From Our Neurons to Yours
This award-winning show from Stanford’s Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute is a field manual for anyone who wants to understand their own brain and the new science reshaping how we learn, age, heal, and make sense of ourselves.Each episode, host Nicholas Weiler sits down with leading scientists to unpack big ideas from the frontiers of the field—brain-computer interfaces and AI language models; new therapies for depression, dementia, and stroke; the mysteries of perception and memory; even the debate over free will. You’ll hear how basic research becomes clinical insight and how emerging tech might expand what it means...
Predicting the brain: the Stanford Digital Brain Project | Dan Yamins & Russ Poldrack
This week, Wu Tsai Neuro launched the Stanford Digital Brain Project, an ambitious effort to build predictive models of the human brain.
So today on the show, we’re bringing you two conversations to get you up to speed on what this new initiative is and why it matters.
First we’re going to revisit a conversation from last year with Wu Tsai Neuro Faculty Scholar Dan Yamins about the vision for building digital models of the brain. We talked about how such models would let neuroscientists test hypotheses about brain function or deve...
What an immune invasion teaches us about Alzheimer’s disease | Julia Belk
Today we’re going to be talking about a recent study that is rewriting neuroscience textbooks, potentially changing our understanding of Alzheimer’s disease, our brain’s immune system, and the potential for immunotherapy for the brain.
Today’s guest is Julia Belk, lead author of a new study that discovered that as we age, immune cells from the blood somehow cross the supposedly impenetrable blood–brain barrier, and replace the brain’s native immune cells, the microglia. The findings help us understand growing links between the aging immune system and Alzheimer’s disease and why certain bl...
What's on our brains: Behind the scenes of From Our Neurons to Yours
Today on the show we're doing something a little different.
Quite different, actually. Nine seasons in, listeners might wonder: Why do we make this show? How do we prepare for it? What do we hope you get out of it? What even is the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute?
The idea has been brewing for a while, and this time we're doing it: From Our Neurons To Yours is taking you behind the scenes of From Our Neurons To Yours. Producer Michael Osborne joins host Nicholas Weiler to talk about where the show came f...
How do our brains stay healthy as we age? | Tom Clandinin
Today on the show, we explore the complex biology underlying a seemingly straightforward question: How do our brains stay healthy – or not – as we age?
There seems to be a constant flow of new secrets to healthy brain aging – inflammation, estrogen levels, how the brain clears out its waste. We've talked about many of these explanations on the show, and it can be easy to think that whatever the latest one is, that's the one. At least until the next one comes along.
In reality, each of those things is probably part of a larg...
Sugar on the brain | Carolyn Bertozzi
Today on the show, we bring you a conversation with Carolyn Bertozzi, the Baker Family Director of Sarafan ChEM-H and the Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences.
Bertozzi is a Nobel Laureate, a MacArthur Fellow, and an all around cool person – although it didn't come up in the conversation, she used to play in a band with Rage Against the Machine's Tom Morello.
Although Bertozzi wouldn’t call herself a neuroscientist — she’s a chemist at heart – her work is having a big impac...
After Ozempic: the revolution in peptide science | Jonathan Long
Health influencers and scientists have both gone crazy for peptides.
The peptide health craze stems from a lot of online hype — centered on gray-market compounds that haven't been rigorously tested in humans and aren't regulated for safety or purity. But among scientists, there is a genuine "revolution" underway — spurred by technological developments revealing an order of magnitude more peptides in our bodies than we ever realized, and by the unexpected and unparalleled success of GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic.
To learn more about what’s driving this excitement – and how much of the peptide hype is...
Transcranial magnetic stimulation and the future of psychiatry | Corey Keller
Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) is one of the most promising new technologies in psychiatry. Essentially, it allows us to reach inside the brain, stimulate it, and alter the brain circuits that go awry in disorders like depression.
As the late Nolan Williams once explained, we've known for a long time that mental health disorders are caused by changes in electrical circuits in our brains, until TMS came along, we didn't had a good way of nudging those circuits back toward healthier function.
But for all its promise, there is still much we don't u...
How brain imaging is transforming mental health (finally) | Leanne Williams
Back in the 1950s, doctors didn't know a whole lot about the heart. If someone came in with chest pain, clinicians would ask a few questions, then take a stab at treating what might be heartburn or a heart attack.
That's where mental health care is today, according to today's guest, Leanne Williams.
For example: you come into a psychiatrist’s office. The psychiatrist determines that you’ve experienced five or more depressive symptoms for at least two consecutive weeks and you get a diagnosis of major depressive disorder. Maybe you get prescribed some...
Is chronic fatigue a gut-brain reflex? (Big Ideas in Neuroscience) | Julia Kaltschmidt
Why does being sick make you so exhausted – and why does that exhaustion sometimes outlast the illness itself? Today, neuroscientist Julia Kaltschmidt returns to the podcast to talk about the body's hidden "sickness reflex," the gut-brain circuitry behind it, and what those things might reveal about chronic fatigue.
Kaltschmidt, a Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute faculty scholar and professor of neurosurgery at Stanford Medicine, is an expert on the enteric nervous system — the gut's own semi-independent network of 200 to 600 million neurons. She's leading a new Big Ideas in Neuroscience project mapping out exactly how the body tell...
Is neurodegeneration a waste-management problem? | Monther Abu-Remaileh
For decades, the field focused on the plaques and tangles of misfolded proteins that show up in the brains of patients with Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and other disorders. The natural assumption was that if you could design a drug to clear out that gunk, you could save the brain. But so far, that bet hasn't paid off.
Now, researchers are taking a big step back and asking whether the plaques aren't a culprit, but rather a clue pointing to something more fundamental going wrong in our brain cells as we age? Put another way, why do our...
A new precision neuroscience of language (Big Ideas in Neuroscience) | Cory Shain
Right now, as you're reading this sentence, something remarkable is happening in your brain. Light waves from your screen hit your eyes, transform into electrical signals, and take on meaning. You understand what you're reading. This is language — our human superpower.
But despite 150 years of intensive research, we still do not have a complete picture of how the brain actually accomplishes all of this. We don't even have a good answer to a seemingly simple question: Where in the brain does language happen? It turns out, the answer may be different in...
How childhood (and Pokémon) shape how we see the world | Kalanit Grill-Spector
Today's episode is all about how childhood literally shapes the brain.
Our most important experiences – from learning to read, to the growing complexity of our social lives at school, and even the video games we play – leave physical traces in how our brains get organized that shape how we see the world as adults.
But how does the brain actually know what parts of our lives are actually important enough to reorganize around? How do particular experiences get under the hood to leave their mark on the developing brain?
Today's guest, Stanford psychology prof...
The FDA's psychedelic sea-change: what accelerated clinical trials for psilocybin, methylone, and ibogaine mean for mental health and neuroscience research | Boris Heifets
Last month we saw a big shift in the federal government’s approach to psychedelic medicine.
Specifically, following an executive order by President Trump, the FDA announced it is fast-tracking its review of several clinical trials of psychedelic drugs for patients with mental health disorders. The executive order also directed more funds towards psychedelic research and a review of psychedelics’ status as highly restricted Schedule 1 substances.
To help us understand what all this means for the future of psychedelic medicine and the neuroscience of psychedelics, we’re joined by Boris Heifets, an anesthesiologist at Stan...
Will work for dopamine: why hard work motivates us | Neir Eshel
Today’s episode is about the neuroscience of hard work—or maybe more specifically, the value we place on hard work.
There’s something different about hiking to the top of a mountain versus taking a helicopter. The view from the top is exactly the same, but if you’ve done the hard slog to get there, the payoff is going to be much more rewarding.
The question is, how does the brain know the difference? To answer this, we need to take a deep dive into the brain’s reward system, and one of our...
Could Parkinson's start in the gut? | Kathleen Poston
Traditionally, we think of Parkinson's as a movement disorder—defined by slowed movement, stiff muscles, and involuntary shaking. But it turns out there are other symptoms that appear years or even decades before movement problems bring patients to the clinic: sleep disturbances, chronic constipation, and loss of smell.
For today's guest, these early symptoms represent an incredible opportunity to understand where Parkinson's begins and to identify patients much earlier in the disease.
Kathleen Poston is a neurologist and division chief for movement disorders at Stanford Medicine. She's also a member of the steering co...
How see-through brains could transform neuroscience (Big Ideas in Neuroscience) | Guosong Hong
What if we could make the brain see-through?
It sounds like science fiction, but it could revolutionize how we study the brain.
Today on the show, we're talking with Guosong Hong, a faculty scholar here at the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute who has a unique reputation for developing creative techniques that literally shed light on the brain—from using fluorescent nanomaterials and focused ultrasound to create a virtual flashlight inside the skull, to discovering a common food dye that temporarily makes skin, muscle, and even parts of the brai...
Could boosting gut–brain communication prevent memory loss? A tale of microbes, memory, and our internal senses | Christophe Thaiss
Our memories and senses are deeply connected—like how a favorite song can recreate a whole glorious teenage summer. It turns out this relationship might extend beyond our five external senses to include our internal senses: the signals telling us what's happening inside our bodies, sometimes beyond the veil of conscious perception.
New research by Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute affiliate Christoph Thaiss suggests that losing these internal signals as we age — in part due to changes in our gut microbiome — could one reason why our memories decline as we get older.
Today we're talking...
Why do some of us age faster than others? | Claire Bedbrook and Ravi Nath
Today on the show, why do some of us age faster than others? Why do some of us grow old and die before our time while others seem to simply endure? And most of us have probably wondered at one point or another, which track am I on?
Turns out it might be possible to predict the whole trajectory of an animal's life at a surprisingly young age, just by looking closely at subtle patterns of behavior. That's the conclusion of a new study from researchers at the Knight Initiative for Brain Resilience here at W...
A new neuroscience of pregnancy (Big Ideas in Neuroscience) | Nirao Shah & Katrin Svensson
We know shockingly little about what goes on in a mother’s brain during pregnancy.
For example, we know only a handful of the hormones involved—out of hundreds scientists think may exist—and very little about how they might impact the brain. This gap in our understanding is one of the reasons we don’t have great treatments for pregnancy-related maladies, whether it’s extreme nausea, or anxiety and depression.
Closing this gap is the mission of the new Stanford Neuro-Pregnancy Initiative, part of the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute's Big Ideas in Neuroscien...
Why do our minds wander? What the brain's default mode tells us about our humanity | Vinod Menon
Here’s a question for you that may at first seem trivial, but is actually profound: Why do our minds drift?
If you have ever dabbled in mindfulness or meditation, you know this mind wandering has an almost gravitational pull. In fact, researchers now think we spend as much as 50 percent of our waking time in this state, which cognitive scientists have dubbed the brain’s “default mode.”
Today’s guest is Vinod Menon. He’s a giant in the field of cognitive science who played a central role in defining the brain “default mode ne...
Is Alzheimer's an energy crisis in the brain? Inflammation, metabolism and a new path in the search for cures | Kati Andreasson
For decades, Alzheimer's research has focused on clearing amyloid plaques from the brain. But new drugs that successfully remove plaques have proven clinically "underwhelming", leaving the field searching for alternative approaches.
Stanford neurologist Katrin Andreasson has spent twenty years pursuing a different path—investigating how aging triggers an energy crisis in the brain's immune and support cells. Her work reveals that inflammation and metabolic dysfunction in microglia and astrocytes may be the real drivers of Alzheimer's pathology.
Most remarkably, her recent research—supported by the Knight Initiative for Brain Resilience here at the Wu Tsai Neuro...
"The Emergent Mind: How Intelligence Arises in People and Machines" | Jay McClelland
The AI revolution of the past few years is built on brain-inspired neural network models originally developed to study our own minds. The question is, what should we make of the fact that our own rich mental lives are built on the same foundations as the seemingly soulless chat-bots we now interact with on a daily basis?
Our guest this week is Stanford cognitive scientist Jay McClelland, who has been a leading figure in this field since the 1980s, when he developed some of the first of these artificial neural network models. Now McClelland has...
Could brain implants read our thoughts? | Erin Kunz
Imagine what it’s like to lose your ability to speak. You know what you want to say, but the connection between your brain and the muscles that form words is no longer functioning. For people with conditions like ALS, or who experience a severe stroke, this is a devastating reality.
Today's guest is Erin Kunz, a postdoctoral researcher in the Neural Prosthetics Translational Laboratory at Stanford, who is part of a global community of scientists working towards the vision of a brain–computer interface — or BCI — to bypass those broken circuits and restore the ability to speak to...
NeuroForecasting: how brain activity can predict stock prices or viral videos | Brian Knutson
Neuroscientists have spent the past few decades tracing the network of brain systems—some deep and emotional, and others more analytical and deliberate— that work together as we make tough choices like where to invest our money as well as more everyday decisions like which videos to watch online—or, for that matter, which podcast to listen to.
You can imagine that the ability to listen in on the brain systems that guide our choices might start to let scientists predict our decisions. But today's guest has taken this a step further, showing that measuring brain activity in jus...
"Why Brains Need Friends: The Neuroscience of Social Connection" | Ben Rein
We are more isolated from one another than ever before — by our technology, by our political divides, and most of all, by our choices.
This week on the show, we talk with neuroscientist Ben Rein about why this social isolation is terrible for our health — implicated in not only rising rates of mental illness, but also heart disease, dementia and more.
We discuss Ben's new book, "Why Brains Need Friends: The Neuroscience of Social Connection", published earlier this week, and try to work out a plan for an improved social diet to restore our b...
From doodles to Descartes: sketching and the human cognitive toolkit | Judith Fan
Before the written word — and possibly even before speech — humans have communicated through drawing. From crude scratches in the dirt or on cave walls to the arcane symbology of the laboratory whiteboard, our instinct for conveying our thoughts visually is pretty extraordinary.
We see or understand something in the world, we build an idea in our mind of what we think we see, and then using our hand and the utensil we re-create it to communicate the share our perception with others. Along the way, we add in our own understanding and experience to craft that...
What is psychosis? Navigating an altered reality | Jacob Ballon & Shannon Pagdon
Imagine if you couldn't distinguish between dreams and reality. If you couldn't tell whether what you were seeing or hearing was really there in front of you. What if you discovered you couldn't trust your own perceptions?
Psychosis is something three out of every a hundred people will experience at some point in their lifetimes. But what exactly is it, and is it something people can learn to live with?
Today we're fortunate to have on the show Dr. Jacob Ballon, the founding co-director of Stanford Medicine's Inspire Clinic, and Shannon Pagdon, a d...
"I Heard There Was a Secret Chord: Music as Medicine" | Daniel Levitin
Most of us can agree: music is awesome. Regardless of which songs speak to you, music probably plays an important role in your life. The question is, what makes music so powerful? Why does a particular combination of sounds and rhythms grab us and affect us in the way that it does? And is it true that music can help heal patients with Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, PTSD, chronic pain, and more?
To help us understand what we're learning about the neuroscience of music and how it can heal and enrich our lives, we're speaking with Daniel Levitin. He's a...
How we learn to read (and why some struggle): what neuroscience teaches us about a transformative human technology | Bruce McCandliss
In this episode, we explore the fascinating neuroscience behind how children learn to read with Bruce McCandliss, director of the Stanford Educational Neuroscience Initiative.
Key topics include:
• How our brains "recycle" visual and language circuits to create reading expertise
• The crucial threshold when reading shifts from effortful to automatic
• Why some children struggle more than others to develop reading fluency
• How teachers can tailor instruction to help struggling readers
• The profound ways literacy reshapes our brains and cognition
Join us for a mind-expanding look at one of humanity's most transf...
Why voices light us up—but leave the autistic brain in the dark | Dan Abrams
Recognizing a familiar voice is one of the brain’s earliest social feats. But what are the brain circuits that let a newborn pick out mom in a crowded nursery? How do they change as kids turn toward friends and the wider world? And what are we learning about why this instinct fails to develop in the autistic brain?
This week, host Nicholas Weiler joins Stanford neuroscientist Dan Abrams on the quest to understand the neural “hub” that links our brains' hearing centers to the networks that tag voices as rewarding, social, and worth our attent...
Famous & Gravy: Cosmic Marketer and the Meaning of Life | Stephen Hawking
In this special crossover episode, we’re doing something a little different. From Our Neurons to Yours host Nicholas joins producer Michael Osborne to co-host his podcast Famous and Gravy for a lively conversation about the extraordinary life and mind of Stephen Hawking.
Hawking, one of the most renowned scientists of our time, lived with ALS for more than 50 years—defying medical expectations while also reshaping how we understand black holes, the universe, and our place within it. While Hawking wasn’t a neuroscientist, his neurological condition and his remarkable communication of complex ideas make his story especi...
Can brain science save addiction policy? | Keith Humphreys
If addiction is a disease of the brain, what does that mean for how we treat people—and how we write policy? In this wide-ranging conversation, Stanford addiction expert and policy advisor Keith Humphreys returns to the show to walk us through what neuroscience has taught us about substance use disorders and how that science intersects with law, public health, and politics.
From the biology of craving to the limits of autonomy, we explore the tension between compassion and accountability, and what truly effective treatment and prevention might look like.
Episode Highlights
Wh...How basic science transformed stroke care | Marion Buckwalter
A generation ago, a big clot in the brain meant paralysis or worse. Today, doctors can diagnose clots on AI-enabled brain scans; provide life-saving, targeted medications; or snake a catheter from a patient’s groin into the brain to vacuum out the clot. If they intervene in time, they can watch speech and movement return before the sedatives wear off. How did that happen—and what’s still missing?
In this episode of From Our Neurons to Yours, Stanford neuroscientist and neurocritical care specialist Marion Buckwalter, MD, PhD retraces the 70-year chain of curiosity-driven research—biochemistry, imaging, material...
Surgery as a window into brain resilience | Martin Angst
We've all heard stories about someone who went in for surgery and came out...different. A grandmother who struggled with names after hip replacement, or an uncle who seemed foggy for months following cardiac bypass. But why does this happen to some people while others bounce right back?
This week, we explore this question with Dr. Martin Angst, a professor of anesthesiology at Stanford who's studying the biological factors that determine cognitive outcomes after surgery. With support from the Knight Initiative for Brain Resilience, Martin and his team are following hundreds of cardiac surgery patients, tracking everything...
Best of: How neural prosthetics could free minds trapped by brain injury | Jaimie Henderson
Imagine being trapped in your own body, unable to move or communicate effectively. This may seem like a nightmare, but it is a reality for many people living with brain or spinal cord injuries.
We're re-releasing one of our favorite episodes from the archives: our 2024 conversation with Jaimie Henderson, a Stanford neurosurgeon leading groundbreaking research in brain-machine interfaces. Henderson shares how multiple types of brain implants are currently being developed to treat neurological disorders and restore communication for those who have lost the ability to speak.
We also discuss the legacy of the...
The secrets of resilient aging | Beth Mormino & Anthony Wagner
This week on the show, we're have our sights set on healthy aging. What would it mean to be able to live to 80, 90 or 100 with our cognitive abilities intact and able to maintain an independent lifestyle right to the end of our days?
We're joined by Beth Mormino and Anthony Wagner who lead the Stanford Aging and Memory Study, which recruits cognitively healthy older adults to understand what makes their brains particularly resilient — and how more of us could join them in living the dream of healthy aging.
Learn More
Sta...Building AI simulations of the human brain | Dan Yamins
This week on the show: Are we ready to create digital models of the human brain?
Last month, Stanford researcher Andreas Tolias and colleagues created a "digital twin" of the mouse visual cortex. The researchers used the same foundation model approach that powers ChatGPT, but instead of training the model on text, the team trained in on brain activity recorded while mice watched action movies. The result? A digital model that can predict how neurons would respond to entirely new visual inputs.
This landmark study is a preview of the unprecedented research possibilities ma...
What ChatGPT understands: Large language models and the neuroscience of meaning | Laura Gwilliams
If you spend any time chatting with a modern AI chatbot, you've probably been amazed at just how human it sounds, how much it feels like you're talking to a real person. Much ink has been spilled explaining how these systems are not actually conversing, not actually understanding — they're statistical algorithms trained to predict the next likely word.
But today on the show, let's flip our perspective on this. What if instead of thinking about how these algorithms are not like the human brain, we talked about how similar they are? What if we could use these lar...
What the other half of the brain does | Brad Zuchero
We've talked about glia and sleep. We've talked about glia and neuroinflammation. We've talked about glia in the brain fog that can accompany COVID or chemotherapy. We've talked about the brain's quiet majority of non–neuronal cells in so many different contexts that it felt like it was high time for us to take a step back and look at the bigger picture. After all, glia science was founded here at Stanford in the lab of the late, great Ben Barres.
No one is better suited to take us through this history and lead us to the fr...
Stimulating the brain with sound | Kim Butts Pauly and Raag Airan
As we gain a better understanding of how misfiring brain circuits lead to mental health conditions, we'd like to be able to go in and nudge those circuits back into balance. But this is hard — literally — because the brain is encased in this thick bony skull. Plus, often the problem you want to target is buried deep in the middle of a maze of delicate brain tissue you need to preserve.
Today we're going to be talking with neuroscientists who aim to solve this problem with sound. And not just any sound: ultrasound.
Kim Butts Pauly...
