Brains for Dinner: Conversations Between Neuroscientists who Happen to be Married

According to the Motion Picture Association of America, the average American spent 38 hours a week watching television shows or movies, 18 hours listening to music, and 8 hours reading books, magazines or newspapers in 2007. Though the types of entertainment we consume as a society have changed over the past two decades (people now spend an average of 18 hours a week on social media and read less than 2 hours a week!), the total amount of time we entertain our brains is still surprisingly large. If you assume that a person sleeps 8 hours a night (which you probably shouldn’t because many don’t), this means that roughly 55% of our waking hours are spent feeding our brains entertainment. Against this backdrop, I have some “measearch” questions to accompany this episode: * How much time do you think you spend doing things “just for fun”?* How much thought do you put into your decisions about how and what you feel like doing for entertainment? Are you mostly flying on autopilot (very little), do you make different choices in different moods (medium), or do you sometimes spend so much time trying to decide what to watch that you never actually watch anything (a lot)?In this episode, we describe our own personal theories, as well as some of the limited research exploring why your brain might crave the entertainment it craves! For now, we want to thank you for choosing to spend some of that time with Brains for Dinner. Please know that Andrea and I are aligned in the idea that we’d like to “earn” rather than “grab” your attention in this edutainment space. And we’re also trying to be more intentional about providing information that’s not only interesting, but also informs and empowers the way you make everyday decisions. As such, we’ve committed to trying to keep our episodes shorter (though we didn’t quite nail it this time), while providing extra learning materials for those who might want to read, listen to, or watch more content about this topic.We had much to share this week including the exciting announcement that Andrea recently completed his naturalization process and became a dual American & Italian citizen!For those who would like to read more about our discussion, here are original papers describing the role of personality in the type of entertainment you gravitate toward, the neural correlates of engagement and disengagement during movie viewing, what creates different types of “desirable challenges” in entertainment, and last but not least, a consideration of movies as attentional engines.If you’d like to listen to related Brains for Dinner episodes, let me point you to Episode 5: On stories, data, belonging and other things your brain may be craving, Episode 9: What dopamine drives, and Episode 10: The lost art of long-form learning. We see these as very different episodes, though their themes overlap, and hope our podcasts aren’t starting to feel like your least favorite sequels!Though it wasn’t our central focus, I found myself thinking about differences in what we like, when we like it, and why—from the point of view of a creator, and there’s enough food for thought in that space that it might warrant a second discussion! Please let us know in the comments if you’d like to hear more about how to create the kind of content different brains crave!And speaking of what brains want, I mentioned a book that was surprisingly refreshing among my reads, Nightbitch. It’s certainly not for everyone, but I freaking loved it (and I believe they made a movie that was NOT well-liked but I haven’t seen it so no comment, also…who is they?) If you’ve got a movie, book, TV show or band that recently surprised you in a great way, please share in the comments! As always, we’re grateful for the brain-shaping time you’ve given us, and hope you enjoy the show. I’ll end with a photo I took this week while doing some boots on the ground research on why brains crave the entertainment they crave. While attending a punk rock concert, I met this gentleman. I can’t remember his name to be honest, but I do remember that when I asked what his skull’s name was, he threw up the devil horns and answered “Rock-n-Roll!”Classic introvert. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chantelpratphd.substack.com

Wow—it might be the nostalgia talking, but this feels like one of the most important science communication moments I’ve been part of.I mean it. You see, I’ve been going through something… an identity defining moment in which I am thinking deeply about the “stuff” I’m putting out into the world, the time it exists in, and how it may be landing in the brains I get to connect with. Part of that “stuff” is this podcast I co-create with one of my favorite brains on the planet, my husband Andrea Stocco.Let me start by sharing how pleasantly surprised I am to say that over the past year, Brains for Dinner has wildly exceeded our expectations. To be fair, they were low… but our intention was simply to share the answer to a question many people asked when learning that we’re married to another neuroscientist. “What are your dinner conversations like?” We promised one another that we wouldn’t do it unless it was fun, and not more frequently than we could make time for, and we have mostly kept that promise. Go us!Imagine our surprise to learn that the podcast has been download thousands of times by listeners in 85 different countries around the globe.But now, more than ever, we want to make sure that our time together is serving YOU well. Before I get into the really serious stuff… Please allow me to keep a promise I made on this episode, to honor another important anniversary—the 13th birthday of our basset hound Dixie, which is August 3rd—with some Shakespeare.My hounds are bred out of the Spartan kind,So flew’d, so sanded, and their heads are hungWith ears that sweep away the morning dew;Crook-kneed, and dewlapped like Thessalian bulls;Slow in pursuit, but matched in mouth like bells,Each under each. A cry more tunableWas never holloed to.William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 4, Scene 1 (Theseus is bragging about his basset hounds to Hyppolita).And though it feels like a crime to move from William Shakespeare to modern “Broetry,” this episode is focused on empowering you to think about how the different sources of information you feed your brain do or don’t change the things you know and the way you move around in the world.We talk about the difference between information gathering, knowledge, and wisdom. We talk about the knowing-doing gap.I say the word f**k, at least twice.And above all, I share my truest intention to meet you and your brain where you’re at, and to try to make sure that we’re doing things that get you where you want to go with it.Thank you for the time you’ve invested in us, and please know that we are here for the partnership, that we’re thinking about you, and hoping we’re part of the solution and not part of the problem.Cheers to more dinners! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chantelpratphd.substack.com

I hope no one minds if I start this note with a picture of baby cows. I swear it’s at least a little bit relevant. You see, yesterday, in the middle of a horsemanship clinic, I got the unexpected opportunity to connect with these two Miniature Highland Cows, Mac and Bowie, and it sent my dopamine through the roof.But what does that even mean?In this episode of Brains for Dinner, Andrea and I discuss how dopamine works in the brain and how it shapes the different ways people move around in the world. From myth busting common misconceptions to reverse engineering Kate Moss, we break dopamine down into bite-sized chunks to help you understand your own navigational system a bit better. We also offer a couple of different options for our anniversary episode next month. Please have a listen, and weigh in on what you want to hear more about from us in the comments! And thanks, as always, for joining us for dinner :) This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chantelpratphd.substack.com

Friends and family, real and virtual, we’re back after too long of a delay with our next episode of Brains for Dinner! We hope it was worth the wait.We start this episode by sharing some of the big things that have been keeping us busy these past two months, including a series of milestones for Andrea: turning 50, passing his naturalization test, and giving a kick-ass talk (as part of his promotion to Professor) about using cognitive models to understand important real-world problems.We also touch on SXSW, where Chantel presented about the role of AI in scientific discovery, and both of us got to meet some of our personal heroes and sheroes!And let’s not forget our enthusiastic recommendation of our friend Tommy Wood’s new book, The Stimulated Mind, which you can get here! This book is changing the way I treat my brain which is a pretty big deal, since I’m not really a “because they said so” type of learner. Great work Tommy!Also, since it came up in the date questions, I feel compelled to share a few pictures of the tiny Pterodactyl we are raising. They are So. Cute.And I promise, we talk about brains (and Jason Momoa) as well. The topic of this episode is daydreams and mind wandering. You can find a link to our own paper on the topic here. We also discuss data from a paper suggesting that mind wandering is often related to negative moods which you can find here, and one that suggests a reduction in mind-wandering associated with dementia (click here to read more). If you’ve ever wondered what daydreams are for, or wished you could direct them toward different topics (more fantasy less trauma), we hope you’ll enjoy learning what we understand about why our brains do what they do! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chantelpratphd.substack.com

As far as Andrea and I are aware, no one really knows why humans spend 20-25% of our time asleep producing vivid, emotional, story-like hallucinations—our brains in states that mimic waking, while our bodies remain largely paralyzed and unable to act out these hallucinations. But philosophers, psychoanalysts, and neuroscientists alike have all thrown their hats into the ring when trying to understand this phenomenon which is so central to the human experience (though all mammals have REM sleep, until we get a better idea of what consciousness is, we’ll never know whether or not they dream!).In this episode of Brains for Dinner, we share experiences of our first and most salient dreams (see Gemini’s attempt at Chantel’s first dream below) while describing some of the common theories about what dreams are for. Memory consolidation? Unprocessed emotions? Random noise? Which of these theories best explain Andrea’s dream of being a goat? (sorry I’m having too much fun with AI dream generation for this post).In this episode, we interleave our own dream experiences with known theories of why we dream. We hope you enjoy it, and will share your own experiences with us. Stay tuned for Part 2— on daydreams, and perhaps Part 3, does this relate to why psychedelics are showing therapeutic promise?Meanwhile, here are some resources to support the podcast, including a link to the description of sculpture Chantel mentions, The Winged Victory of Samothrace, a YouTube video of Billy Joel talking about how dreams help him compose songs, the book Andrea mentions about mathematicians dreaming up solutions, and the paper that inspired this episode, The Overfitted Brain by Erik Hoel. We hope you enjoy this episode and will share your dream experiences and questions with us. Cheers :) This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chantelpratphd.substack.com

B4D is back with a bang after a brief hiatus! We hope it was worth the wait :) Though I rarely play favorites, this is definitely one of my favorite episodes so far… In it, Andrea and I talk about our personal experiences with what we call in the field phenomenological differences, or differences in peoples subjective ways people think.Want to figure out how you think?Here’s a link to the questionnaire that Gary Lupyan created to fuel your self exploration. As you’ll learn in this episode, Andrea thinks almost entirely in images while I think almost entirely verbally. What causes this? And what does it say about what we can do differently? These are just a few of the questions that occasionally keep me up at night. Suffice it to say that when we put together a new piece of furniture from IKEA immediately after this episode, Andrea took the lead…(actual images of me reading IKEA instructions on the top left and Andrea on the bottom right) I also want to provide a link to the movie we mentioned, I am Human, which we had the honor of being part of. This movie is related to Andrea’s answer to my date question—which involved the idea of implanting stimulators in the brain to help with memory impairments. It addresses what it means to be human in a world in which we can interface with your brain for a variety of health reasons…And last, but definitely not least, I’d love to share what we had for dinner—one of my favorites, Andrea’s chickpea pasta and insalata caprese. For those who listen, let the record reflect that he has more than repaired his reputation as head chef after the “chicken jerky” event.We hope you enjoy this episode. Let us know what, and how, you think in the comments! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chantelpratphd.substack.com

I think it’s fair to say that Episode 5 of B4D reaches new highs and lows of sophistication (and that’s saying something). From lessons in how to interpret statistics, to laughing fits spawned by burping dogs, this hour of content contains something for everyone.Our musings were sparked by an article Andrea read about how reviews of books, movies, and the like have increasingly disappeared from newspapers and been outsourced to social media. Noting this, Andrea surveyed the contents of some of his “go to” news sources and found other content changes worth talking about. In the conversation that unfolds, we discuss the supply and demand for various “news” content, and the roles that curiosity, belonging, and intellectual humility play in driving our brains’ choices about what to consume.In that space, we also discuss the role of storytelling in science communication, noting that for the vast majority of human existence, stories were the data our brains consumed!And as Andrea and I get more and more experience with this podcasting thing under our belts, our dogs are getting increasingly skilled at disruption. In this episode alone, we have “thunderous toy drop” moments, an epic burp from the frat boy of our family, Kinzu, and much panting and drinking. Since we aren’t going to be renting a dog-free, sound-proof recording studio any time soon, I’m afraid this is part of our “charm.” Perhaps I will create a “Dog Sounds Bingo” card to go with the next episode of B4D. Please drop a comment if you were able to hear the three I mentioned here for an honorary prize. (I’m sorry, my dog’s been drinking again).And now a few show notes:At the beginning of the episode, Andrea asks me to name a book people were crazy about that I thought was meh. I couldn’t retrieve the name of: The Emperor of Gladness by Ocean Vuong. I think “meh” is too strong for me (I gave it 4 stars on Goodreads). There were many things I liked about the book: kids from disadvantaged economic and cultural backgrounds, cross-generational relationships, and lots of good brain happenings including a woman with dementia and neurodiverse youth. But I think there were too many of those things going on to spend enough time on any one of them, and other books I read that stayed in one or two of those lanes just hit me a bit deeper. They include: Stay, All the Colors of the Dark, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, and Demon Copperhead.I do love a good coming of age book, and perhaps I’ve saturated my brain!Last but not least, I’ll leave you with a link to the article on Collective Intellectual Humility that we read in the lab. I hope you enjoy this episode, with all its added bells and whistles. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chantelpratphd.substack.com

Yesterday I was watching a talk about procrastination for book research (I wasn’t procrastinating, I swear). When the cameraperson panned the audience, I saw much younger versions of Andrea and I, and it gave me all the feels.The talk was over a decade ago, and our lives were very different then—but seeing us there, taking it all in, brought me right back into the moment. I could feel the excitement I get when exposed to new ideas. And given that I had just finished delivering my first public lecture to nearly 800 people, I was also feeling a good deal of relief. As I listened to Randy provide the first theoretical explanation of procrastination I had ever heard, I looked forward to digging into the ideas more deeply afterward with Andrea. You can see our lectures on The Neuroscience of Good Decision Making here if you are interested.Sharing these deeper dives with you is our vision for Brains for Dinner, and this episode is all about how feelings shape our memories and how memories shape our feelings. We’re particularly focused on the negative aspects of this cycle as they play out in PTSD. If you enjoy the episode, please let us know and, if you feel so compelled, share with others, so we know you find what we’re doing useful!This episode was inspired, in part, by a collaboration with our colleague, clinical psychologist Lori Zoellner. Andrea and Lori recently published a paper called Remembering and Forgetting: A Dynamic Social Retrieval Theory of Posttraumatic Stress which you can read here! I also ask about what factors contribute to who will get PTSD and he mentions one of Lori’s other papers, which you can read here.We also talk about our friend (and my former professor) Charan Ranganath’s book Why We Remember, which I highly recommend. I had the pleasure of interviewing Charan here in Seattle when his book first came out in February and it was a blast!We hope you enjoy this episode and look forward to braining with you in the future This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chantelpratphd.substack.com

I have good news and bad news and in our family we always do the bad new first so here goes… Brains for Dinner Episode 3 does not come with a side order of dancing birds or babies! (never fear, you can always return to Episode 2 for this!) AND we went nearly 7 minutes over time. EEK!The good news is that this episode is centered on a topic that is near and dear to my heart, language!I was thrilled to learn—based on a recent survey I created and circulated—that learning a natural language was the most highly ranked answer to the question “What’s something you’d like to learn but aren’t currently working on?” But what gets in the way? (If you have 5 minutes to take the survey and tell me about your learning goals click here!)In this episode of Brains for Dinner, Andrea Stocco and I discuss both former research, using quantitative EEG (aka brainwaves) to predict natural language learning and the ability to learn programming languages. Here’s some media coverage of this work:* Scientific American: Some People’s Brains are Wired for Languages* Travel and Leisure: Why Learning a Second Language is So DifficultYou can find the original scientific papers here if you’re interested:* French Learning* Python LearningWe hope you enjoy the episode! Please leave us a note if you have questions or suggestions for what you would like to hear us think aloud about!Cheers! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chantelpratphd.substack.com

This was an extremely fun episode to record—arguably too fun because we were SO LOUD that Chantel had to learn how to use sound editing software to remove some of the microphone artifacts. Ah well, you live and you learn! We sincerely hope that the fun is contagious. Whether you’d like to add a drinking game (might I suggest guessing whether Chantel says something is “exciting” or Andrea says it’s “interesting” more often and taking a drink when the one you didn’t pick happens?), to watch videos of dancing babies or animal friends, or to dig into the science of the relation between dance, vocal communication, and learning, we’ve got something for you. Below, I’ve included some photos, videos, and links to papers that will allow you to explore with us in your modality of choice. Here are some of the things we talked about:Celebrating Andrea’s application for U.S. citizenship (fingers crossed that its not too early to celebrate)photo credits for this amazing shot go to Debera J. Prat, my amazing mommaand Kintsugi’s 3rd Birthday Here are some of Chantel’s favorite baby and animal dance videos:* Ronan the dancing sea lion * Snowball the cockatoo dancing to Queen* Dancing baby 1 (because who can pick just one)* Dancing baby 2 (inspirational)We’ve established that horses don’t “dance” and this is not a traditional freestyle routine but it is my absolute favorite. True partnership courtesy of the beautiful Stacey Westfall You might want to grab your tissues.Now for the sciency main course! Here are some of the papers we discussed.* Theories on the evolution of dance* Men who dance to the beat are sexier* Paper on vocal learning that stresses environmental factors* Evidence that cockatiels have favorite songs* The beluga that speaks with a Russian accent* Dance has a powerful influence on depressionAnd here’s the music and cognition collaborator whose last name I couldn’t remember! * Dr. Steven MorrisonLast but not least, I give you empirical evidence that Howard the duck responds (maybe not with dance but possibly with suspicion) to my effortless singer/songwriter moments. Don’t worry, I won’t quit my day job just yet.We hope you enjoyed Episode 2 of brains for dinner. Thank you for listening, clicking, or reading along—whatever your brain prefers! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chantelpratphd.substack.com

We’re so excited to share the first episode of Brains for Dinner (BFD), where we talk about real life and our shared love of brains. This episode is centered on metacognition. Like many of the topics Andrea and I chat about, metacognition is a word that means different things to different people. In this dinner date, Andrea explains the difference between “thinking about thinking” and the kinds of feelings that accompany different thoughts and actions. What can and can’t an AI know? Spoiler alert: Higher-level thinking seems to require a check-in with what’s going on at the lower-levels in the body! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chantelpratphd.substack.com