Jumping to Delusions!

Loading player...
In this podcast from the March Cafe Scientifique in Cambridge, we investigate how our brain takes shortcuts to understand the world around us and how it jumps to delusions! We meet event speaker Dr Paul Fletcher to find out how our brains process the masses of information coming in from the world around us by using shortcuts and how changes in these shortcuts can lead to delusions . We also answer your questions such as what the scale of these delusions are and whether knowing this about our brains means eye witness accounts are less reliable. All that plus a heads up on what to look forward to at the April event.
8 Apr 2010 English United Kingdom Science

Other recent episodes

Keeping humans healthy in orbit

With only a few walls between an astronaut and a rapid death, what do we know about the various dangers to the human body during space travel? Chris Smith spoke with Mark Shelhamer, a professor of Otolaryngology - Head and Neck Surgery at John Hopkins Medical School - about which…
10 Sep 6 min

Ants doing gene therapy, and tadpole microbiomes

This month, as the eLife Podcast hits its century, we hear how getting frog dads to cross-foster tadpoles has revealed the way in which some frogs come by their microbiomes, the ants that do gene therapy, signs that disease causes a breakdown in nutrient exchange between the elements of the…
7 Sep 43 min

Synthetic sustainable spuds

As the global population heads toward 10 billion, the pressure on agriculture is mounting. With that in mind, the UK's Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA) has announced millions of pounds worth of funding for crops enhanced through synthetic biology by designing entirely new chromosomes and chloroplasts, starting with the…
9 Jul 5 min

Scientists say they've bent spacetime

"Warp speed, Mr Sulu." It's the kind of command we've only heard in science fiction - until now. Did a team of scientists just bend spacetime using nothing but sparks in a lab? That's right - not black holes, not neutron stars - electrical sparks. A new experiment claims to…
23 Jun 5 min

Finland's giant virus, and monkeys take care of their teeth

In the eLife podcast, a university compost heap has turned up Finland's first documented "giant virus". Also, why monkeys de-sand their supper, and how learning more languages actually makes brain tissue thinner. Then, the link between sugar and neonatal sepsis, and how a cancer controls its hydra host by bestowing…
19 Jun 38 min