Coming Next Friday - "Awestruck!" With Dr. Beau Lotto
This Is Your Brain With Dr. Phil Stieg
What is awe? It's not wonder, or surprise, or pleasure — it's a state of mind that Dr. Beau Lotto calls "finding the impossible in the common." Dr. Lotto is a neuroscientist who specializes in perception; he once actually measured awe in the brains of people watching Cirque du Soleil. In a special two part episode Dr. Stieg and Dr. Lotto will explore the related concepts of Awe and Uncertainty, and how humans have evolved to move from fear and chaos to order and resolution.
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The Mercurial Genius of Candace Pert
This Is Your Brain With Dr. Phil Stieg
Candace Pert discovered the opioid receptor, created a drug to stop AIDS in the brain, and identified stress as a cause of disease. She also inadvertently unleashed the overdose epidemic, got kicked out of the NIH, and was denied credit for much of her work. Largely forgotten, Pert was a trailblazing yet mercurial neuroscientist. Emmy award winning writer and producer Pamela Ryckman shines a light on Pert’s breakthroughs and her fascinating legacy on the podcast. For a transcript and more information about this episode use this link: For more about our...
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The Mother of all Brain Changes - Chelsea Conaboy
This Is Your Brain With Dr. Phil Stieg
New parents - especially moms - experience profound changes in the brain when they are expecting and welcoming a new baby. Health journalist explains how the caricature of "mommy brain" and its cognitive fog has it all wrong - parenthood actually has a neuroprotective effect, as the brain adapts to meeting the needs of children. It happens to all parents, not just mothers, but it's most dramatic in gestating parents. Plus... how it takes a troop to . For a transcript and further information use this link:
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Cultivating Confidence
This Is Your Brain With Dr. Phil Stieg
Where in the brain is that little something that makes top performers feel so confident in their ability? Can that confidence be developed in someone who is naturally more timid? Dr. Nate Zinsser, director of West Point’s Performance Psychology Program and author of The Confident Mind, explains how a sense of mastery develops, and why butterflies in your stomach are a signal from the brain when you’re about to do something great. Plus… why Ted Lasso wants us all to be a little more like goldfish. For transcript and further information, use this link:
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Why We Procrastinate -- with Joseph Ferrari
This Is Your Brain With Dr. Phil Stieg
We all do it - put things off, tell ourselves we'll start tomorrow, and somehow still miss the deadline. But chronic procrastination isn’t just a bad habit; it’s self-sabotaging behavior that can derail our goals, relationships, and even our health. Psychologist Dr. Joseph Ferrari, a leading expert on procrastination, breaks down the emotional roots of procrastination, debunks the myth that we “work best under pressure,” and offers science-backed strategies for change. Plus - meet one of history’s most legendary procrastinators: Leonardo da Vinci. Find out how his epic delays shaped...
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“Not Just Another Victim” – Nancy Jarecki’s recovery from a stroke
This Is Your Brain With Dr. Phil Stieg
Nancy Jarecki’s stroke could have reduced her to a statistic. But her determination, humor and style paved a different path to recovery. For our Season Six Finale we are recognizing Stroke Awareness Month with a very special episode of This Is Your Brain. This is a story told by Nancy Jarecki, - a businesswoman, wife and mother - whose resilience and good humor while recovering from a serious brain aneurysm was inspiring to all of us who treated her here at New York – Presbyterian Hospital. What follows is a dramatic, funny and heart-warming story...
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“I Think I Look Ugly” – Body Dysmorphia
This Is Your Brain With Dr. Phil Stieg
Most of us have a bad hair day or we're not happy if we have a little pimple on our face. But that's quite different from the experience of people with body dysmorphic disorder. (BDD) More than simple insecurity about one’s appearance, BDD is a disorder in which a person’s perception of their appearance becomes all-consuming and deeply distressing. Perfectly normal looking people can see themselves as horribly ugly. Or one minor detail becomes an enormous fixation, like the patient who said they felt they were just one giant pimple with hands and feet. In this...
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I Never Forget a Face
This Is Your Brain With Dr. Phil Stieg
Imagine a world where everyone looks the same and you can’t recognize one person from another – even you own child! It sounds like a frightening episode from the “Twilight Zone”, but it’s just every day life for people with prosopagnosia, better known as “Face Blindness”. We humans use parts of our brains to see, process and recognize faces that are different from recognizing anything else in our lives, which is not surprising when you consider how important faces are to understanding the situations we are in and the emotions of the people closest to us. In this episode, ...
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Why We Drink Too Much
This Is Your Brain With Dr. Phil Stieg
Why do we sometimes drink too much, even when we know the risks? In this episode, surgeon, author, and recovering alcoholic Dr. Charles Knowles joins us to explore the neuroscience of alcohol use and addiction. Drawing from his book and his own lived experience, Dr. Knowles describes how alcohol alters the brain’s reward pathways, and how drinking problems exist on a spectrum. Through neuroscience and deeply personal insight, he speaks to alcohol’s impact on mental and physical health and gives inspiration to others through sharing his own journey to recovery. For more...
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Why Wisdom is Necessary
This Is Your Brain With Dr. Phil Stieg
Although memories fade, hearing declines and our bodies suffer aches and pains, there is one benefit to aging that we can actually gain with each passing year. It’s called wisdom. But just because someone is older, it doesn't mean they are wiser. It takes a certain type of person to learn important lessons from their life experiences. reveals what he has discovered after studying wisdom for decades, including the neuroscience of the wise brain, emphasizing how cultivating wisdom enhances brain health as well as offering some insights on how to develop and...
info_outlineYour early experiences literally change the way you think and feel about the world -- they even shape what you see and hear. Dr. Chantel Prat, a cognitive neuroscientist and professor at the University of Washington, studies how variations in brain wiring make each of us unique individuals and drive our understanding of each other, and of the world. In this episode, learn which parts of the brain are "experience-expectant" (waiting for input on how to develop), and why trade-offs in the brain are responsible for our personalities, our learning styles, and our values. The answers begin to explain how three pounds of brain develop into what we know as the mind.
Click here to learn if you are a "Carrot" learner or a "Stick" learner in a special bonus segment.