brain-computer interfaces and Kernel's non-invasive brain monitoring hardware. It covers what the devices can do today and the company's plans.

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.

Jack Gallant's lab demonstrates reconstructing movie trailer clips a subject watched from fMRI brain activity, using regression models trained on hours of viewing data. The video shows the original clip beside the reconstruction.

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 Huberman Lab podcast episode on the gut-brain axis and how the gut microbiome affects the nervous system, hunger and overall health. It covers the pathways by which the gut influences the brain and practical steps for gut health.

An RSA Animate summary of Iain McGilchrist's lecture on the divided brain, arguing the brain's two hemispheres attend to the world differently and that this has shaped culture and society.

A NOVA documentary with neuroscientist Heather Berlin exploring the subconscious and what drives our decisions. It uses sleepwalking, anesthesia, improvised rap in an MRI and game theory to probe how much of the brain's work is hidden.

Lex Fridman interviews Jeff Hawkins, founder of Numenta and author of On Intelligence, about the Thousand Brains Theory and reverse-engineering the neocortex. They also cover Hierarchical Temporal Memory and brain-inspired AI architectures.

An update from the Strange Parts YouTuber on his recovery from a brain injury caused by a metal pipe while filming, and his plans for the channel.

A video arguing that exercise matters for the brain as much as the body, linking movement, the nervous system and BDNF to learning and memory. It draws on research connecting complex movement to brain development.

A short TED-Ed animated lesson by Anita Collins on what happens in the brain when people play a musical instrument. It argues that playing engages many brain areas at once, like a full-body workout, with long-term benefits.

Andrew, diagnosed with early onset Parkinson's at 35, shows how deep brain stimulation surgery has controlled his motor symptoms. The short video shows his tremors with the stimulator off and on.

Andrew Huberman introduces how the nervous system produces sensation, emotion and behavior, and how neuroplasticity lets us change it. It covers neurons, synapses, brain chemicals and the rhythms governing focus, learning and sleep.

A 60 Minutes report on neurosurgeon Ali Rezai using focused ultrasound on the brain to treat Alzheimer's and addiction. It shows experiments opening the blood-brain barrier and targeting addiction-related regions.

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.

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.

Isaac Arthur explains the Matrioshka Brain, a hypothetical computer or artificial mind powered by an entire star using nested shells. It covers how such megastructures relate to Dyson spheres and superintelligence.

A short recording of a 1565 organ in Mantua tuned in quarter-comma meantone, showing split sharps in use. The extra keys provide separate D-sharp and A-flat for more tonalities.

A two-hour Huberman Lab podcast episode on the physiological effects of alcohol on the brain and body at different levels of consumption. It covers genetic predisposition to alcoholism, alcohol metabolism, and how it causes cellular stress and changes thinking and behavior.

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.

Destin of Smarter Every Day learns to ride a bicycle whose steering is reversed, taking about eight months, and compares it with how his young son learned much faster. It illustrates knowledge versus understanding and brain plasticity in adults versus children.

Neuroscientist Karl Friston gives a 15-minute talk on the free energy principle, covering Markov blankets, Bayesian model evidence and global brain theories.

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.

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.

A FoundMyFitness episode on how microplastics and associated chemicals such as BPA and PFAS accumulate in the body, including the brain and reproductive systems. It also discusses ways to reduce exposure.

Mike Boyd takes up Smarter Every Day's challenge to learn to ride the Backwards Brain Bike, a bicycle whose steering is inverted, and rides 50 meters. It shows how hard it is to unlearn a motor skill.

A Golden Balls episode in which one contestant announces he will steal, leading to an unexpected outcome in the split-or-steal prisoner's dilemma.

A short animated explanation of the power split device in Toyota-style hybrids, a planetary gearset that works as an eCVT. It shows how engine and motor power are combined.

A tool-assisted run of Brain Age by TASBot, shown at Awesome Games Done Quick 2016. The bot gives deliberately deranged answers while exploiting the game's error-prone recognition.

A short CGP Grey bonus video explaining the shortest-splitline algorithm, which draws electoral districts by repeatedly splitting a state along its shortest dividing line while balancing population. It is offered as a neutral, algorithmic fix for gerrymandering.

Destin Sandlin of Smarter Every Day undergoes hypoxia training and experiences his own impaired thinking as oxygen is withdrawn. The video shows how quickly and unnoticeably oxygen deprivation degrades judgment, illustrating why you put your own mask on first.

Neuroscientist Anil Seth gives a Royal Institution lecture on the science of consciousness. He separates conscious level, content and self, and argues that experience arises from the brain's predictive inference.

Robert Sapolsky's Stanford lecture on language, comparing human and animal communication, ape language projects like Koko and Kanzi, and how language is acquired. It is part of his human behavioral biology course.

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.

Lex Fridman interviews MIT psycholinguist Edward Gibson on human language, syntax, grammar and how large language models relate to them. The conversation runs nearly three hours.