#28 No. 1 Intuition Expert: Harnessing your Subconscious, Aphantasia and The Future of AI Relationships

Dr. Joel Pearson is a psychologist, neuroscientist, and founder of Future Minds Lab at UNSW — a cutting-edge research group exploring consciousness, intuition, mental imagery, and the psychology of decision-making in the age of AI.

He’s the world’s leading expert on aphantasia — the inability to visualize mental images — and author of The Intuition Toolkit, a science-backed guide to harnessing the power of the subconscious mind.

Expect to learn how intuition really works in the brain, the 5 science-based rules for trusting your gut, how to train intuition like a skill, the surprising link between interoception and unconscious decision-making, the neuroscience of flow and instinctive action, what aphantasia reveals about emotion and memory, how visual imagery amplifies anxiety, why some people are immune to mental pictures, how AI companions are already warping human psychology, and what happens when we start outsourcing love to machines.

Timestamps:

00:02:03 Exploring the Unconventional Lab of Dr. Joe Pearson

00:08:05 Understanding Intuition: Definitions and Mechanisms

00:13:50 The Role of Context in Intuition

00:17:00 The Neural Mechanisms of Intuition

00:19:59 Intuition in Decision Making

00:22:54 Practical Applications of Intuition

00:26:03 Intuition in Sports and Motor Skills

00:32:38 Intuition and Career Choices

00:34:47 The Role of Intuition in Decision Making

00:38:20 Agency and Mental Health

00:39:52 The Science of Intuition

00:41:31 Real-Life Applications of Intuition

00:45:30 Honing Intuition in Daily Life

00:48:39 Flow State and Intuition

00:54:13 Improving Intuition in the Lab

01:00:31 Measuring the Mind: Psychophysical Technologies

01:02:11 Intuition and Learning: Understanding Decision-Making

01:05:15 Aphantasia: The Inability to Visualize

01:09:34 The Journey into Mental Imagery Research

01:12:44 Personal Experiences with Aphantasia

01:21:26 Memory and Aphantasia: How Do They Interact?

01:29:28 Adaptive Advantages of Aphantasia: A New Perspective

01:30:33 Diverse Cognitive Approaches to Mathematics

01:31:32 The Emotional Impact of Imagery

01:32:57 Risk Perception and Empathy in Aphantasia

01:35:09 Understanding Aphantasia Prevalence

01:36:28 The Limits of Understanding Aphantasia

01:38:38 Exploring Multisensory Aphantasia

01:40:23 Future Directions in Aphantasia Research

01:43:55 The Psychological Impact of AI

01:49:00 The Future of Human-AI Relationships

01:51:41 Exciting Developments in Neuroscience..

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