New Books in Neuroscience

A new understanding of memory is emerging from the latest scientific research. In Why We Remember: Unlocking Memory's Power to Hold on to What Matters (Doubleday, 2024), pioneering neuroscientist and psychologist Charan Ranganath radically reframes the way we think about the everyday act of remembering. Combining accessible language with cutting-edge research, he reveals the surprising ways our brains record the past and how we use that information to understand who we are in the present, and to imagine and plan for the future.Memory, Dr. Ranganath shows, is a highly transformative force that shapes how we experience the world in often invisible and sometimes destructive ways. Knowing this can help us with daily remembering tasks, like finding our keys, and with the challenge of memory loss as we age. What's more, when we work with the brain's ability to learn and reinterpret past events, we can heal trauma, shed our biases, learn faster, and grow in self-awareness.Including fascinating studies and examples from pop culture, and drawing on Ranganath's life as a scientist, father, and child of immigrants, Why We Remember is a captivating read that unveils the hidden role memory plays throughout our lives. When we understand its power-- and its quirks--we can cut through the clutter and remember the things we want to remember. We can make freer choices and plan a happier future. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/neuroscience

In this episode of the CEU Press Podcast, host Andrea Talabér (CEU Press/CEU Review of Books) sat down with Matt Qvortrup (Coventry University) to discuss his new book with CEU Press entitled, The Political Brain: The Emergence of Neuropolitics (CEU Press, 2024).Putting the “science” back into political science, The Political Brain shows how fMRI-scans can identify differences between liberals and conservatives, can predict our behaviour, and can explain the biology of uprisings, revolutions, and wars. The book also provides an overview of the state-of-the-art knowledge of the organ that shapes our politics. It warns that if we rely on the evolutionarily primitive parts of the midbrain, those engaged when we succumb to polarised politics, we stand in danger of squandering the gains we made through the last eight million years.Matt’s book is part of our new series, CEU Press Perspectives. The series offers the latest viewpoints on both new and perennial issues, these books address a wide range of topics of critical importance today. The new series, originating from an international collection of leading authors, encourages us to look at issues from a different viewpoint, to think outside the box, and to stimulate debate.You can learn more about the series here.The CEU Press Podcast delves into various aspects of the publishing process: from crafting a book proposal, finding a publisher, responding to peer review feedback on the manuscript, to the subsequent distribution, promotion and marketing of academic books. We will also talk to series editors and authors, who will share their experiences of getting published and talk about their series or books.Interested in CEU Press’s publications? Click here to find out more: https://ceupress.com/  Stay tuned for future episodes and subscribe to our podcast to be the first to be notified. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/neuroscience

Our stress response system is magnificent - it operates beneath our awareness, like an orchestra of organs playing a hidden symphony. When we are healthy, the orchestra plays effortlessly, but what happens when our bodies face chronic stress, and the music slips out of tune? The alarming rise of stress-related conditions, such as heart disease, diabetes, and depression, show the price we're paying for our high-pressure living, while global warming, pandemics and technology have brought new kinds of stress into all our lives. But what can we do about it? Explore the fascinating mysteries of our hidden stress response system with Dr. Wulsin, who uses his decades of experience to show how toxic stress impacts our bodies. In Toxic Stress: How Stress Is Making Us Ill and What We Can Do About It (Cambridge UP, 2024), Wulsin gives us the expert advice and tools needed to prevent toxic stress from taking over. Chapter by chapter, learn to help your body and mind recover from toxic stress. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/neuroscience

Max Bennett, an AI entrepreneur and neuroscience researcher, dives into the intersection of brain evolution and artificial intelligence. He discusses how intelligence has developed over 600 million years, from primitive organisms to humans. Bennett explains key breakthroughs in cognition, such as planning and episodic memory, and parallels them with AI technologies. He highlights the role of curiosity in both biological and artificial systems, emphasizing how understanding our brains can inform AI design. The intriguing interplay between neuroscience and tech unfolds throughout the conversation.

Why do we sleep? How can we improve our sleep?A century ago, sleep was considered a state of nothingness—even a primitive habit that we could learn to overcome. Then, an immigrant scientist and his assistant spent a month in the depths of a Kentucky cave, making nationwide headlines and thrusting sleep science to the forefront of our consciousness.In the 1920s, Nathaniel Kleitman founded the world’s first dedicated sleep lab at the University of Chicago, where he subjected research participants (including himself) to a dizzying array of tests and tortures. But the tipping point came in 1938, when his cave experiment awakened the general public to the unknown—and vital—world of sleep. Kleitman went on to mentor the talented but troubled Eugene Aserinsky, whose discovery of REM sleep revealed the astonishing activity of the dreaming brain, and William Dement, a jazz-bass playing revolutionary who became known as the father of sleep medicine. Dement, in turn, mentored the brilliant maverick Mary Carskadon, who uncovered an epidemic of sleep deprivation among teenagers, and launched a global movement to fight it.In Mapping the Darkness: The Visionary Scientists Who Unlocked the Mysteries of Sleep (Hachette Books, 2023), award-winning Kenneth Miller weaves together science and history to tell the story of four outsider scientists who took sleep science from fringe discipline to mainstream obsession through spectacular experiments, technological innovation, and single-minded commitment.Mapping the Darkness was named the Best Book of the Year 2023 by the New Yorker. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/neuroscience

Thomas Metzinger, a leading researcher on consciousness and Professor Emeritus at Johannes Gutenberg University, discusses the essence of pure consciousness. He shares insights derived from over 500 experiential reports from meditators across 57 countries, exploring states of pure awareness and their transformative power. Metzinger bridges philosophical skepticism and non-dual awareness, critiques consciousness research, and examines ethical dilemmas posed by AI technologies. The conversation emphasizes the importance of creating a genuine culture of consciousness.

C. S. Sherrington said “All the brain can do is to move things". The Brain in Motion: From Microcircuits to Global Brain Function (MIT Press, 2023) shows how much the brain can do "just" by moving things. It gives an amazing overview of the large variety of motor behaviors and the cellular basis of them. It reveals how motor circuits provide the underlying mechanism not just for walking or jumping, but also for breath or chewing.The book emphasizes the evolutionary perspective. It demonstrates how the basic structures are the same across all vertebrates, suggesting that these systems have been around for more than 500 million years.At the very beginning, Grillner introduces the analogy of an orchestra: The microcircuits are the musicians, and the forebrain acts as the conductor. In the following chapters, the readers get to know all the important actors and their contribution to this "performance": the CPGs and motor centers that execute the movements, the tectum that synthesizes input from the direct surroundings of the animal, the basal ganglia and the cortex that together direct the microcircuits, and the cerebellum, which plays a crucial role in adapting the movements according to the environment and learning new motor behavior. The Brain in Motion provides both a great overview of the motor system and a detailed presentation of its major contributors. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/neuroscience

Today’s book is: Look Again: The Power of Noticing What Was Always There (Atria/One Signal Publishers, 2024), by Tali Sharot and Cass R. Sunstein, a book that asks why stimulating jobs and breathtaking works of art lose their sparkle after a while. People stop noticing what is most wonderful in their own lives. They also stop noticing what is terrible, due to something called habituation. Because of habituation, people get used to dirty air, become unconcerned by their own misconduct, and become more liable to believe misinformation. But what if you could dishabituate? Could you find a way to see everything anew? What if you could regain sensitivity, not only to the great things in your life, but also to the terrible things you stopped noticing and so don’t try to change? In Look Again, neuroscience professor Tali Sharot and Harvard law professor Cass R. Sunstein investigate why we stop noticing both the great and not-so-great things around us and how to “dishabituate.” This groundbreaking work, based on decades of research in the psychological and biological sciences, illuminates how we can reignite the sparks of joy, innovate, and recognize where improvements urgently need to be made. The key to this disruption—to seeing, feeling, and noticing again—is change. By temporarily changing your environment, changing the rules, changing the people you interact with—or even just stepping back and imagining change—you regain sensitivity, allowing you to more clearly identify the bad and more deeply appreciate the good.Our guest is: Cass R. Sunstein, who is the nation’s most-cited legal scholar. For the past fifteen years, he has been at the forefront of behavioral economics. From 2009 to 2012, he served as the administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. Since that time, he has served in the US government in multiple capacities and worked with the United Nations and the World Health Organization, where he chaired the Technical Advisory Group on Behavioral Insights and Sciences for Health during the COVID-19 pandemic. He is the Robert Walmsley University Professor at Harvard Law School. His book Nudge, coauthored with Richard Thaler, was a national bestseller. In 2018, he was the recipient of the Holberg Prize from the government of Norway, sometimes described as equivalent of the Nobel Prize for law and the humanities. He lives in Boston and Washington, DC, with his wife, children, and labrador retrievers. He is the co-author [along with Tali Sharot, who could not join us for this episode] of Look Again.Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, who is the creator of the Academic Life podcast. She holds a PhD in history, which she uses to explore what stories we tell and what happens to those we never tell.Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! Join us again to learn from more experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Missed any of the 200+ Academic Life episodes? You’ll find them all archived here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/neuroscience

Why are some things cute, and others not? What happens to our brains when we see something cute? And how did cuteness go global, from Hello Kitty to Disney characters?Cuteness is an area where culture and biology get tangled up. Seeing a cute animal triggers some of the most powerful psychological instincts we have - the ones that elicit our care and protection - but there is a deeper story behind the broad appeal of Japanese cats and saccharine greetings cards.In Irresistible: How Cuteness Wired our Brains and Conquered the World (Profile Books, 2023) Dr. Joshua Paul Dale, a pioneer in the burgeoning field of cuteness studies, explains how the cute aesthetic spread around the globe, from pop brands to Lolita fashion, kids' cartoons and the unstoppable rise of Hello Kitty. Irresistible delves into the surprisingly ancient origins of Japan's kawaii culture, and uncovers the cross-cultural pollination of the globalised world. Understanding the psychology of cuteness can help answer some of the biggest questions in evolutionary history and the mysterious origins of animal domestication.This is the fascinating cultural history of cuteness, and a revealing look at how our most powerful psychological impulses have remade global style and culture.This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose forthcoming book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/neuroscience

How does human language arise in the mind? To what extent is it innate, or something that is learned? How do these factors interact? The questions surrounding how we acquire language are some of the most fundamental about what it means to be human and have long been at the heart of linguistic theory. Harry van der Hulst's book A Mind for Language: An Introduction to the Innateness Debate (Cambridge UP, 2023) provides a comprehensive introduction to this fascinating debate, unravelling the arguments for the roles of nature and nurture in the knowledge that allows humans to learn and use language. An interdisciplinary approach is used throughout, allowing the debate to be examined from philosophical and cognitive perspectives. It is illustrated with real-life examples and the theory is explained in a clear, easy-to-read way, making it accessible for students without a background in linguistics. An accompanying website contains a glossary, questions for reflection, discussion themes and project suggestions, to further deepen students’ understanding of the material.Madhumanti Datta completed her PhD in Linguistics from the University of Southern California, USA. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/neuroscience