Episode 18 - The Negative Impacts of Stress with Dr. David Morilak

Is stress good or bad? Do the negative impacts of a stressful life outweight the benefits of the adaptive physiological response? Matt and Dr. David Morilak (Professor of Pharmacology, UT Health Science Center, San Antonio) talk about what defines a stress response and why we have them to begin with. We also find out if stress researchers have the secret to beating anxiety.

Thanks to Audible for supporting Brain Matters efforts in science outreach and education. Get a free audiobook of your choice at audiblepodcast.com/brainmatters.

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Episode 12 - Snapshot of a Memory with Dr. Bruce Hope

Anthony and Dr. Bruce Hope talk about how researchers can identify and manipulate the activity of neurons that are active during a specific experience. Toward the end of their conversation, Bruce gets into the importance of perseverance and the personality traits of the successful scientists he has worked with.

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Recent Brain Matters guest Erin Schuman gave a talk at TEDxCaltech where she discussed ‘The Remarkable Neuron’. She discusses how a single neuron can generate the 250 million proteins it needs to function and send all these proteins to 10,000 synapses.

You can listen to our interview with Erin on iTunes or our website.

Episode 10 - Alzheimer’s Disease with Dr. Kenneth Kosik

Anthony and Dr. Kenneth Kosik had a chance to talk about Ken’s path to becoming a neuroscientist. It’s a different story than the ones we are used to hearing and offers some new perspectives on what it takes to become a great scientist. They also talk about the approaches Ken uses in his lab to study Alzheimer’s Disease.

Listen and Subscribe on iTunes.

Catalyzing Behavioral Change - Marie-H. Monfils, University of Texas at Austin from Kavli Frontiers of Science on Vimeo.

Catalyzing Behavioral Change

Our very first guest, Dr. Marie Monfils from The University of Texas at Austin talks about erasing or reinterpreting fear memories.

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When Brain Matters sat down with Dr. Alyssa Brewer from The University of California, Irvine, we talked about maps of visual information in the brain.

The visual cortex is the area of the brain that is responsible for processing visual information. Much of this brain area is organized into maps where each hemisphere encodes information about half of the visual field. Light seen through the fovea (an area of the retina used for fine visual acuity) occupies a large amount of space in the cortical representation of the visual field.

Find the full review article on PubMed.

Image Credit:
Brian A. Wandell, Serge O. Dumoulin, Alyssa A. Brewer, Visual Field Maps in Human Cortex, Neuron, Volume 56, Issue 2, 25 October 2007, Pages 366-383.