Big Picture Science - Skeptic Check: Brain Gain
Looking to
boost your brainpower? Luckily, there are products promising to
help. Smart drugs, neurofeedback exercises, and brain-training video games
all promise to improve your gray matter’s performance. But it’s uncertain whether
these products really work. Regulatory agencies have come down har
on
some popular brain training companies for false advertising. But other brain
games have shown benefits in clinical trials. And could we skip the brain
workout altogether and pop a genius pill instead?
In our regular
look at critical thinking, we separate the pseudo from the science of
commercial cognitive enhancement techniques.
Guests:
- Caroline Williams – Science journalist and author of “My Plastic Brain: One Woman’s Yearlong Journey to Discover If Science Can Improve Her Mind”
- Adam Gazzaley – Neuroscientist, University of California, San Francisco, and the executive director of Neuroscape. His book is “The Distracted Mind: Ancient Brains in a High Tech World.”
- Amy Arnsten – Professor of neuroscience and psychology at Yale Medical School
- Kevin Roose – Journalist for the New York Times.
- Leonard Mlodinow – Physicist and author of “Elastic: Flexible Thinking in a Time of Change”
This repeat podcast originally aired on August 6, 2018
Download podcast at - http://bigpicturescience.org/episodes/skeptic-check-brain-gain
You can listen to this and other episodes at http://bigpicturescience.org/, and be sure to check out Blog Picture Science, the companion blog to the radio show.
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