Are You Really You, or Just a Pattern Your Brain Built with Dr. Masud Husain

About this episode

The episode explores the neuroscience behind identity and self through a conversation with Dr. Masud Husain.

What actually makes you who you are? In this episode, we get into one of the biggest questions a person can ask, not in a vague or philosophical way, but through the lens of neuroscience. Our guest is Dr. Masud Husain, Professor of Neurology and Cognitive Neuroscience at Oxford, Editor-in-Chief of Brain, and the award-winning author of Our Brains, Our Selves, which won the Royal Society Trivedi Best Science Book Prize. Dr. Husain explains how your sense of self is built through memory, attention, motivation, perception, concepts, and relationships. In other words, who you are is not just something you have, it is something your brain is constantly creating. That is what makes this conversation so gripping. Because if the brain creates the self, then what happens when part of that system changes? We talk about real patients whose identities seemed to shift after changes in the brain, including one man who lost nearly all motivation after tiny strokes, and another who began losing not just words, but the concepts behind them. Their stories are fascinating, but they also raise a deeply personal question: how much of who you are depends on brain processes you rarely notice? We also…

People in this episode

Guest: Dr. Masud Husain

Topics covered

• neuroscience
• identity
• memory
• self
• motivation
• perception

Keywords

• neuroscience
• identity
• memory
• motivation
• perception
• self
• risk-averse
• brain processes

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Oxford, Brain, Royal Society

Books & works: Our Brains, Our Selves

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