From Our Neurons to Yours

Today on the show, we explore the complex biology underlying a seemingly straightforward question: How do our brains stay healthy – or not – as we age?

There seems to be a constant flow of new secrets to healthy brain aging – inflammation, estrogen levels, how the brain clears out its waste. We've talked about many of these explanations on the show, and it can be easy to think that whatever the latest one is, that'...

Today on the show, we bring you a conversation with Carolyn Bertozzi, the Baker Family Director of Sarafan ChEM-H and the Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences. 

Bertozzi is a Nobel Laureate, a MacArthur Fellow, and an all around cool person – although it didn't come up in the conversation, she used to play in a band with Rage Against the Machine's Tom Morello.

Although Bertozzi woul...

Health influencers and scientists have both gone crazy for peptides.

The peptide health craze stems from a lot of online hype — centered on gray-market compounds that haven't been rigorously tested in humans and aren't regulated for safety or purity. But among scientists, there is a genuine "revolution" underway — spurred by technological developments revealing an order of magnitude more peptides in our bodies t...

Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) is one of the most promising new technologies in psychiatry. Essentially, it allows us to reach inside the brain, stimulate it, and alter the brain circuits that go awry in disorders like depression. 

As the late Nolan Williams once explained, we've known for a long time that mental health disorders are caused by changes in electrical circuits in our brains, until TMS came along, we didn'...

Back in the 1950s, doctors didn't know a whole lot about the heart. If someone came in with chest pain, clinicians would ask a few questions, then take a stab at treating what might be heartburn or a heart attack. 

That's where mental health care is today, according to today's guest, Leanne Williams.

For example: you come into a psychiatrist’s office. The psychiatrist determines that you’ve experienced five or more d...

Why does being sick make you so exhausted – and why does that exhaustion sometimes outlast the illness itself? Today, neuroscientist Julia Kaltschmidt returns to the podcast to talk about the body's hidden "sickness reflex," the gut-brain circuitry behind it, and what those things might reveal about chronic fatigue.

Kaltschmidt, a Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute faculty scholar and professor of neurosurgery at Stanford Medicin...

For decades, the field focused on the plaques and tangles of misfolded proteins that show up in the brains of patients with Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and other disorders. The natural assumption was that if you could design a drug to clear out that gunk, you could save the brain. But so far, that bet hasn't paid off.

Now, researchers are taking a big step back and asking whether the plaques aren't a culprit, but rather a c...

Right now, as you're reading this sentence, something remarkable is happening in your brain. Light waves from your screen hit your eyes, transform into electrical signals, and take on meaning. You understand what you're reading. This is language — our human superpower.

But despite 150 years of intensive research, we still do not have a complete picture of how the brain actually accomplishes all of this. We don't even have a go...

Today's episode is all about how childhood literally shapes the brain.

Our most important experiences – from learning to read, to the growing complexity of our social lives at school, and even the video games we play – leave physical traces in how our brains get organized that shape how we see the world as adults.

But how does the brain actually know what parts of our lives are actually important enough to reorganize arou...

Last month we saw a big shift in the federal government’s approach to psychedelic medicine.

Specifically, following an executive order by President Trump, the FDA announced it is fast-tracking its review of several clinical trials of psychedelic drugs for patients with mental health disorders. The executive order also directed more funds towards psychedelic research and a review of psychedelics’ status as highly restrict...

Today’s episode is about the neuroscience of hard work—or maybe more specifically, the value we place on hard work.

There’s something different about hiking to the top of a mountain versus taking a helicopter. The view from the top is exactly the same, but if you’ve done the hard slog to get there, the payoff is going to be much more rewarding. 

The question is, how does the brain know the difference? To ...

Traditionally, we think of Parkinson's as a movement disorder—defined by slowed movement, stiff muscles, and involuntary shaking. But it turns out there are other symptoms that appear years or even decades before movement problems bring patients to the clinic: sleep disturbances, chronic constipation, and loss of smell.

For today's guest, these early symptoms represent an incredible opportunity to understand where Parkinson's ...

What if we could make the brain see-through? 

It sounds like science fiction, but it could revolutionize how we study the brain. 

Today on the show, we're talking with Guosong Hong, a faculty scholar here at the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute who has a unique reputation for developing creative techniques that literally shed light on the brain—from using fluorescent nanomaterials and focused ultrasound to create a vir...

Our memories and senses are deeply connected—like how a favorite song can recreate a whole glorious teenage summer. It turns out this relationship might extend beyond our five external senses to include our internal senses: the signals telling us what's happening inside our bodies, sometimes beyond the veil of conscious perception.

New research by Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute affiliate Christoph Thaiss suggests that losing ...

Today on the show, why do some of us age faster than others? Why do some of us grow old and die before our time while others seem to simply endure? And most of us have probably wondered at one point or another, which track am I on? 

Turns out it might be possible to predict the whole trajectory of an animal's life at a surprisingly young age, just by looking closely at subtle patterns of behavior. That's the conclusion of a new...

We know shockingly little about what goes on in a mother’s brain during pregnancy.

For example, we know only a handful of the hormones involved—out of hundreds scientists think may exist—and very little about how they might impact the brain. This gap in our understanding is one of the reasons we don’t have great treatments for pregnancy-related maladies, whether it’s extreme nausea, or anxiety and depre...

Here’s a question for you that may at first seem trivial, but is actually profound: Why do our minds drift? 

If you have ever dabbled in mindfulness or meditation, you know this mind wandering has an almost gravitational pull. In fact, researchers now think we spend as much as 50 percent of our waking time in this state, which cognitive scientists have dubbed the brain’s “default mode.”

Today’s gues...

For decades, Alzheimer's research has focused on clearing amyloid plaques from the brain. But new drugs that successfully remove plaques have proven clinically "underwhelming", leaving the field searching for alternative approaches.

Stanford neurologist Katrin Andreasson has spent twenty years pursuing a different path—investigating how aging triggers an energy crisis in the brain's immune and support cells. Her work reveals t...

The AI revolution of the past few years is built on brain-inspired neural network models originally developed to study our own minds. The question is, what should we make of the fact that our own rich mental lives are built on the same foundations as the seemingly soulless chat-bots we now interact with on a daily basis?

Our guest this week is Stanford cognitive scientist Jay McClelland, who has been a leading figure in this field s...