That Stranger In The Mirror: Neuroscience For Everyone

There are different voices talking inside our brains - see where those voices originate.

The prefrontal cortex is the seat of higher thought, limbic systems are our primitive selves. The anterior cingulate loves shiny new toys, while the ventrolateral prefrontal just says no.

Neurons are like telegraph poles, and synapses are the gaps between them. Neurotransmitters - such as dopamine and noradrenaline - govern our mood and behaviour with their balance.

Our mind wanders, but then switches back into conscious thought, driven by the insula, a switching system in our brain.

There are five main functions in conscious thought: Inhibiting, Deciding, Recalling, Understanding and Memorising.

An introduction to the state of flow, which represents a Goldilocks level of prefrontal cortex stimulation. Too stimulated? We're overexcited. Not stimulated enough? We're sluggish.

Distractions overwhelm our attentional filter - back when we were cavemen, ignoring distractions meant an early death. These days though, its giving into distractions that hastens professional death.

Our brains are driven to satisfy primary urges - these urges are primary, but not primitive. Understand how complex these can be.

16 Primary Motivations - we are surprisingly hard to motivate.

We round off our look at different motivation systems with a look at motivational sweet spots - when our reward centers are firing!

We come back to the 16 primary motivations and cycle through why and how they evolved.

The need for acceptance, and peer pressure.

The surprising need for independence, and its link to autonomy and control

Curiousity, or the urge to learn new skills and understand the world around us, is not restricted to geniuses like Edison, Jobs or Wozniak. In fact, its not restricted to humans - crows, chimps and many other species display it as well.

Order, tranquility - and some insights into post-partum depression.

Maslow's Hierarchy, the need for self-transcendance, and purpose.

The state of flow - magical, yet real - can be explained using first principles neuroscience.

People who are addicted to the state of flow, and work in order to achieve it, succeed professionally more easily than those who don't. Call it karma, or call it flow.

We introduce the big 5 personality traits: OCEAN.

See how openness to new experiences is a predictor of creativity, humor and intelligence; similar examinations of the other 4 are in here too.

Conscientiousness pays off at work, at school, and in relationships; its virtually unambiguously good. Neuroticsm is a lot less ought after.

See how classification and categorisation can be applied to the people around us.

The first batch of personality profiles. Tim Duncan is open, conscientious, and does n't really give a damn. Understand what makes personality types tick.

See why successful politicians often have aggressive, "attack-dog" types to do their nasty stuff. All it takes is flipping a few switches in the big 5.

We wrap up with a few last case studies of personality profiles.

Memories are signatures of neuron firings - unique, just like snow flakes. 

Each time you replay a memory, you're modifying it. So its really true, you never cross the same river twice.

Virtually all languages added words for colors in the same order - "light", "dark", "red". See why, and understand how categorisation and classification are cognitive shortcuts.

If you'd really like to learn this course well, don't watch the videos twice - take pen and paper and jot down a summary. Active Learning works, the science shows.

Sleep plays a critical role in memory formation, and also in creativity.

Consider becoming a morning person.

You need to turn off distractions during your two best hours of the day - and you need plausible deniability for not replying to email during those 2 hours.

A good mentor is dominant, but not obnoxious. See why your mentor should scare you just a little bit.

A 10-minute nap is akin to a miracle drug - make sure you use it.

Talk in bullets - our prefrontal cortex has a hard time remembering more than 6 points at a time, so stick to 5 or less.

Think in trees - hierarchies of logical constructs are a very efficient way of representing information in the brain.

Choose in pairs, because our brains likes true/false questions much better than multiple-choice ones.

Never shy away from tough conversations - but plan ahead of either fight or flight.