Intro

Our brains can feel remote and abstract. Hidden behind Latin names and textbook diagrams, they rarely feel as personal to us as our hearts and stomachs.

In this episode, neurologist and author Pria Anand helps us get a little more intimate with that grey, wrinkly seat of our consciousness.

Together we explore both the structural architecture and the musical synchronies of the brain. We travel across the left and the right brain, "listen" to the meaning of different brain waves, and discuss some of the most perplexing examples from the annals of neuroscience. What emerges is not just an intimate journey through the organ that makes us who we are, but also an exploration on the meaning of pain, identity, and storytelling.

As always, we finish with my guest's reflection on humanity.

📖 Dr Anand's new book is The Mind Electric: A Neurologist on the Strangeness and Wonder of Our Brains

Want to support the show? Join the club at Patreon.com/OnHumans

FACT CHECKING

No major mistakes have been found so far.

As a small correction, the patient with conflicting career goals did not, when asked, want to be an "architect", but a "draftsman". See "A Divided Mind" by Joseph LeDoux and colleagues (free PDF).

If you find a mistake in this or other episodes, you reach out directly to at Substack.com/OnHumans or via email.

KEYWORDS

Names mentioned: Michael Gazzaniga | Joseph LeDoux | Patient P.S. | Henry Molaison (H.M.) | William Halsted | Julius Caesar | Fyodor Dostoevsky | Dr. Strangelove | Matthew Cobb | Suzana Herculano-Houzel

Terms and concepts discussed: neurology | neuropsychology | brain damage | lesions | REM sleep (rapid eye movement) | paradoxical sleep | REM atonia | narcolepsy | sleep apnea | Parkinson’s disease | dementia | slow-wave sleep | EEG (electroencephalography) | brain oscillations | alpha waves | theta waves | seizure | epilepsy | focal seizure | generalized tonic-clonic seizure | aura | déjà vu | phantom smell (olfactory hallucination) | corpus callosum | callosotomy | anterior cerebral artery | cerebral aneurysm | hemispatial neglect | apraxia | alien hand (anarchic hand) | visual cortex | language dominance (left hemisphere) | thalamus | somatosensory cortex | limbic system | hippocampus | mesial temporal lobe | anterior temporal lobectomy | anterograde amnesia | retrograde amnesia | Korsakoff dementia (Wernicke–Korsakoff) | transient global amnesia | posterior cortical atrophy | aphasia | confabulation | nociception | lidocaine | dissociative anesthetic | epidural anesthesia | spinal anesthesia | paralytic (neuromuscular blocker) | neocortex | cortex | brainstem | cerebellum | cerebellar lesion | ataxic dysarthria | folia (cerebellar) | trunk (elephant, motor control) | Buddha’s “two arrows” parable