Episode 23: Spikes and Dark Neurons - An Interview with Mark Humphries

Thinking Tools Podcast Episode 23 -  Spikes are action potentials–or the firing of neurons, while dark neurons indicate how rare such events really are in the human brain. That is, when we picture a brain, we sometimes imagine it flooded with action potentials, a hundred billion neurons all activating nearly simultaneously. The reality is that there are far fewer neurons active at any given time. Dr. Mark Humphries, author of the 2021 book, “The Spike: An Epic Journey Through the Brain in 2.1 Seconds,” has dubbed this phenomenon “the dark neuron problem.” In this episode of the Thinking Tools Podcast, I speak with Dr. Humphries about this and a few other ideas from “The Spike.” Mark Humphries is a computational neuroscientist and writer. His lab at the University of Nottingham, UK, researches how groups of neurons collectively encode information about the past, present, or future, in order to guide behaviour. He writes about systems neuroscience for a broad audience at Medium (https://drmdhumphries.medium.com). Find Mark on Twitter @markdhumphries  (https://twitter.com/markdhumphries). Watch the video version on YouTube: https://youtu.be/bbsyYThAjCY -- Connect, Follow and Subscribe! Sign up for the video version: https://mailchi.mp/d76edf98390b/sense-of-mind-newsletter-sign-up-page Link to all of our video newsletters: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLC92ipyM9i9L_9yna8Jn6eM5RSQmNbSJj Subscribe to the Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC610T-s8gpOVDtAVXTZ35FQ Website: www.Senseofmindshow.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sense.ofmind/ Linktree: https://linktr.ee/senseofmind By the way, the newsletter is 100% free, it has zero ads, and I will NEVER sell or give your information to third parties. Please follow, share and subscribe if you found this helpful, thanks for listening! --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/senseofmind/support