This Is Your Brain With Dr. Phil Stieg Weill Cornell Medicine Brain and Spine Center

 
Dr. Luis M Martínez, director of the Virtual Mind Laboratory at the Spanish National Research Council, draws on the latest findings in neuroscience to explain how magic deceives us and amazes us.  He shows us how illusionists skillfully “hack” our brains to alter our perceptions and expectations of things and - like a good joke - deliver a surprise at the end.
www.thisisyourbrain.com 

The human brain did not evolve to read -- but reading makes us more fully human as it opens up new worlds of understanding and empathy. Today, as we read so much by "skimming" on phones and tablets, we're missing out on the sophisticated thought processes that deep reading provides. Dr. Maryanne Wolf, director of the Center for Dyslexia, Diverse Learners, and Social Justice at UCLA and the author of several books on literacy, joins us this week to discuss how reading in a digital era affects our critical thinking and leaves us vulnerable to misinformation.   Plus... is dyslexia actually a superpower? https://www.maryannewolf.com/

New parents - especially moms - experience profound changes in the brain when they are expecting and welcoming a new baby. Health journalist Chelsea Conaboy explains how the caricature of "mommy brain" and its cognitive fog has it all wrong - parenthood actually has a neuroprotective effect, as the brain adapts to meeting the needs of children. It happens to all parents, not just mothers, but it's most dramatic in gestating parents. Plus... how it takes a troop to raise a monkey.
https://www.chelseaconaboy.com/ 

Teen brains are uniquely primed for addiction -- that age is all about novelty seeking, risk taking, and impulsivity, a developmental stage with strong drives and little inhibition -- and they "learn" the pleasures of alcohol and drugs a little too well. Judith Grisel, PhD, a behavioral neuroscientist at Bucknell University who has written widely (and from personal experience) about the brain chemistry of addiction, explains why the urge to feel good "on demand" is so difficult to resist, and how the brain adapts to highs and lows. Fortunately, she also explains the path to life after addiction. Plus... why smelling weed on every street corner these days makes recovery much harder.
 https://www.bucknell.edu/fac-staff/judy-grisel

You know what you have to do to tighten your abs (whether or not you actually do it), but do you know how to awaken your brain?  Lisa Miller, professor of psychology at Columbia University, explains how we humans are hard-wired for spirituality, but we've lost the connection. Faith-based traditions once connected most of us to something larger than ourselves, and without that we've entered a self-centered age of widespread depression, addiction, and suicide. Dr. Miller has insight into how to awaken our brains and reconnect to the deeper force in life, even if you don't believe in a god.
For episode transcripts and more information: www.thisisyourbrain.com 
Dr. Miller's book "The Awakened Brain": https://www.randomhousebooks.com/books/608347/ 

Have you ever felt a "presence" - someone next to you, even speaking to you, when no one is there? Dr. Ben Alderson-Day, a psychologist at Durham University in the UK, studies the phenomena of felt presences, or what he calls "the unseen other."
These experiences are not always symptoms of mental illness - these are universally reported and not always distressing. Learn what's happening in the brain during these hallucinations - or should we call them visitations? Plus... how the Internet brings together groups of people who can conjure up invisible friends, seemingly on command.
Full transcripts and additional resources available at: www.thisisyourbrain.com 
For more about Dr. Alderson-Day's book, "Presence; The Strange Science and True Stories of the Unseen Other"
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250278265/presence