Popular Neuroscience: TED talks, Books, Movies/TV, Games
I curated this list of popular (accessible, fun) neuroscience resources for teaching purposes. Let me know if you have any suggestions!
(last updated 09-22-2017)
Neurological illness:
TED talks:
https://www.ted.com/talks/jill_bolte_taylor_s_powerful_stroke_of_insight
https://www.ted.com/talks/gregory_petsko_on_the_coming_neurological_epidemic
https://www.ted.com/talks/oliver_sacks_what_hallucination_reveals_about_our_minds
https://www.ted.com/talks/lisa_genova_what_you_can_do_to_prevent_alzheimer_s?language=en
Books:
“The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat” – Oliver Sacks
“An Anthropologist on Mars” – Oliver Sacks
“My stroke of insight” – Jill Bolte Taylor
“The tale of the dueling Neurosurgeons” – Sam Kean
“Brain on Fire: My month of madness” – Susannah Cahalan
“Into the Silent Land: Travels in Neuropsychology” – Paul Broks
Movies:
“Awakenings” (also a book)
Fiction: “Memento”
“Murderball”
“The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” (also a book)
"The Lobotomist" (American Experience: PBS)
"BBC’s Blood and Guts: A History of Surgery – Into the Brain" (episode 1)
Psychiatric Illness:
TED talks:
https://www.ted.com/talks/joshua_walters_on_being_just_crazy_enough
https://www.ted.com/talks/sherwin_nuland_on_electroshock_therapy
https://www.ted.com/talks/andrew_solomon_depression_the_secret_we_share
https://www.ted.com/talks/vilayanur_ramachandran_on_your_mind
https://www.ted.com/talks/thomas_insel_toward_a_new_understanding_of_mental_illness?language=en
https://www.ted.com/talks/eleanor_longden_the_voices_in_my_head
https://www.ted.com/talks/jim_fallon_exploring_the_mind_of_a_killer
Books:
“The center cannot hold: My journey through madness” – Elyn Saks
The three Christs of Ypsilanti” – Milton Rokeach
Fiction: “Finding Alice” – Melody Carlson
“Beautiful Boy: A father’s journey through his son’s addiction” - David Sheff
Movies:
“A beautiful mind” – although I have some serious mixed feelings about this… (also a book)
Fiction: “Touched with Fire”
Fiction (also a book): “One flew over the cuckoo’s nest” – particularly if combined with reading David Rosenhan’s the original case study that inspired it: https://web.archive.org/web/20041117175255/http://web.cocc.edu/lminorevans/on_being_sane_in_insane_places.htm
Autism:
TED talks:
https://www.ted.com/talks/temple_grandin_the_world_needs_all_kinds_of_minds
https://www.ted.com/talks/wendy_chung_autism_what_we_know_and_what_we_don_t_know_yet?language=en
Books:
“Thinking in Pictures” – Temple Grandin
Fiction: “The curious incident of the dog in the night-time” – Mark Haddon
Movies/TV shows:
“Atypical”
“Rain Man”
General Neuroscience:
TED talks:
https://www.ted.com/talks/robert_sapolsky_the_biology_of_our_best_and_worst_selves?language=en
https://www.ted.com/talks/mehdi_ordikhani_seyedlar_what_happens_in_your_brain_when_you_pay_attention
https://www.ted.com/talks/uri_hasson_this_is_your_brain_on_communication?language=en
https://www.ted.com/talks/daniel_wolpert_the_real_reason_for_brains?language=en
https://www.ted.com/talks/russell_foster_why_do_we_sleep?language=en
https://www.ted.com/talks/suzana_herculano_houzel_what_is_so_special_about_the_human_brain
https://www.ted.com/talks/rebecca_saxe_how_brains_make_moral_judgments
Books:
“Behave: The biology of humans at their best and worst” – Robert Sapolsky
Open experiments/scientific games & crowd-sourcing:
http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/brain-games/
Affective Neuroscience:
TED talks:
https://www.ted.com/talks/david_anderson_your_brain_is_more_than_a_bag_of_chemicals
Panksepp: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65e2qScV_K8
Books:
“Affective neuroscience: The foundations of human and animal emotions” – Jaak Panksepp
“Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain” – Antonio Damasio
“Why zebra’s don’t get ulcers” – Robert Sapolsky
“The emotional brain: The mysterious underpinnings of emotional life” – Antonio Damasio
“Anxious: Using the brain to understand and treat fear and anxiety” – Antonio Damasio
“Sex on the Brain” – Deborah Blum
Sensory neuroscience:
TED talks:
https://www.ted.com/talks/anil_seth_how_your_brain_hallucinates_your_conscious_reality?language=en
https://www.ted.com/talks/beau_lotto_optical_illusions_show_how_we_see
https://www.ted.com/talks/elliot_krane_the_mystery_of_chronic_pain
Books:
"The Island of the Colorblind" - Oliver Sacks
"Rebuilt: My Journey Back to the Hearing World"-Michael Chorost
"Pride and a Daily Marathon"- Jonathan Cole
"Feeling Pain and Being in Pain"-Nikola Grahek
"The Emperor of Scent"-Chandler Burr
"Neurogastronomy" -Gordon Shepherd
Open experiments/scientific games & crowd-sourcing:
Animal Behavior:
TED talks:
https://www.ted.com/talks/carl_safina_what_are_animals_thinking_and_feeling?language=en
https://www.ted.com/talks/frans_de_waal_do_animals_have_morals
https://www.ted.com/talks/joshua_klein_on_the_intelligence_of_crows
Books:
“Love at Goon Park: Harry Harlow and the Science of Affection” – Deborah Blum
“A primate’s memoir” – Robert Sapolsky
Studying the brain: Neuroscience and Technology:
TED talks:
fMRI/EEG/Connectome:
https://www.ted.com/talks/christopher_decharms_scans_the_brain_in_real_time
https://www.ted.com/talks/read_montague_what_we_re_learning_from_5_000_brains
https://www.ted.com/talks/sebastian_seung
https://www.ted.com/talks/ariel_garten_know_thyself_with_a_brain_scanner
https://www.ted.com/talks/nancy_kanwisher_the_brain_is_a_swiss_army_knife?language=en
Neurogenesis, Brain repair:
https://www.ted.com/talks/sandrine_thuret_you_can_grow_new_brain_cells_here_s_how?language=en
https://www.ted.com/talks/siddharthan_chandran_can_the_damaged_brain_repair_itself
https://www.ted.com/talks/siddhartha_mukherjee_soon_we_ll_cure_diseases_with_a_cell_not_a_pill
Visualizing the brain, Allen Brain Atlas:
https://www.ted.com/talks/carl_schoonover_how_to_look_inside_the_brain
https://www.ted.com/talks/allan_jones_a_map_of_the_brain
Optogenetics:
https://www.ted.com/talks/ed_boyden
https://www.ted.com/talks/gero_miesenboeck
Neuroprosthetics:
https://www.ted.com/talks/greg_gage_how_to_control_someone_else_s_arm_with_your_brain
https://www.ted.com/talks/tan_le_a_headset_that_reads_your_brainwaves
https://www.ted.com/talks/gregoire_courtine_the_paralyzed_rat_that_walked?language=en
Computational modeling & the brain:
https://www.ted.com/talks/henry_markram_supercomputing_the_brain_s_secrets
Open experiments/scientific games & crowd-sourcing:
EyeWire: https://eyewire.org/explore
Backyard Brains: https://backyardbrains.com
Cell Biology, Cell Culture, General Physiology:
TED talks:
https://www.ted.com/talks/david_bolinsky_animates_a_cell?language=en
https://www.ted.com/talks/geraldine_hamilton_body_parts_on_a_chip
https://www.ted.com/talks/paula_johnson_his_and_hers_healthcare
Books:
“The Lives of a Cell” – Lewis Thomas
“Stiff: The curious lives of human cadavers” – Mary Roach
“The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” – Rebecca Skloot
Open experiments/scientific games & crowd-sourcing:
Foldit: https://fold.it/portal/
Zooniverse by the Citizen Science Alliance:
https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/h-spiers/etch-a-cell
https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/jbrugg/microscopy-masters
Genetics & Epigenetics:
TED talks:
https://www.ted.com/talks/james_watson_on_how_he_discovered_dna?language=en
https://www.ted.com/talks/stephen_friend_the_hunt_for_unexpected_genetic_heroes
https://www.ted.com/talks/jennifer_doudna_we_can_now_edit_our_dna_but_let_s_do_it_wisely
https://www.ted.com/talks/sebastian_kraves_the_era_of_personal_dna_testing_is_here
https://www.ted.com/talks/richard_resnick_welcome_to_the_genomic_revolution
https://www.ted.com/talks/francis_collins_we_need_better_drugs_now
https://www.ted.com/talks/keolu_fox_why_genetic_research_must_be_more_diverse?language=en
https://www.ted.com/talks/moshe_szyf_how_early_life_experience_is_written_into_dna?language=en
Books:
“The selfish gene” – Richard Dawkins
“Genome: the autobiography of a species in 23 chapters.” – Matt Ridley
Movies/TV:
Fiction: “Jurassic Park”
Fiction: “Gattaca”
Open experiments/scientific games & crowd-sourcing:
Personal genotyping:
23andMe: https://www.23andme.com
GenesForGood (free): https://genesforgood.sph.umich.edu
… and can be interpreted using Promethease: https://promethease.com
EteRNA: http://www.eternagame.org/web/
Phylo: http://phylo.cs.mcgill.ca
