theatlantic:

Why Can’t We Tickle Ourselves?

Neuroscientist David Eagleman explains:

Because your brain is always predicting your own actions, and how your body will feel as a result, you cannot tickle yourself. Other people can tickle you because they can surprise you. You can’t predict what their tickling actions will be.

Read more.[Images: Fun book]

The Fresh Air interview with David Eagleman: What’s Hiding in the Unconscious Mind

Currently in the legal system there’s this myth of equality. And the assumption is if you are over 18 and you have an IQ of over 70 then all brains are created equal. And, of course, that’s a very charitable idea but it’s demonstrably false. Brains are extraordinarily different from one another. Brains are essentially like fingerprints; we’ve all got them but they’re somewhat different. And so by imagining that everyone has the exact same capacity for decision-making, for understanding future consequences, for squelching their impulsive behavior and so on, what we’re doing is we’re imagining that everybody should be treated the same. And, of course, what has happened is that our prison system has become our de facto mental health care system. Estimates are that about 30 percent of the prison population has some sort of mental illness.

— neuroscientist David Eagleman, author of Incognito

Audio for Terry’s interview with neuroscientist David Eagleman about decisions, consciousness, religion, stress, crime and time is now up. Enjoy!

Neuroscientist David Eagleman on our unconscious minds: “All of our lives — our cognition, our thoughts, our beliefs — all of these are underpinned by these massive lightning storms of [electrical] activity [in our brains,] and yet we don’t have any awareness of it. What we find is that our brains have colossal things happening in them all the time.”

pterodactylpants:

Chicago, 2011 (by PterodactylPants Plush)

Today: Neuroscientist David Eagleman explains why everything we do, think and believe is determined by neural processes in our unconscious brain.

In case you missed it, we re-aired an interview with Keith Richards yesterday.

Today: exploring the unconscious brain with neuroscientist David Eagleman. 

Before Francis Crick died, in 2004, he gave Eagleman some advice. “Look,” he said. “The dangerous man is the one who has only one idea, because then he’ll fight and die for it. The way real science goes is that you come up with lots of ideas, and most of them will be wrong.

— 

David Eagleman and Mysteries of the Brain : The New Yorker (via poptech)

Tuesday’s guest: David Eagleman