Wendy Suzuki – Exercise and the Brain

A cognitive neuroscientist gives a rousing talk about the benefits of exercise on memory. She describes being inspired to teach after learning about the brain’s ability to adapt, and experimenting with aerobic exercise, becoming an IntenSati fitness instructor to teach her neuroscience students. She designed a classroom experiment that combined lectures with workouts, and found students were not only more engaged but their cognitive skills improved over time. Mentioning animal models that showed growth in the brain after exercise, as well as research with exercise and Alzheimer’s (see this video), she makes a compelling case to visit the gym.

Analogy as the Core of Cognition

Douglas Hofstadter demonstrates numerous analogies and talks about how analogy is at the core of cognition, in this high profile Presidential Lecture from the Stanford archives.

Neuromarketing Brainwaves for Marketers

A basic grounding in neuroimaging and neuromarketing, in a presentation by a professor for marketers. Definitions, processes, interpretation, and the difference between traditional market research that asks for explicit views and neuroimaging that looks inside the brain.

[Image by Juliana Coutinho.]

Spatial vs. Object-Based Attention

Neuropsychologist Marlene Behrmann gives an overview of visual perception, different types of attention, and visual processing in an interview for the excellent cognitive science educational site, Go Cognitive.

Brain Imaging: Reality and Hype

An introduction to neuroimaging techniques (mainly fMRI), technical specs, and interpreting data. Lively talk with good slides. Detailed but not overcomplicated for beginners, with excellent guidance on how to understand and critique published studies and what gets filtered down to the mass media. Another great talk from the Neuroethics Learning Collaborative video series.

[Image by B*2.]

Catching Up on Sleep

From the Waking Up To Sleep 2007 conference, a renowned sleep expert discusses how much sleep is optimal. He presents correlative population studies on mortality rates and performance measures in a 15 minute talk, followed by another quarter hour of very good Q&A. See also: Sleeping Pills: More Harm Than Good, another compelling talk by Dr. Kripke.

[Image by martinhoward.]

Prosopagnosia

Face blindness (the inability to recognize people based on their faces) and its effects on those affected is the topic of this interview, one of a series of three with the researcher.

[Image by bloomsberries.]

Neuroscience, Law and Government Symposium

Keynote speaker Hank Greely gives a basic talk about neuroscience and the law for an audience of lawyers/law students. Topics include predicting (behaviour and illnesses), mind reading and lie detection, responsibility and consciousness, treatment, and cognitive enhancement. Q&A follows. Greely blogged about it as well; sounds like it was a great symposium and it’s a pity the other videos aren’t online too.

[Image by Bernzilla.]

Cognitive Developmental Robotics: An Approach to Understand Ourselves and to Design Robots Like Us

Designing robots with the minds of infants, using human cognitive development modelling and biomimetics. Cute baby robot (CB2) video clips included. From the University of Washington’s Computer Science and Engineering Colloquia series (vodcast RSS).

[Image by mysza831]

The Signatures of Sleep

In a peppy talk from the Waking Up To Sleep meeting, Sara Mednick answers the question, “Will naps make you smarter, healthier, happier?” Roger Bingham also conducts an interview about napping with UCSD’s Dr. Mednick, available here, recorded in Seattle at Sleep 2009.