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  1. Enhanced Naked Neuroscience

    Friday, February 15, 2013

    The human brain is a disgusting, glorious piece of machinery that mostly tells me to procure more Cheetos, Doritos, or other processed foods that end with the "ee-toes" sounds.  Once I have a few dozen bags (Funyuns are also allowed) stashed in the false bottom of my desk, my brain then tells me to write podcast reviews.

    Brains are weird!  They wrinkle up when you learn a thing!  Your prefrontal cortex rewrites itself during puberty!  If something is wrong with your brain, like seizures, a doctor will crack your skull open and cleave your brain in twain to help you out!  AND WHAT I DESCRIBED IN THE LAST SENTENCE ACTUALLY WORKS.

    Also, Phineas Gage

    In summary:  brains are neat, brains are important to your day-to-day life, and we should strive to learn more about how they do the things they do.  With that in mind (pun!), we turn to the Enhanced Naked Neuroscience (ENN) podcast.

    Relevant Links:
    ENN RSS Feed!
    Get it through Google!
    Check out ALL of the Naked Scientist podcasts HERE.  There's so many and they're all FREE!
    Naked Scientists Twitter!

    Content RatingClean.  Trigger-warning for zombies.

    Average Episode Length:  A dubious average of the episodes I have downloaded in iTunes shows about 18 minutes on average.

    Drinking Game:  Take a drink every time a specific part of the brain is named (dendrite, neural circuit, hypothalamus).  Alternate each drink with a glass of water because otherwise you will have an odd sense of guilt about what damage you're doing to the body part you're learning about.

    Release Schedule:  Couldn't find any concrete release schedule, so let's go with "erratic".

    Music:  A little intro, not bad, doesn't get it the way of anything. 

    The ENN podcast is a series of interviews and articles relating to neuroscience.  Doctors and scientists in fields related to and surrounding neurology let you know about recent studies and what cool new things humans are discovering by prodding into lumps of grey matter.  If topics such as how scientists backwards-engineer neurons for testing, or studies on little amoebas and how they relate to human behavior, this podcast is your bag, baby.

    Topics are discussed in such a way that they are accessible to the typical listener without being overly simplified.  This keeps the podcast interesting, and the topics themselves are flat out fascinating.  The interviews range greatly in topic, so if one interview doesn't interest you, another will be along shortly.

    Unintentionally Good Part:  The delightful accents.

    Unintentionally Bad Part:  When you start looking up neurological disorders on Wikipedia and the subsequent self-diagnosis that you have at least 3 of them. 

    Unrelated rating:  Two out of eight mice that escaped along with the Rats of NIMH. 

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