Send us a text
Episode Summary: Dr. Gyorgy Buzsaki discusses the hippocampus’s role beyond memory and spatial navigation, delving into its broader functions in cognition, action planning, and brain-body interactions; how hippocampal rhythms, like sharp wave ripples, influence memory consolidation, glucose regulation, and metabolic health, challenging conventional neuroscience assumptions; the interplay of brain rhythms, sleep, and preconfigured neural dynamics; the history and conceptual foundations of neuroscience; and more.
About the guest: Gyorgy Buzsaki, MD, PhD is a professor at NYU. He leads a lab investigating how neural circuits underpin cognition, particularly through oscillations and brain-body interactions. His work has significantly advanced understanding of memory formation and spatial navigation.
Note: Podcast episodes are fully available to paid subscribers on the M&M Substack and everyone on YouTube. Partial versions are available elsewhere. Transcript and other information on Substack.
Key Conversation Points:
- Hippocampus isn’t just for memory or navigation; it may orchestrate action planning and abstract representations of the world, shaped by evolutionary constraints.
- Brain rhythms, like sharp wave ripples, synchronize neural activity, enabling efficient communication and impacting bodily functions like glucose homeostasis.
- Sharp wave ripples, prominent during non-REM sleep and consummatory states, are critical for memory consolidation and may link sleep disruptions to metabolic disorders.
- Buzsaki challenges the idea of memory as fixed synaptic patterns, proposing it’s more like dynamic, cloud-like sequences, endlessly reconfigurable.
- The brain’s intrinsic dynamics prioritize action generation and learning from consequences over external representations.
Related episode:
- M&M 16: Sleep, Dreams, Memory & the Brain | Bob Stickgold
*Not medical advice.
Support the show
All episodes, show notes, transcripts, and more at the M&M Substack
Affiliates:
- KetoCitra—Ketone body BHB + potassium, calcium & magnesium, formulated with kidney health in mind. Use code MIND20 for 20% off any subscription (cancel anytime)
- Lumen device to optimize your metabolism for weight loss or athletic performance. Use code MIND for 10% off
- Readwise: Organize and share what you read. 60 days FREE through link
- Athletic Greens: Comprehensive & convenient daily nutrition. Free 1-year supply of vitamin D with purchase.
- MASA Chips—delicious tortilla chips made from organic corn and grass-fed beef tallow. No seed oils or artificial ingredients. Use code MIND for 20% off
For all the ways you can support my efforts
