From Our Neurons to Yours

Today's episode is all about how childhood literally shapes the brain.
Our most important experiences – from learning to read, to the growing complexity of our social lives at school, and even the video games we play – leave physical traces in how our brains get organized that shape how we see the world as adults.
But how does the brain actually know what parts of our lives are actually important enough to reorganize around? How do particular experiences get under the hood to leave their mark on the developing brain?
Today's guest, Stanford psychology professor Kalanit Grill-Spector, has spent her career trying to answer these questions. She's has been imaging children's brains – from infants to teenagers – to watch this reorganization unfold. Her work focuses on how our visual experience as children shapes our brains and how we see the world – what she and her team have found is not always what they expected.
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The Vision and Perception Neuroscience Lab at Stanford Humanities and Sciences
Brain's face recognition area grows much bigger as we get older (New Scientist, 2017)
Neuroscientists use AI to simulate how the brain makes sense of the visual world (Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute, 2025)
Bridging nature and nurture: The brain's flexible foundation from birth (Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute, 2025)
Extensive childhood experience with Pokémon suggests eccentricity drives organization of visual cortex (Nature Human Behavior, 2019)
Cortical recycling in high-level visual cortex during childhood development (Nature Human Behaviour, 2021)
A unifying framework for functional organization in early and higher ventral visual cortex (Neuron, 2024)
The emergence of visual category representations in infants' brains (eLife, 2024)
White matter connections of human ventral temporal cortex are organized by cytoarchitecture, eccentricity and category-selectivity from birth (Nature Human Behaviour, 2025)
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Thanks for listening! If you're enjoying our show, please take a moment to give us a review on your podcast app of choice and share this episode with your friends. That's how we grow as a show and bring the stories of the frontiers of neuroscience to a wider audience.
We want to hear from your neurons! Email us at at [email protected]
Learn more about the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute at Stanford and follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

Last month we saw a big shift in the federal government’s approach to psychedelic medicine.
Specifically, following an executive order by President Trump, the FDA announced it is fast-tracking its review of several clinical trials of psychedelic drugs for patients with mental health disorders. The executive order also directed more funds towards psychedelic research and a review of psychedelics’ status as highly restricted Schedule 1 substances. 
To help us understand what all this means for the future of psychedelic medicine and the neuroscience of psychedelics, we’re joined by Boris Heifets, an anesthesiologist at Stanford Medicine who runs a lab studying how psychedelics affect the nervous system and their impact on patients with psychiatric conditions.
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The Heifets Lab at Stanford Medicine
FDA plans ultra-fast review of three psychedelic drugs following Trump directive (Associated Press, 2026)
Trump’s order on psychedelics could have far-reaching science consequences (Scientific American, 2026)
Psychedelics, placebo, and anesthetic dreams (From Our Neurons to Yours, 2024)
Pychedelics inside out — how do LSD and psilocybin alter perception? (From Our Neurons to Yours, 2024)
The power of psychedelics meets the power of placebo (From Our Neurons to Yours, 2024)
Magnesium–ibogaine therapy in veterans with traumatic brain injuries (Nature, 2024)
Magnesium–ibogaine therapy effects on cortical oscillations and neural complexity in veterans with traumatic brain injury (Nature Mental Health, 2025)
Send us a text!
Thanks for listening! If you're enjoying our show, please take a moment to give us a review on your podcast app of choice and share this episode with your friends. That's how we grow as a show and bring the stories of the frontiers of neuroscience to a wider audience.
We want to hear from your neurons! Email us at at [email protected]
Learn more about the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute at Stanford and follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

Today’s episode is about the neuroscience of hard work—or maybe more specifically, the value we place on hard work.
There’s something different about hiking to the top of a mountain versus taking a helicopter. The view from the top is exactly the same, but if you’ve done the hard slog to get there, the payoff is going to be much more rewarding. 
The question is, how does the brain know the difference? To answer this, we need to take a deep dive into the brain’s reward system, and one of our favorite neurotransmitters, dopamine. And it turns out, the way dopamine operates is more complicated than we thought.
Our guest today, Stanford Medicine psychiatrist Neir Eshel, tells us about new research that’s starting to reveal exactly how the brain pushes us to work hard for the things that matter to us. 
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Eshel's Stanford Translational Addiction and Aggression Research (STAAR) Lab
Why we value things more when they cost us more (Stanford Medicine, 2026)
Cholinergic modulation of dopamine release drives effortful behaviour (Nature, 2026)
Striatal dopamine integrates cost, benefit, and motivation (Neuron, 2023)
Dopamine and serotonin work in opposition to shape learning (Wu Tsai Neuro, 2024)
Why we do what we do (From Our Neurons to Yours, 2024)
Send us a text!
Thanks for listening! If you're enjoying our show, please take a moment to give us a review on your podcast app of choice and share this episode with your friends. That's how we grow as a show and bring the stories of the frontiers of neuroscience to a wider audience.
We want to hear from your neurons! Email us at at [email protected]
Learn more about the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute at Stanford and follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

Traditionally, we think of Parkinson's as a movement disorder—defined by slowed movement, stiff muscles, and involuntary shaking. But it turns out there are other symptoms that appear years or even decades before movement problems bring patients to the clinic: sleep disturbances, chronic constipation, and loss of smell.
For today's guest, these early symptoms represent an incredible opportunity to understand where Parkinson's begins and to identify patients much earlier in the disease.
Kathleen Poston is a neurologist and division chief for movement disorders at Stanford Medicine. She's also a member of the steering committee for the Knight Initiative for Brain Resilience at Wu Tsai Neuro, and advises the Michael J. Fox Foundation and pharmaceutical companies on Parkinson's research.
We discuss why non-motor symptoms might hold the key to early diagnosis, how new biomarkers are redefining the disease, and whether Parkinson's might actually start in the gut.
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Learn about Poston's research on her lab site
Learn about the Stanford Lewy Body Dementia Research Center of Excellence
Redefining Parkinson's Disease | Our previous conversation with Poston, in which we learned about a sea change in our understanding of Parkinson's Disease.
Neuroscientists dive into the gut (Wu Tsai Neuro, 2025) | Our 2025 Symposium explored how our brains and bodies communicate—and what that means for our health and well-being
Parkinson’s comes in many forms. New biomarkers may explain why (Knight Initiative, 2025) | Blood and cerebrospinal fluid markers tied to inflammation and metabolism sort some patients into subgroups, a step toward predicting progression and tailoring care.
A biological definition of neuronal α-synuclein disease: towards an integrated staging system for research (The Lancet - Neurology, 2024)
International Working Group Proposes New Framework for Defining Parkinson Disease Based on Biology, Not Symptoms (Neurology Live article)
Send us a text!
Thanks for listening! If you're enjoying our show, please take a moment to give us a review on your podcast app of choice and share this episode with your friends. That's how we grow as a show and bring the stories of the frontiers of neuroscience to a wider audience.
We want to hear from your neurons! Email us at at [email protected]
Learn more about the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute at Stanford and follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

What if we could make the brain see-through? 
It sounds like science fiction, but it could revolutionize how we study the brain. 
Today on the show, we're talking with Guosong Hong, a faculty scholar here at the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute who has a unique reputation for developing creative techniques that literally shed light on the brain—from using fluorescent nanomaterials and focused ultrasound to create a virtual flashlight inside the skull, to discovering a common food dye that temporarily makes skin, muscle, and even parts of the brain transparent. 
Now, Guosong and colleagues are taking this work to the next level through a Wu Tsai Neuro Big Ideas grant, genetically engineering mice to have see-through brains from birth. 
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Q&A: 'To see is to believe'  (Wu Tsai Neuro, 2026)
Big Ideas in Neuroscience tackle brain science of everyday life and more (Wu Tsai Neuro, 2026)
Researchers turn mouse scalp transparent to image brain development (Stanford Report, 2026)
The future of transparent tissue (Stanford Engineering's The Future of Everything Podcast, 2025)
Non-invasive brain stimulation opens new ways to study and treat the brain (Wu Tsai Neuro, 2025)
Researchers make mouse skin transparent using a common food dye (Stanford Report, 2024)
Note: Episode transcript will be uploaded within 24-48 hours of publication
Send us a text!
Thanks for listening! If you're enjoying our show, please take a moment to give us a review on your podcast app of choice and share this episode with your friends. That's how we grow as a show and bring the stories of the frontiers of neuroscience to a wider audience.
We want to hear from your neurons! Email us at at [email protected]
Learn more about the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute at Stanford and follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.