KUT & KUTX Studios -- Podcasts

KUT and KUTX news and music podcasts for Austin, Texas and beyond

Rebecca McInroy

Brain Games and Learning

You can go to the gym and work out your quads, your biceps, or your balance and isolate those muscle groups to focus on the improvement of those areas of function with work.

So it’s not too far of a stretch to assume if we exercise specific areas of our brains might we see improvement in functions as well, right?  Unfortunately, it’s not quite so simple.

But have so many brain-training systems like Lumosity become so popular?

On this week’s Two Guys on Your Head, Dr. Art Markman and Dr. Bob Duke will demystify the process of brain function improvement and illustrate the effectiveness of brain training programs.

The Social Components of Healing

Healing from an injury, suffering a loss, or struggling with a mental illness, can be isolating, and yet many of us don’t take the time or know how to ask about where our friends, colleagues, or loved ones are in their process of healing from or dealing with these challenges; and that’s a problem. In this edition of Two Guys on Your Head, Dr. Art Markman, and Dr. Bob Duke talk about the social components of healing and why they’re important.

Back to School-How To Help Your Teen Get More Sleep

Sleep is an essential part of our overall well-being and health, and throughout our lives how much sleep we need and when we need it changes. Teenagers, for example, are wired to stay up late and sleep in but a lot of times our school and extracurricular schedules don’t allow for it. In this episode of Two Guys on Your Head, Dr. Art Markman,  Dr. Bob Duke, and Rebecca McInroy give some tips that could help your teens get some much-needed sleep and why it’s important.

Why We Love Sugar More Than Fat

Why is it hard to have just one of those delicious slices of pound cake over the holidays? Well, it turns out it has less to do with the creamy butter and more to do with the way our brains react to those sweet white grains of sugar.

In this edition of Two Guys on Your Head, Dr. Art Markman and Dr. Bob Duke discuss the ways our brains respond to sugar by releasing dopamine. While we may think this dopamine is supposed to make us feel good, what the chemicals in our brains are trying to do is to teach us that this sugar is a good thing and that we want more of it for our survival. This might have been beneficial to us 150,000 years ago, but with sweets in every candy dish, gas station, and coffee shop, craving sugar has its consequences.

Porosity vs. Meditation

“Porosity” is a term developed by anthropologist Tanya Marie Luhrmann and psychology researcher Kara Weisman, to help understand the root of religious and spiritual beliefs. They argue that at the heart is the concept of a porous boundary between mind and world and that people in all human societies have conflicting intuitions about this boundary.

Here at Two Guys on Your Head, Dr. Art Markman,  Dr. Bob Duke, and Rebecca McInroy find this concept interesting and thought we would spend a little time, not only understanding it, but also complicating it, and asking, “what’s the difference between the concept of porosity and meditation?”

In this third and final episode in our three-part series on porosity, we dig into the mind-body connection.

“Porosity is The Heart of Religion”

Porosity Complicated

Last week’s episode focused on the concept of “porosity” a term developed by anthropologist Tanya Marie Luhrmann and psychology researcher Kara Weisman, to help understand the root of religious and spiritual beliefs. They argue that at the heart is the concept of a porous boundary between mind and world and that people in all human societies have conflicting intuitions about this boundary.

Here at Two Guys on Your Head, Dr. Art Markman,  Dr. Bob Duke, and Rebecca McInroy find this concept interesting and thought we would spend a little time, not only understanding it but complicating it.

In this second in our three-part series on porosity we ask a few questions about how it manifests in our daily lives and why we should care.

“Porosity is The Heart of Religion”

 

Memory, Trauma, and PTSD (Rebroadcast)

We may underestimate the role that our emotions of an event play in our memory of that event. But it turns out there are ways to manipulate those memories and separate the emotion out; even from Flashbulb memories.

In this episode of Two Guys on Your Head, Dr. Art Markman, and Dr. Bob Duke talk about why looking at how traumatic memories are formed has led to new treatments for PTSD that are not chemical-based.

Reasoning From The Desired Conclusion

When we go about joint problem solving it’s important to agree on what problem we’re solving for and then go about working toward a solution. However, many times this doesn’t happen. In today’s episode of Two Guys on Your Head, Dr. Art Markman and Dr. Bob Duke, talk about how the psychology of reasoning from the desired conclusion is frustrating when we want things to change.

 

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