TTC Video – Neuroscience of Everyday Life
TTC Video – Neuroscience of Everyday Life
Course No. 1540, Taught By Professor Sam Wang, Ph.D.
36 Lectures (.m4v) + Guidebook (.pdf) + Starter Materials (.txt)
1. What Is Neuroscience?
2. How Do Neuroscientists Study the Brain?
3. Evolution, Energetics, and the 10-percent Myth
4. Neurons and Synapses
5. Neurotransmitters and Drugs
6. Juicing the Brain
7. Coming to Your Senses
8. Perception and Your Brain’s Little Lies
9. Pain—All in Your Head?
10. Decisions—Your Brain’s Secret Ballot
11. Reward, Adaptation, and Addiction
12. The Many Forms of Memory
13. Quirks of Memory
14. Learning, Studying, and Sleep
15. Willpower and Mental Work
16. Work, Play, and Stress
17. Biological Timekeepers and Jet Lag
18. The Hidden Talents of Infants
19. The Mozart Myth and Active Learning
20. Childhood and Adolescence
21. Handedness—Sports, Speech, and Presidents
22. Reaching the Top of the Mountain—Aging
23. Brain Exercise and Real Exercise
24. Animal and Human Personality
25. Intelligence, Genes, and Environment
26. The Weather in Your Brain—Emotions
27. Fear, Loathing, and Anger
28. From Weather to Climate—Mood
29. The Social Brain, Empathy, and Autism
30. Mars and Venus—Men’s and Women’s Brains
31. Sex, Love, and Bonds for Life
32. Math and Other Evolutionary Curiosities
33. Consciousness and Free Will
34. Near-Death and Other Extreme Experiences
35. Spirituality and Religion
36. Happiness and Other Research Opportunities
30 minutes / lecture
Your nervous system is you. All the thoughts, perceptions, moods, passions, and dreams that make you an active, sentient being are the work of this amazing network of cells. For many centuries, people knew that this was true. But no one was sure how it happened.
Now, thanks to the exciting new field of neuroscience, we can chart the workings of the brain and the rest of the nervous system in remarkable detail to explain how neurons, synapses, neurotransmitters, and other biological processes produce all the experiences of everyday life, in every stage of life. From the spectacular growth of the brain in infancy to the act of learning a skill, falling in love, getting a joke, revising an opinion, or even forgetting a name, something very intriguing is going on behind the scenes.
For example, groundbreaking research in the past few decades is now able to explain such phenomena as these:
Decisions: Studies of decision making at the level of neurons show that our brain has often committed to a course of action before we are aware of having made a decision—an apparent violation of our sense of free will.
Memory: Memory is composed of many systems located in different parts of the brain, which means that you can forget your car keys (information stored in the neocortex) but still remember how to drive (a learned skill requiring the striatum and cerebellum).
Willpower: Willpower is more than a metaphor; it’s a measurable trait that draws on a finite mental resource, like a muscle. While any given individual has a consistent willpower capacity throughout life, it can be strengthened through training—again, just like a muscle.
Religion and spirituality: Three mental traits appear to be essential for the development of organized religion: the search for causes and effects, the ability to reason about people and motives, and language. Mystical experiences also trace to specific activities of the brain.
Opening your eyes to how neural processes produce the familiar features of human existence, The Neuroscience of Everyday Life covers a remarkable range of subjects in 36 richly detailed lectures. You will explore the brain under stress and in love, learning, sleeping, thinking, hallucinating, and just looking around—which is less about recording reality than creating illusions that allow us to function in our environment.
Your professor is distinguished neuroscientist and Professor Sam Wang of Princeton University, an award-winning researcher and best-selling author, public speaker, and TV and radio commentator. Professor Wang’s insightful and playful approach makes this course a joy for anyone who wants to know how his or her own brain works. And his vivid, richly illustrated presentation assumes no background in science.
Because of the highly visual nature of the subject matter, this course is available in VIDEO format. It features more than 1,000 visual elements including a detailed three-dimensional model of the brain, rich graphics and illustrations, and helpful on-screen text.
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