PODCAST · science
Unsupervised Thinking
by Neuro Collective
A podcast about neuroscience, artificial intelligence, and science more broadly, run by a group of computational neuroscientists.
Episodes
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Models of the Mind: How physics, engineering and mathematics have shaped our understanding of the brain
Grace wrote a book! And she talked to Brain Inspired host Paul Middlebrooks about it. The book is about the many different ways mathematical methods have influenced neuroscience, from models of single cells all the way up to equations to explain behavior. You can learn more about the book and how...
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E50: Brain Organoids
Most neuroscience research takes place in a full, live animal. But brain organoids are different. Brain organoids are three-dimensional blobs of brain grown from human stem cells and they offer novel access to the study of human brain development. On this episode we go beyond our computational...
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E49: How Important is Learning?
The age-old debate of nature versus nurture is now being played out between artificial intelligence and neuroscience. The dominant approach in AI, machine learning, puts an emphasis on adapting processing to fit the data at hand. Animals, on the other hand, seem to have a lot of built in…
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E48: Studying the Brain in Light of Evolution
The brain is the result of evolution. A lot of evolution. Most neuroscientists don't really think about this fact. Should we? On this episode we talk about two papers---one focused on brains and the other on AI---that argue that following evolution is the path to success. As part of this…
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E47: Deep Learning to Understand the Brain
The recent advances in deep learning have done more than just make money for startups and tech companies. They've also infiltrated neuroscience! Deep neural networks---models originally inspired by the basics of the nervous system---are finding ever more applications in the quest to understand…
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E46: What We Learn from Model Organisms
From worms to flies, and mice to macaques, neuroscientists study a range (but not very large range...) of animals when they study "the brain". On this episode we ask a lot of questions about these model organisms, such as: how are they chosen? should we use more diverse ones? and what is a model...
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E45: How Working Memory Works
Working memory is the ability to keep something in mind several seconds after it's gone. Neurons don't tend to keep firing when their input is removed, so how does the brain hold on to information when it's out of sight? Scientists have been probing this question for decades. On this episode, we...
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E44: Can a Biologist Fix a Radio?
In 2002, cancer biologist Yuri Lazebnik raised and addressed the semi-facetious question "Can a biologist fix a radio?" in a short paper. The paper is a critique of current practices in the biological sciences, claiming they are inefficient at getting to truth. We discuss the stages of research...
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E43: What Are Glia Up to?
Despite the fact that the brain is full of them, glial cells don't get much attention from neuroscientists. The traditional view of these non-neurons is that they are supportive cells---there to silently help neurons do what they need to do. On this episode we start by describing this traditional...
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E42: Learning Rules, Biological vs. Artificial
For decades, neuroscientists have explored the ways in which neurons update and control the strength of their connections. For slightly fewer decades, machine learning researchers have been developing ways to train the connections between artificial neurons in their networks. The former endeavour...
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E41: Training and Diversity in Computational Neuroscience
This very special episode of Unsupervised Thinking takes place entirely at the IBRO-Simons Computational Neuroscience Imbizo in Cape Town, South Africa! Computational neuroscience is a very interdisciplinary field and people come to it in many different ways from many different backgrounds. In…
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E40: Global Science
In the past few years, we've noticed researchers making more explicit efforts to engage with scientists in other countries, particularly those where science isn't well-represented. Inspired by these efforts, we took a historical dive into the international element of science with special guest…
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E39: What Does the Cerebellum Do?
Cerebellum literally means "little brain," and in a way, it has been treated as a second-class citizen in neuroscience for awhile. In this episode we describe the traditional view of the cerebellum as a circuit for motor control and associative learning and how its more cognitive roles have been...
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E38: Reinforcement Learning - Biological and Artificial
Reinforcement learning is important for understanding behavior because it tells us how actions are guided by reward. But the topic also has a broader significance---as an example of the happy marriage that can come from blending computer science, psychology and neuroscience. In this way, RL is a...
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E37: What is an Explanation? - Part 2
In part two of our conversation on what counts as an explanation in science, we pickup with special guest David Barack giving his thoughts on the "model–mechanism–mapping" criteria for explanation. This leads us into a lengthy discussion on explanatory versus phenomenological (or "descriptive")...
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E36: What is an Explanation? - Part 1
As scientists, we throw around words like "explanation" a lot. We assume explaining stuff is part of what we're doing when we make and synthesize discoveries. But what does it actually take for something to be an explanation? Can a theory or model be successful without truly being one? How do…
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E35: Generative Models
Machine learning has been making big strides in a lot of straightforward tasks, such as taking an image and labeling the objects in it. But what if you want an algorithm that can, for example, generate an image of an object? That's a much vaguer and more difficult request. And it's where…
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E34: The Gut-Brain Connection
Because of the sheer number of neurons in the gut, the enteric nervous system is sometimes called the second brain. What're all those neurons doing down there? And what, or who, is controlling them? Science has recently revealed that the incredibly large population of microorganisms in the gut…
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E33: Predictive Coding
You may have heard of predictive coding; it's a theory that gets around. In fact, it's been used to understand everything from the retina to consciousness. So, before we get into the details, we start this episode by describing our impressions of predictive coding. Where have we encountered it?…
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E32: How Do We Study Behavior?
There is a tension when it comes to the study of behavior in neuroscience. On the one hand, we would love to understand animals as they behave in the wild---with the full complexity of the stimuli they take in and the actions they emit. On the other hand, such complexity is almost antithetical to...
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E31: Consuming Science (with Cosyne interviews)
On this unique episode of Unsupervised Thinking, we talk not about a particular area of science, but about the process of doing science itself. In particular, we're discussing how scientists take in information from their niche research areas and beyond. The topic for this free-form conversation...
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E30: The Neuroscience of Sleep
Sleep is such a ubiquitous part of our lives we may forget just how weird of a thing it is to spend a third of our days laying in darkness. In this episode on the science of sleep, we start by describing types of sleep (while appreciating its strangeness) and the negative cognitive effects of...
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E29: The Neuron Doctrine - Then and Now
In the late 19th century, many of the most basic foundations of neuroscience were laid, but not without a fight. In this episode, we cover the famous debate between Camillo Golgi and Santiago Ramon y Cajal regarding the very nature of neurons: are they separate cells or one conjoined mass? We…
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E28: Past, Present, and Future of Neuroscience
In this very special episode of Unsupervised Thinking, we bring together a group of neuroscientists and neuroscience enthusiasts to have a semi-structured discussion on the past, present, and future of the field of neuroscience. The group includes your three regular hosts plus Yann, Alex, and…
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E27: The Concept of Coding - Part 2
In the second part of our discussion on the concept of coding, we get into specific examples of what could count as the "neural code". In particular, we talk rate vs temporal coding along with examples of each in different organisms. We then get into the use of coding as a metaphor. How does it...
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E26: The Concept of Coding - Part 1
The concept of "coding," along with language referencing it, is abundant in neuroscience whether describing sensory systems, cognition, or motor control. The notion that neurons encode information is so core to neuroscience it is almost difficult to imagine the field without it. In the first part...
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E25: What Can Eye Movements Tell Us About The Mind?
You move your eyes several times a second, making choices about what to attend to without even noticing. That is a lot of behavioral data that scientists could use to understand underlying computations, preferences, memories, and intentions. On this episode, we talk about just such endeavors to...
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E24: Social Neuroscience Research
For this episode, special guest Nancy Padilla (E5: Neural Oscillations) returns to talk about a topic she now studies: social neuroscience. We get into the methods this rather new field uses to probe the neural processes behind social interaction, including the inherent difficulties in studying...
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E23: What Can Neuroscience Say About Consciousness?
For this episode, we try to de-thorn one of the thorniest topics in neuroscience: consciousness! Starting with the (not so) simple task of defining the c-word, we first lay out our own definitions but end up relying on the work of philosopher David Chalmers (easy and hard problems of…
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E22: Underdeterminacy & Neural Circuits
Sloppiness, stiffness, and stomatogastric ganglion! This episode on underdeterminacy in neural circuits will introduce you to all these topics, as well as to special guest Alex Williams! To start, we take you way back to algebra class with a refresher on what makes a system "underdetermined"...
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E21: Understanding fMRI
To much of the world, the face of neuroscience is an image of a brain with small colored blobs on it. Those images come from functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a technology that's made a big splash in its relatively short tenure. For this episode, we delve into fMRI and what scientists...
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E20: Studies on the State of Science
Sometimes scientists decide to turn their tools of inquiry inward to understand their own fields and behaviors. For our 20th episode, we're diving into this meta-science by reading some papers about by papers written by scientists studying scientists. In particular, we start with a commentary...
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E19: Gender Science
Way back in Episode 16 we paired up with Always Already to talk about a book on gender and the interaction of science and society. Unsurprisingly, that conversation spanned far beyond the scientific study of gender and so we never really got into the biological weeds. Our intent with this episode...
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E18: Does Neuroscience Need More Behavior?
For most people, the desire to study neuroscience comes from a desire to understand how, in some form, the brain leads to behavior. Generally, neuroscientists focus on the brain side of that relationship, but what obligation do they have to study behavior? Is it even possible to do proper...
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E17: Ethics of AI
There's a lot to be said about the technical progress being made with artificial intelligence, but what about the impact these rapid advances have on the society in which they unfold? In this episode, we tackle a broad range of such issues, from the possibility of removing human bias from...
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E16: Gender, Biology, and Society
On this "very special" episode of Unsupervised Thinking, we partner with our fellow podcasters over at Always Already, a critical theory podcast, to burst out of our respective academic bubbles and tackle issues of science and society. The fodder for our conversation is Brain Storm, a book by...
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E15: "Just-So" Stories of Bayesian Modeling in Psychology
In the late 1700s, English minister Thomas Bayes discovered a simple mathematical rule for calculating probabilities based on different information sources. Since then Bayesian models for describing uncertain events have taken off in a wide variety of fields, not the least of which is psychology....
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E14: Computational Psychiatry
Computational psychiatry is a field in its infancy, but it offers potential to change the way mental disorders are diagnosed, treated, and understood. In this episode, we cover the different components of computational psychiatry, compare and contrast it to computational neuroscience, and discuss...
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E13: The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics
As computational neuroscientists, the members of this podcast take for granted the fact that math can be used to describe the brain. But is this ability of math trivial or deeply surprising? On this episode we tackle the large philosophical issues behind computational sciences, with the help of a...
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E12: Brain Freezing
The body is generally kept at around 37 degrees C, and the brain maybe even a degree higher. So it might seem like a bad idea to cool it down. But against intuition (or with it?) freezing the brain can actually be helpful, both for science and for medicine. In this episode we explain how cooling...
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E11: The Connectome
The connectome--a silly word and a somewhat simple concept that has caused significant debate amongst neuroscientists worldwide. In this episode, we teach the controversy surrounding the big C. First, we trudge through a definition of the connectome (it means different things to different people,...
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E10: Brain Size
It's the big 1-0 here at Unsupervised Thinking and for it we are tackling a big topic: brain size! [insert obligatory "does size matter" joke here]. Ever since humans started using their intelligence to compare their brains to that of other animals, we've been searching for what makes us so much...
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E9: Patenting Science
Do you know what happens when scientists patent their ideas? Do you know who gets the money from those patents? Did you know that scientists even patent things at all? We weren't so sure about these topics back in our Optogenetics episode, so we brought in Penn Law alum/fellow neuroscience grad...
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E8: Neuroscience vs Psychology
In some ways, neuroscience is like psychology's little brother. It came around later, started encroaching on psychology's turf and drawing attention to itself, and so they don't always get along. On this episode we explore the place where neuro and psych interact, and the separate roles for each....
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E7: Optogenetics
Inside a skull it's generally pretty dark. But about 10 years ago, as part of a new method for toying with neurons, scientists started shining a light in there. That method is optogenetics, and it allows for highly-specified control of neural activity by light, via genetic engineering. As part of...
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E6: Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation
tDCS is old school brain manipulation involving electrodes and sponges. For our 6th episode we describe the basic premise of tDCS (really simple) and its effects on the brain (really not simple). We also talk about its use as a treatment of depression and other clinical applications, which leads…
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E5: Neural Oscillations
For our 5th episode, we get into braaaiiiiinnnwaaaaaavessss. By which we mean neural oscillations. By which we really mean a lot of different things it turns out. For this, we bring in special guest Nancy Padilla, who actually puts electrodes into animals to study these things. We define the...
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E4: Deep Learning
As you may have heard, there's been a lot of talk about something called deep learning lately. So for our fourth episode, we and our special guest, Ryan Tombacco, are taking a deep dive into deep learning! We give broad overviews of machine learning, artificial intelligence, and the historical...
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E3: Neuromorphic Computing
For our third episode, we cover "neuromorphic computing". The attempt to build hardware that functions like neurons is a fairly new field of research. We discuss how building neurons on a chip is possible, how it compares to standard computing and standard neural modeling, and the principles of...
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E2: Brain-Computer Interface
For our second episode, we break down BCI. We'll go over what signals in the brain are used to interface with computers and how. Included is some constrained optimism about how well these devices can perform and where the limitations come from. Our focus is mostly on motor interfaces (prosthetic...
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does Unsupervised Thinking have?
Unsupervised Thinking currently has 52 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is Unsupervised Thinking about?
A podcast about neuroscience, artificial intelligence, and science more broadly, run by a group of computational neuroscientists.
How often does Unsupervised Thinking release new episodes?
Unsupervised Thinking has 52 episodes. Check the episode list to see recent publication dates and frequency.
Where can I listen to Unsupervised Thinking?
You can listen to Unsupervised Thinking on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts Unsupervised Thinking?
Unsupervised Thinking is created and hosted by Neuro Collective.
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