Despite multi-million dollar research programmes and impressive technical progress, neuroscience still can’t explain basic systems - like a maggot’s tiny brain or the grinding of a lobster’s stomach.

Professor Matthew Cobb joins me to discuss the intellectual history of neuroscience,  his frank assessment of where we’re at, and how we can make progress.

We cover:

• How the idea of the brain as computer got started in the mid-C20th, and why it’s probably wrong. (10:53)
• The challenge of the Grandmother Cell - and why some neurons selectively respond to Jennifer Aniston and Halle Berry! (21:00)
• What have we really learnt from fMRI? Is it “just a bit crap”? (27:25)
• Why the Human Brain Project was so controversial - and how its has spectacularly failed to live up to its own rhetoric (36:29).
• Could a neuroscientists understand a microprocessor? We discuss the brilliant study by Eric Jonas and Konrad Paul Kording. (41:30)
• The amazing achievement of artificial limbs (49:50)
• How useful is the ‘predictive brain theory’ favoured by Anil Seth, Karl Friston and Andy Clark?
• “Show me in a maggot!” Why we should get behind a Maggot Brain project. (58:40)

Matthew’s book The Idea of the Brain has been shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford prize. Check it out here: https://bit.ly/2Ky6IOL

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To get in touch with Ilan or join the conversation, you can find NOUS on Twitter @NSthepodcast or on email at nousthepodcast@gmail.com