How do we regulate our impulsive emotions, resist temptation, break bad habits, and come up to our best potential - and why do we sometimes run short? Is willpower anything like muscle power? In this episode, we welcome prominent social psychologist Roy F. Baumeister, who has published some 700 scientific works, including 40 books. A recipient of many awards, in 2013 Roy received the highest award given by the Association for Psychological Science, the William James Fellow award, in recognition ...
Mar 27, 2023•1 hr 6 min•Season 3Ep. 27
Neurobiologist Stuart Firestein, one of the world's leading experts on olfaction, joins Bernard Baars to discuss the similarities and surprising differences of smell and taste in relation to vision, hearing and somatosensory systems, like touch. The olfactory system presents us with alternative views of how sensory stimuli are parsed in the brain and how we integrate those into some sort of conscious worldview. Dr. Stuart Firestein specializes in the olfactory system ⎯ why and how our brains and...
Feb 02, 2023•1 hr 31 min•Season 3Ep. 26
In this episode, we examine Human Consciousness and AI, and particularly the popular idea that AI will become conscious at some point. Because conscious brains are the product of enormous periods of evolution and environmental conditions that keep changing in basic ways, the popular idea that machine consciousness is just around the corner is questioned by Bernard Baars. But very important ethical and practical questions are already emerging today. Social media has trouble distinguishing between...
Jan 02, 2023•1 hr 32 min•Season 3Ep. 25
The home of the late Nobel Laureate, Gerald Edelman, is the setting for this elevated discussion on human consciousness. In this episode, Bernie is joined by Gerald's son and neuroscientist David Edelman, developmental neuropsychiatrist Dr. Jay Giedd, and professional magician Mark Mitton. What level of biology is relevant to the study of conscious processing? Is it a matter of molecules? Or cells? Or networks? Talking Points 0:00 – The Biological Level of the Conscious Brain 6:28 – Like Evoluti...
Nov 22, 2022•43 min•Season 3Ep. 24
We think of the cortex in terms of anatomical regions, but the cortex works as a whole. Static, gross anatomical divisions are superseded by the dynamical connectome of cortex. This holistic viewpoint is detailed in the recent paper in the Journal Frontiers in Psychology: Consciousness Research , titled "Global Workspace Theory & Prefrontal Cortex: Recent Developments" (Baars, Geld & Kozma, 2021), which we discuss in this episode. A wide range of experimental and theoretical studies in t...
Oct 18, 2022•1 hr 24 min•Season 3Ep. 23
“Can consciousness be seen as the key to understanding our surroundings and organizing our actions?” — David Edelman, PhD, Neuroscientist and Visiting Scholar in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Dartmouth College Ep 22: Consciousness Has an Integrative Function with Neuroscientist, David Edelman Episode 22 of our podcast On Consciousness brings back neuroscientist David Edelman, who graciously hosted this discussion in the home of his late father, Nobel Laureate Gerald M. Ed...
Jul 11, 2022•26 min•Season 2Ep. 22
"Subjectivity and consciousness are the two main mysteries that science is still faced with. I'm an optimist. I believe that in the next half a century we might make progress on understanding consciousness." - Stanley A. Klein, psychophysicist, professor of Vision Science and Optometry at the University of California, Berkeley and a member of the Berkeley Visual Processing Laboratory. Episode 21: The Duet of Physics & Psychology with Psychophysicist, Stanley Klein In episode 21 of our podcas...
Jun 06, 2022•1 hr 3 min•Season 2Ep. 21
The brain seeks meaning and patterns. It would be very adaptive to do so in nature, because you need to know how to predict danger and to develop social ties. So our brains are very good at recognizing patterns, but also at creating them, even when they're not there. - Dr. Jay Giedd, Chair of Child Psychiatry at Rady Children's Hospital - San Diego and Director of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Professor of Psychiatry at UCSD School of Medicine , and Professor in the Department of Population, ...
May 03, 2022•36 min•Season 2Ep. 20
Studies show that, especially for young children, if you prematurely wake them up and deprive them of that much needed sleep, it becomes detrimental to their proper cognitive development further down in life. I just wonder about the amount of damage we're doing to kids with 7:20 AM school start times. - Ilian Daskalov, senior undergraduate student at University of California, Irvine Ep 19: The Sleeping Brain: Better Than a Cup of Coffee This episode of the Podcast On Consciousness riffs on the d...
Mar 18, 2022•26 min•Season 2Ep. 19
Global Workspace Theory is probably oversimplified, just like the Newtonian theory of the planets and their orbits. And that's what framework theories usually do. You don't want to go to them for the details, you want to go to them for the overview. And Global Workspace is really an overview. – Dr. Bernard Baars, originator of Global Workspace Theory and Global Workspace Dynamics, a theory of human cognitive architecture, the cortex and consciousness. Ep 18: Global Workspace Functions, the Brain...
Mar 17, 2022•1 hr 43 min•Season 2Ep. 18
"I think in terms of consciousness, it seems to me that these Feelings of Knowing are perhaps the conscious tip of the iceberg for this huge amount of unconscious processing that's going on of all this information in our environment, where maybe I couldn't tell you why I know there's danger, but I know." - Alea Skwara, PhD Candidate in the Perception, Cognition, and Cognitive Neuroscience (PCCN) area of the Psychology Department at UC Davis Global Workspace Theory: Exploring Evidence for Widespr...
Nov 22, 2021•1 hr 51 min•Season 2Ep. 17
"One of the major features of the Global Workspace hypothesis began with limited capacity, that there has to be a compensatory event in the brain happening, and the most plausible one, for various reasons, including other people's work, of course, was that there's some kind of very wide recruitment of brain resources that happens as a function of becoming conscious of something." – Dr. Bernard Baars, originator of Global Workspace Theory and Global Workspace Dynamics, a theory of human cognitive...
Nov 22, 2021•1 hr 11 min•Season 2Ep. 16
"The idea is to help people understand how this science is relevant to their daily lives. Our brain likes novelty. It gets this sort of dopamine hit when you give it new information. Capturing attention and getting people excited about the information is really important, especially when dealing with things like public health issues, for example.” – Dr. Heather Berlin, Neuropsychologist and Assistant Clinical Professor at Mount Sinai Episode 15: "Communicating Science Effectively and The Notion ...
May 14, 2021•28 min•Season 2Ep. 15
“In many cases you can see an immediate effect, as in chronic depression – suddenly you turn on the electrodes – you don't tell them when it's on or off, right? And their whole face lights up. And you ask, "What do you feel like?" And they say, "Oh, it feels wonderful. It feels like I won the lottery! It's so great!" – Dr. Heather Berlin, Neuropsychologist and Assistant Clinical Professor at Mount Sinai Episode 14: "Psychedelics, Impulsivity, and Brain Stimulation" with Dr. Heather Berlin *On Co...
Feb 01, 2021•1 hr 9 min•Season 2Ep. 14
"The only way we get certainty or stability in the world is to start from what we know, and gradually move to what we don't know." - Bernard Baars, PhD, originator of the Global Workspace Theory, a theory of cognitive architecture and consciousness. Episode 13: "Thinking About Animal Consciousness" The question of whether some non-human animals are capable of awareness has vexed psychologists, neuroscientists, and philosophers of mind for many decades. In the final episode of Season One of The P...
Sep 25, 2020•45 min•Season 1Ep. 13
"Consciousness can be firmly embedded in biology, based on the fact that all kinds of [demonstrably biological] processes that are not [by themselves] conscious are important for conscious process[ing].” - David Edelman, PhD, A neuroscientist and a Visiting Scholar in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Dartmouth College Episode 12: "Consciousness in Context - The Brain is Embodied and the Body is Embedded" In the 12th episode of ‘On Consciousness,’ psychobiologist Bernard Baar...
Jul 23, 2020•1 hr 12 min•Season 1Ep. 12
"Episodic memory involves conscious experiences being encoded. Same goes for semantic and autobiographical memories. All varieties of memories come in through conscious moments of recall. So, I think that consciousness is the means by which any kinds of memories are established." - Bernard Baars, PhD, originator of global workspace theory and global workspace dynamics, former Senior Fellow in Theoretical Neurobiology at the Neurosciences Institute in La Jolla, CA, editor in Chief of the Society ...
Jun 30, 2020•21 min•Season 1Ep. 11
"All models are wrong, but some are useful." And I think ultimately that's the test of a construct like Global Workspace Theory - does it lead us to greater knowledge? Does it suggest areas of research? Does it make predictions that we can test? And that's why I think Global Workspace Theory has stood the test of time. It has succeeded on all of those fronts." - Dr. Jay Giedd, Chair of child psychiatry at Rady Children's Hospital - San Diego and director of child and adolescent psychiatry, profe...
Jun 02, 2020•31 min•Season 1Ep. 10
"You highlighted the difference that makes a difference. Тhis is not only a neat catchphrase, but there's also something very deep about it. And sleep, in fact, is a really interesting aspect of behavior, that maybe gives us a window on the difference between conscious and non-conscious processes in the brain, because there is a distinct difference and it is recordable." - David Edelman, PhD, A neuroscientist and a Visiting Scholar in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Dartmou...
May 18, 2020•38 min•Season 1Ep. 9
"I want to try to understand consciousness from a neuroanatomy and neuro-function standpoint. What would consciousness look like in a brain scanner and other types of imaging? What are we looking for, in a sense, and could I predict from basically the architecture and the anatomy, that this could be conscious, and this would not be able to be conscious?" - Dr. Jay Giedd, Developmental Neuropsychiatrist, UCSD School of Medicine, Rady Children's Hospital, and Johns Hopkins EPISODE 8: Roundtable Pa...
Apr 30, 2020•13 min•Season 1Ep. 8
In this uplifting episode recorded at La Jolla landmark D.G. Wills Books, neuroscientists Bernie Baars & David Edelman unpack the nature of consciousness — the ineffable sense of ‘aboutness’ each one of us experiences that encompasses features of the outside world, your own thoughts, recollections, and emotions, all of which mysteriously — yet inevitably — arise from the coordinated firing of neurons in the cerebral cortex and other regions of the brain. David reads from Bernie's new book, “...
Apr 16, 2020•1 hr 30 min•Season 1Ep. 7
In this episode of "On Consciousness," neuroscientists Bernie Baars, Jeff Krichmar, and David Edelman engage in a freewheeling conversation that begins with mulling over the possible development of conscious machines -- or ‘conscious artifact,’ as Gerald Edelman put it -- sometime in the not-so-distant future. We unpack the various ‘bumps in the road’ in the quest to build intelligent, sentient machines--the problems of efficiency (with regard to energy utilization, brains run circles around any...
Apr 16, 2020•44 min•Season 1Ep. 6
Why are we conscious? Is cortex the organ of mind? Throughout human history, people have perceived the conscious brain as the great nexus of human life, of social relationships, of their personal identities and histories, in encounters with new challenges. In Episode #5 of the podcast On Consciousness, Bernard Baars, originator of GWT, talks with neuroscientists David Edelman and Jay Giedd, roboticist Jeff Krichmar, magician Mark Mitton, and editor Natalie Geld about our growing understanding of...
Apr 16, 2020•16 min•Season 1Ep. 5
“If not in the womb, at what point in life do we first have the sensation of being us? In terms of knowing that we’re an individual person... And where that line is crossed, including octopus or other animals, at what point in terms of our brain development are the brains capable of this sensation of being self aware?” Naturalizing Consciousness: Conversations on the Biology of Subjectivity - the Premiere Event for the New Podcast "On Consciousness with Bernard Baars" - and a Special Tribute to ...
Feb 16, 2020•22 sec
The engine of evolution is geared to overproduce and selectively eliminate. How do biological systems confront, adapt, and survive an ever-changing world? This is the central question that defined Charles Darwin’s scientific journey. In Episode #4 of NATURALIZING CONSCIOUSNESS - the premiere event for the new podcast "On Consciousness with Bernard Baars" - neuroscientists Bernard Baars, David Edelman, Jay Giedd, Jeff Krichmar, professional magician Mark Mitton, and editor Natalie Geld unpack the...
Feb 15, 2020•47 min•Season 1Ep. 4
What Is Subjectivity? We have a growing understanding of many relationships between the structure and functions of the brain and our own private experiences. What is the best scientific evidence that can tell us about subjectivity and the brain? In Episode #3 of NATURALIZING CONSCIOUSNESS - the premiere event for the new podcast "On Consciousness with Bernard Baars" - neuroscientists Bernard Baars, Gerald Edelman, Jay Giedd, Jeff Krichmar, professional magician Mark Mitton, and editor Natalie Ge...
Feb 11, 2020•14 min•Season 1Ep. 3
In Part One of NATURALIZING CONSCIOUSNESS - the premiere event for the new podcast "On Consciousness with Bernard Baars" - neuroscientist David Edelman discusses his father, Nobel Laureate Gerald M. Edelman's life, reminisces about little known stories and milestones, and the professional artistry of GME's distinguished career and groundbreaking theories. 1st segment (:20 - 8:05) -- A Tribute to Nobel Laureate Gerald M. Edelman by Oliver Sacks and others, along with interviews with Gerald on Put...
Feb 11, 2020•19 min•Season 1Ep. 2
NATURALIZING CONSCIOUSNESS: A Special Tribute to Nobel Laureate Gerald M. Edelman. Our premiere event "Naturalizing Consciousness" is Episode #1 of The Podcast "On Consciousness with Bernard Baars." This full length event features open-minded conversations on the biology of subjectivity, Neural Darwinism, Global Workspace Theory, plus new ideas about the scientific study of consciousness and the brain. With Psychobiologist Bernard J. Baars, Neuroscientists David Edelman, Jay Giedd, and Jeffrey K...
Jan 20, 2020•1 hr 32 min•Season 1Ep. 1
