Nature & Nurture #1: Dr. Jonas Kaplan - Cognitive Neuroscience, Belief, & Consciousness

In this episode I interview Dr. Jonas Kaplan, a cognitive neuroscientist and co-director of the Brain and Creativity Institute at the University of Southern California. We discuss his early career and inspirations, his favorite studies, and the neural underpinnings of belief and consciousness.

Timestamps:
0:00 - Introduction
0:40 - How Jonas first became interested in neuroscience
2:00 - Jonas describes an experience in college which changed his views on consciousness
3:40 - Jonas describes his college studies and research
5:57 - Jonas describes his graduate school experience
11:10 - Left brain/right brain hemispheric specialization
14:53 - Back to graduate school and the rise of neuroimaging technology
17:03 - The timeline of MRI technology and how it works
22:22 - Post-graduate school and transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS)
29:34 - Moving to USC & working with Antonio Damasio
33:38 - Predicting visual stimuli on the basis of activity in auditory cortices
38:19 - Working with Sam Harris to study the neural correlates of religious belief
39:55 - The role of belief being tied to identity
44:22 - Free will and the deterministic universe
47:05 - Challenges to belief and trait openness
49:45 - The impact of environment on belief
51:21 - Evolutionary selection for different patterns of belief
53:20 - Why we believe in free will
1:01:49 - Panpsychism and the origins of consciousness
1:07:20 - Conclusion and future work

Papers discussed:

Meyer, K., Kaplan, J. T., Essex, R., Webber, C., Damasio, H., & Damasio, A. (2010). Predicting visual stimuli on the basis of activity in auditory cortices. Nature Neuroscience, 13(6), 667.

Kaplan, J. T., Gimbel, S. I., & Harris, S. (2016). Neural correlates of maintaining one’s political beliefs in the face of counterevidence. Scientific Reports, 6(1), 1-11.