It's Me. Your Brain. | The mind behind your decisions

Virginia Palm | Augment Mind
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It’s Me. Your Brain. is a neuroscience and psychology podcast about decision-making, stress, mental health, brain health, and thinking clearly in a fast-paced, AI-driven world. The show explores attention, emotional regulation, cognitive performance, and how modern work environments shape the way our brains function under pressure. Hosted by Virginia Palm, founder of Augment Mind. Grounded insights into the mind behind your choices - no hacks, no hustle culture.

  1. What You Lose When AI Remembers for You - with Lucy Dinu

    5d ago

    What You Lose When AI Remembers for You - with Lucy Dinu

    The strategy built in minutes. The brief drafted before the meeting ended. The answer retrieved before the question was fully formed. Everything faster. Everything smoother. And somewhere in that efficiency, something quietly shifting. This episode is about what happens to the brain when AI takes the cognitive load, what gets offloaded, what stops being encoded, and what leaders need to deliberately protect before they notice it's gone. In this episode: What cognitive offloading actually is, and why the brain does it automaticallyWhy integrating AI changes not just how you work, but how you thinkWhat most executives aren't asking when they bring AI in, and what that's costing themThe difference between retrieving intelligence and building itWhat human judgement actually means when the tools get this goodVirginia Palm's guest is Lucy Dinu, founder and managing director of KHAIO, an AI architecture firm that helps executives architect AI integration, building both the technical structure and the human judgement that decides whether the rest of it holds. Her path runs from opening her own restaurant at 20 to over a decade leading global teams across 50 markets in pharma, finance, automotive, hospitality, and the public sector. Originally from Romania, she has lived in the Netherlands, dreams of living in Japan, but currently calls Stuttgart, Germany home. It's Me. Your Brain. | The mind behind your decisions.

    33 min
  2. Brain Capital - The Asset Nobody's Managing

    Jun 7

    Brain Capital - The Asset Nobody's Managing

    Brain Capital - The Asset Nobody's Managing. Why the Most Important Asset in Your Organisation Is the One Nobody Is Measuring Most organisations manage their buildings, their technology, their financial capital with rigour and intention. The cognitive capacity of the people doing the thinking, the brains running every meeting, every decision, every strategy, is largely unmanaged, often actively depleted, and almost never measured. In January 2026, brain capital arrived at the main stage of the World Economic Forum in Davos. Not in the wellness tent. In the core economic agenda. The McKinsey Health Institute and the World Economic Forum published a landmark report arguing that in the AI era, investment in brain capital - brain health and brain skills, is not an optional wellbeing initiative. It is the most important infrastructure decision most organisations aren't making. In this episode, Virginia Palm, breaks down what brain capital actually is, why the numbers demand a boardroom conversation, what is depleting it in most high-performance environments - including an AI paradox most leaders haven't seen coming - and what building it looks like at the level of strategy, team design, and individual leadership. You'll learn: Why brain capital is defined as two interdependent components, brain health and brain skills, and why you cannot optimise one while neglecting the otherWhat $3.5 trillion, 12 billion working days, and 1 in 5 professionals actually tell us, and why these are economic figures, not health statisticsWhy the AI era creates a paradox: human cognitive skills become most valuable exactly when the conditions of work are most reliably depleting themWhat the five levers of brain capital investment look like at the level of a leadership team, and what most organisations are still missingWhy this is not a wellness conversation, and what it means to treat cognitive capacity as the strategic asset it isIf you manage anything - a team, a function, an organisation - this is the conversation your strategy is missing. 🌐 www.augment-mind.com

    24 min
  3. From the Outside: Successful. From the Inside: Dysregulated.

    May 24

    From the Outside: Successful. From the Inside: Dysregulated.

    The apartment in front of the ocean. The titles. The recognition. Everything on paper looking exactly right. And underneath it, something slowly, quietly, falling apart. This episode is about high-functioning burnout: what it looks like from the inside before it breaks, why the people closest to you don't see it, and why the system you need to read the warning signs is the same system being quietly degraded by them. In this episode: What it actually feels like to be performing well and dysregulated at the same timeWhy the signals were there, and why the brain couldn't receive themWhat happens when you do everything right and it still isn't enoughThe second collapse, and what it taught that the first one couldn'tWhat came back first when the body finally stoppedVirginia Palm's guest is Camila Santiago, a therapeutic mindfulness mentor and founder of The Grounded Way, where she works with companies, founders, and individuals, both remotely and in person, to navigate mental overload, decision fatigue, and high-performance pressure. Recognised as a Top 100 Women Voices on LinkedIn and ranked #2 in Workplace Wellbeing, she brings over a decade of mindfulness practice and firsthand experience of burnout in corporate environments to deliver practical, real-world tools for clearer thinking and more sustainable leadership. Originally from Brazil, she now lives in Bali, where her work is shaped by both structured practice and lived experience. Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/camilapsantiago/ Website:  www.thegroundedway.life Email: hello@thegroundedway.org It's Me. Your Brain. | The mind behind your decisions.

    30 min
  4. You Know the Science. So Why Hasn't Anything Changed?

    May 17

    You Know the Science. So Why Hasn't Anything Changed?

    You Know the Science. So Why Hasn't Anything Changed? Why insight and behaviour change are two different neurological events, and what to do about it You've read the books. You've been in the workshops. Something clicked. And then Monday arrived, and you were exactly the same person you were before. This isn't a motivation problem. It isn't a discipline problem. It's a neuroscience problem. And once you understand what's actually happening in the brain, the gap between knowing and changing stops feeling like a personal failing, and starts looking like a design problem. Design problems have solutions. In this Season 2 opener, Virginia explores why understanding something and changing something happen in completely different parts of the brain, and what the brain actually requires to build something genuinely new. In this episode:  Why insight lands in the prefrontal cortex but automatic behaviour lives in the basal ganglia, and why those two don't automatically communicateHow the amygdala keeps old patterns running, even in people who are highly self-aware and genuinely motivated to changeWhat deliberate practice actually means neurologically, and why most leadership development misses it entirely The four conditions the brain needs to change: repetition, specificity, emotional salience, and safety Why high performers are often the most stuck, and what that says about the conditions they're operating inResearch referenced: Anders Ericsson; Deliberate Practice and Acquisition of Expert Performance (Academic Emergency Medicine, 2008) McKinsey & Company; What's missing in leadership development? Global executive survey The brain is not failing you. The conditions are failing your brain. Season 2 starts here.

    16 min

  5. May 10

    Your Brain Was Never the Problem

    Sixteen episodes. One argument underneath all of them. In this Season 1 finale, Virginia Palm names what the show has been building toward, and what it means for Season 2. In this episode: Why your brain was never the problem, and what actually wasThe thread that ran through every solo episode without being namedWhat Yasmina and Monika showed about what happens when you stop fighting your brain and start designing around itThe pattern Virginia didn't plan but kept finding across the seasonWhat's coming in Season 2, and why it's different from everything so farPlus: an honest note on why the show is moving to a fortnightly schedule. If you're new here, welcome. The episodes don't build on each other, so start wherever something catches your attention. It's Me. Your Brain. - The Mind Behind Your Decisions.

    14 min
  6. Your Nervous System Is the Room

    May 3

    Your Nervous System Is the Room

    Your Nervous System Is the Room Why the state of your nervous system is the most powerful - and least measured - variable in your organisation There's a kind of meeting everyone has sat in. The tension nobody names. The flatness where there should be energy. Everyone feels it and nobody says a word. Most leaders assume that's a communication problem, or a culture problem. The neuroscience says something different. In this episode, Virginia Palm explores co-regulation - the measurable biological phenomenon through which human nervous systems sync with each other - and what it means for anyone who leads people. When your nervous system is dysregulated, the people around you don't consciously notice. They simply become more vigilant, less willing to take risks, less able to access the kind of thinking that high performance requires. Not because of what you said. Because of what your biology broadcast. Grounded in research from interpersonal neurobiology, organisational neuroscience, and Amy Edmondson's work on psychological safety, this episode reframes brain health not as a wellness conversation but as a strategic one, and offers three questions every leader can use privately to start working with their nervous system rather than against it. You'll learn: What co-regulation is, and why your nervous system is never just your private experienceWhy psychological safety is a neurological state, not a policy or a value statementWhat the WHO and Gallup data actually show about dysregulated leadership and organisational outputWhy the brain reads biology before it reads languageThree questions to assess your own nervous system's impact on the rooms you runBrain health as strategic advantage isn't a metaphor. It's biology. And it starts with whoever is running the room.

    10 min

  7. Apr 26

    Brain Fog Isn't Laziness. It's Biology.

    Brain Fog Isn't Laziness. It's Biology. What's actually happening when your thinking goes offline - and how to work with it You sit down to work. The task is in front of you. The time is there. And then... nothing. Not tiredness exactly. Something denser. You re-read the same sentence three times and it doesn't land. You're present, technically, but your thinking feels like it's happening behind glass. And the next voice in your head isn't curiosity. It's judgment: what is wrong with me today? That's not a discipline problem. It's a biology one. In this episode, Virginia Palm unpacks the four neurological mechanisms that actually produce brain fog, sleep debt and the glymphatic system that clears metabolic waste from your brain overnight; glucose regulation and why the prefrontal cortex is disproportionately fuel-hungry; chronic cortisol and its measurable effect on hippocampal function and working memory; and interoceptive load, the bandwidth tax of unprocessed body signals that almost no one talks about. Drawing on a 2024 study from Frontiers in Human Neuroscience that found more than one in four adults (28% of nearly 26,000 participants) experience brain fog as a regular feature of their cognitive life, this episode reframes the experience entirely: not as personal failure, but as a feature of how brains operate under modern conditions. You'll learn: Why the prefrontal cortex is the first system to go offline when sleep debt accumulates, and why losing 45 minutes a night across a working week is enough to do itWhat chronic cortisol actually does to working memory, and why "pushing through" makes the fog worse, not betterWhy self-criticism activates the brain's threat response, narrows prefrontal access, and biologically guarantees that judging yourself for being foggy will deepen the fogThe interoceptive load nobody names, how unprocessed body signals draw down the cognitive bandwidth you're trying to use for thinkingA three-question fog audit you can run in any moment to identify which mechanism is actually in play, and what to do instead of forcing the original taskThis isn't an episode about productivity hacks or optimisation. It's about understanding what your brain is actually asking for when the fog rolls in, and learning to respond to it correctly rather than against it. If you've ever sat at your desk, known what needed doing, and felt nothing, this episode explains exactly what was happening.

    16 min
  8. The Execution Gap: Why Knowing Isn't Enough

    Apr 20

    The Execution Gap: Why Knowing Isn't Enough

    The Execution Gap: Why Knowing Isn't Enough What's actually happening in the gap between what you know and what you do You know what you're supposed to do. You've read the book, listened to the podcast, had the conversation with yourself on a Sunday night. And then Monday happens. By Wednesday evening you notice the gap - the quiet sigh, the small of course, the familiar note that something is off between what you meant and what you did. Most of us have been telling ourselves that gap is a character problem. It isn't. That's not a willpower failure. It's a translation problem between two parts of your brain that don't speak the same language. In this episode, Virginia Palm looks at what the execution gap actually is at the neurological level, tracing the handover between the prefrontal cortex (which holds the intention) and the basal ganglia (which runs the behaviour), and explaining why the quiet self-criticism that typically follows a missed intention is, biologically, the move that widens the gap rather than closing it. Grounded in a 2023 meta-analysis of nearly thirty thousand people showing that 47% of sincere intentions don't translate into action, this episode reframes a private, recurring frustration as a predictable feature of how the human brain changes, and points toward what actually closes the gap. You'll learn: What the execution gap actually is, and why it isn't a discipline problemWhy your knowing brain and your doing brain are not the same brainWhat 47% means, and why it reframes the gap as the norm, not the exceptionWhy self-criticism narrows the exact cognitive capacity you need to cross the gapWhy the people who seem to close the gap haven't out-willed you, they've out-designed youThis isn't about trying harder. It's about understanding your own biology well enough to stop working against it. If you've ever caught yourself on the other side of an intention you meant, this episode explains what's actually happening, and why it's much more ordinary than you think. Reference: Reference: Feil, Fritsch & Rhodes (2023), British Journal of Sports Medicine. Meta-analysis of 25 studies, ~29,600 participants.

    16 min
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About

It’s Me. Your Brain. is a neuroscience and psychology podcast about decision-making, stress, mental health, brain health, and thinking clearly in a fast-paced, AI-driven world. The show explores attention, emotional regulation, cognitive performance, and how modern work environments shape the way our brains function under pressure. Hosted by Virginia Palm, founder of Augment Mind. Grounded insights into the mind behind your choices - no hacks, no hustle culture.

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