Imagine if you couldn't distinguish between dreams and reality. If you couldn't tell whether what you were seeing or hearing was really there in front of you. What if you discovered you couldn't trust your own perceptions?

Psychosis is something three out of every a hundred people will experience at some point in their lifetimes. But what exactly is it, and is it something people can learn to live with?

Today we're fortunate to have on the show Dr. Jacob Ballon, the founding co-director of Stanford Medicine's Inspire Clinic, and Shannon Pagdon, a doctoral student, peer counselor, and advocate for those living with psychosis.

Learn More:

• Learn about the Inspire 360 Program at Stanford Medicine
• Explore Pagdon's Psychosis Outside the Box project and additional stories of the lived experience of psychosis from the Hearing Voices Network
• Read: "Psychosis 101: Unmasking one of the brain's most mysterious Malfunctions" (Stanford Medicine, 2024)
• Watch: "Demystifying Psychosis" (Stanford Medicine, 2024)
• Read: "Two key brain systems are central to psychosis, Stanford Medicine-led study finds" (Stanford Medicine, 2024)
• Watch: "Schizophrenia: Early signs and treatment options" (Stanford Center for Health Education, 2022)

We want to hear from your neurons! Email us at at neuronspodcast@stanford.edu

Send us a text!

Thanks for listening! If you're enjoying our show, please take a moment to give us a review on your podcast app of choice and share this episode with your friends. That's how we grow as a show and bring the stories of the frontiers of neuroscience to a wider audience.

Learn more about the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute at Stanford and follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

Most of us can agree: music is awesome. Regardless of which songs speak to you, music probably plays an important role in your life. The question is, what makes music so powerful? Why does a particular combination of sounds and rhythms grab us and affect us in the way that it does? And is it true that music can help heal patients with Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, PTSD, chronic pain, and more?

To help us understand what we're learning about the neuroscience of music and how it can heal and enrich our lives, we're speaking with Daniel Levitin. He's a musician and a producer as well as a neuroscientist and bestselling author. His newest book is "I Heard There was a Secret Chord: Music As Medicine."

Learn More:

• "I Heard There Was a Secret Chord" playlist
• Menon, V., & Levitin, D. J. (2005). The rewards of music listening: Response and connectivity of the mesolimbic system. NeuroImage.
• Menon, V. (2023). 20 years of the default mode network: A review and synthesis. Neuron.
• Salimpoor, V. N., et al. (2013). Interactions between the nucleus accumbens and auditory cortices predict music’s reward value. Science.
• Wang, L., Peng, J.-l., et al. (2022). Effects of rhythmic auditory stimulation on gait and motor function in Parkinson’s disease: Systematic review & meta-analysis. Frontiers in Neurology.
• Zumbansen, A., et al. (2014). Melodic Intonation Therapy: Back to basics for future research. Frontiers in Neurology.
• Moreno-Morales et al. (2020). Music therapy in the treatment of dementia: Systematic review & meta-analysis. Frontiers in Medicine.
• Allen, E. J., et al. (2017). Representations of pitch and timbre variation in human auditory cortex. Journal of Neuroscience.
• Sonos/Apple “Music Makes It Home” study (2016). "This Speaker Company Says Music Makes You Happier." Time Magazine.

We want to hear from your neurons! Email us at at neuronspodcast@stanford.edu

Send us a text!

Thanks for listening! If you're enjoying our show, please take a moment to give us a review on your podcast app of choice and share this episode with your friends. That's how we grow as a show and bring the stories of the frontiers of neuroscience to a wider audience.

Learn more about the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute at Stanford and follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

In this episode, we explore the fascinating neuroscience behind how children learn to read with Bruce McCandliss, director of the Stanford Educational Neuroscience Initiative.

Key topics include:
• How our brains "recycle" visual and language circuits to create reading expertise
• The crucial threshold when reading shifts from effortful to automatic
• Why some children struggle more than others to develop reading fluency
• How teachers can tailor instruction to help struggling readers
• The profound ways literacy reshapes our brains and cognition

Join us for a mind-expanding look at one of humanity's most transformative technologies - written language - and how mastering it quite literally changes our brains.

Learn More

• Learn about the Stanford Educational Neuroscience Initiative at Stanford's Graduate School of Education
• Learn about the "brainwave learning center" at Menlo Park's Synapse School.
• Watch McCandliss present his work at Wu Tsai Neuro's 10th anniversary Symposium

Recent Academic Articles & News Coverage

• Tan LH, Perfetti CA, Ziegler JC, McCandliss B. "Editorial: Neural bases of reading acquisition and reading disability." Frontiers in Neuroscience (2023).
  
  This editorial highlights advances in the neuroscience of reading, focusing on the brain mechanisms underlying reading development and disabilities. The authors summarize key themes across international research, including neuroimaging insights and educational applications.
  
  
• Stanford News. "Stanford-led study links school environment to brain development" (2024)
  
  Researchers found that children who attend higher-performing schools have accelerated white matter development, including in an area of the brain closely associated with reading skills.
  
  
• Stanford News. "Stanford study on brain waves shows how different teaching methods affect reading development" (2015)
  
  Stanford Professor Bruce McCandliss found that beginning readers who focus on letter-sound relationships, or phonics, increase activity in the area of their brains best wired for reading.

We want to hear from your neurons! Email us at at neuronspodcast@stanford.edu

Send us a text!

Thanks for listening! If you're enjoying our show, please take a moment to give us a review on your podcast app of choice and share this episode with your friends. That's how we grow as a show and bring the stories of the frontiers of neuroscience to a wider audience.

Learn more about the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute at Stanford and follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.