Why Neuroscience Matters

“The driving principle is really to get a mechanistic understanding of cognition at the lowest level possible…but the way to get there is through a large amount of exploration. And partly that’s because, I think at this moment, we don’t really know how the brain works.” ~ Ilya Monosov

Ilya Monosov, Ph.D. studies neuronal circuits of motivation, emotion, and learning at the Department of Neuroscience at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. 

That’s the short version. 

But the version that emerges in this conversation about how one neuroscientist explores the world — and why — is much more nuanced and thoughtful than his position description suggests. 

I asked Ilya for an interview because I was impressed by his curiosity at a multidisciplinary conference on complexity. I was in way over my head at the gathering, but I know a curious mind at work when I see it — and that was Ilya. 

Still, I didn’t anticipate our conversation would take us to the importance of neuroscience and information seeking for the fate of humanity, or to how achieving an “engineer’s understanding” of the brain could be helpful for those living with mental health challenges like OCD. 

Ilya invites us to rethink our too-facile understanding of the brain — and to wrestle with the implications of how we define “curiosity”.

People view curiosity as a single sort of motivation, but there are so many components to it. It’s our desire to interact with novel objects; how much we want to resolve our uncertainties; how strongly are we driven by our actual imagination of something better than what we expected. 
There are so many different things that drive it — and so I think it’s really important to think about them a little bit separately in order to get to that understanding that you’re talking about. 

Choose to be Curious · Ep. #209: Why Neuroscience Matters, with Ilya Monosov

Listen to Choose to be Curious #209: Why Neuroscience Matters, with Ilya Monosov

Learn more about Ilya Monosov’s work here:https://neuroscience.wustl.edu/people/ilya-monosov-phd/

The Zuckerman Institute hosted the Curiosity, Creativity & Complexity Conference in May 2023. 

Some years ago, I had the pleasure of interviewing Jacqueline Gottlieb, one of the organizer of the complexity conference.

Theme music by Sean Balick; “Lacquer Groove” by Tiny Tiny Trio, via Blue Dot Sessions.

You can subscribe to Choose to be Curious on Apple Podcasts and now on Spotify. 

Wear your curiosity on your sleeve. Check out the Choose to be Curious shop.

How Curiosity Can Transform Your Life & Change the World

“I wanted us to see if there was a different way that we can move through this era of incuriosity… to see if there was a way for us to meet our loneliness, our social isolation, our feelings of fear and anxiety in this moment of division and political polarization. Is there something else we can do to meet this moment? And the answer is something that we both love: to be curious.” ~ Scott Shigeoka

I think it’s fair to describe first-time author and long-time educator Scott Shigeoka as a curiosity activist. His debut book SEEK: How Curiosity Can Transform Your Life & Change the World focuses on what Scott calls “deep curiosity” — the search for understanding that leads to connection and transformation and, in so doing, makes people feel seen and heard…reminding them that they matter.

That’s no small thing in a time of profound incuriosity. 

Deep curiosity is a particular type of understanding that actually connects us — to either ourselves or one another, or that transforms us.

Scott Shigeoka is a Choose to be Curious trifecta: he delves into research, theory and how curiosity shows up in our work and lives, It was a pleasure to talk with him about all that he’s learned.

It was such a great conversation, in fact, that I couldn’t contain it in one episode, so I give you a double dip of the deliciousness that is Scott Shigeoka!

PART 1

In the first episode, we dig into some of my favorites among his many curiosity practices, like: “Be an admitter” — seeing the joy in saying “I don’t know” and centering on the relationship, rather than being right. I’ve found “Visualize yourself being curious” reallyhelpful in those moments when I just don’t feel the least bit curious. And, I’ve got some bonus content from his book and other recent writing as well!

Choose to be Curious · Ep. #208: (Part 1) How Curiosity Can Transform Your Life & Change the World, with Scott Shigeoka

Listen to Choose to be Curious #208 (Part 1): How Curiosity Can Transform Your Life & Change the World, with Scott Shigeoka

PART 2

In the second episode, we focus on a few of his favorite practices, including “Quicksanding” — how to survive those scary, suffocating moments by slowing down. We explore how we can honor the limits of our curiosity and appreciate curiosity’s cardinal directions: inward, outward, and beyond. Finally, I revisit a conversation with Jenn Seiff, whose training in yoga echoes so many of Scott’s insights. It’s a lovely pairing.

Choose to be Curious · Ep. #208: (Part 2) How Curiosity Can Transform Your Life & Change the World, with Scott Shigeoka

Listen to Choose to be Curious #208 (Part 2): How Curiosity Can Transform Your Life & Change the World, with Scott Shigeoka

Check out Scott Shigeoka’s website and new book SEEK.

Read more! For a sampler of all the ways curiosity can be put into action, check out Scott’s recent articles in Harvard Business Review, Forbes, and Fast Company.

Listen to the full conversation with Carlisle Levine (source of the best question ever: “Anything else?”) and yoga teacher Jenn Seiff (source of the wonderful 5-5-5 curiosity practice).

Theme music by Sean Balick; “Arizona Moon” by Cholate and “Home Home At Last” by Warmbody, via Blue Dot Sessions.

Photo Credit: Matt Stomper, used with permission.

You can subscribe to Choose to be Curious on Apple Podcasts and now on Spotify. 

Wear your curiosity on your sleeve. Check out the Choose to be Curious shop!

Seeing Differently: Curiosity, Creativity & Dyslexia, with Rebecca Kamen

“To me, dyslexia is a superpower.” ~ Rebecca Kamen

You wouldn’t know it, given her passion for research and accumulation of impressive academic credentials, but one thing artist and educator Rebecca Kamen doesn’t do very well is read.

Only as an adult did she come to understand that she lives with dyslexia – a challenge in making the connection between the letters on a page and their meaning and sound – a challenge in reading.

As we come to understand the human brain better, we’re also coming to see that dyslexia, once uniformly regarded as a learning disability, is also a lens for seeing things differently.

Think “neurodivergent” not “disabled.”

I was delighted when Rebecca, the deeply curious & creative person who happens to have dyslexia, reached out to me with an offer to explore all three.

Rebecca’s artwork is informed by wide-ranging investigations of cosmology, history, and philosophy, and by connecting common threads that flow across various scientific fields to capture and re-imagine what the scientists see.

She, and they, go looking for patterns. 

“Patterns,” she says, “are critical for knowing.”  

I never even knew I had a problem; I just thought everyone processed information the way I did…It wasn’t until I was a college professor and I was having coffee with a friend of mine who taught special education at the University Maryland and she asked me how I got into art education. So I told her my story and she said, ‘Rebecca. I think you might be dyslexic.’ And I thought, ‘Really? That explains a lot!’ That’s when I became curious and thought, ‘Well, let me see what that’s about!’

Choose to be Curious · Ep. #207: Seeing Differently: Curiosity, Creativity & Dyslexia, with Rebecca Kamen

Listen to Choose to be Curious #207: Seeing Differently: Curiosity, Creativity & Dyslexia, with Rebecca Kamen

Learn more about Rebecca Kamen’s work on her website: rebeccakamen.com

Read more about Rebecca’s exhibits on Dyslexia and 300 Years of Women in Science.

Rebecca recommends DyslexicAdvantage.org as a good resource for more information about living with dyslexia.

Listen to my previous conversation with Rebecca Kamen: Ep. 151: Reveal: The Art of Reimagining Scientific Discovery, with Rebecca Kamen.

Theme music by Sean Balick; “The Summit”, by K2, via Blue Dot Sessions.

You can subscribe to Choose to be Curious on Apple Podcasts and now on Spotify. 

Wear your curiosity on your sleeve. Check out the Choose to be Curious shop!