You’ve experienced a child’s brain change year by year, wondered how a species that took hundreds of thousands of years to evolve still carries traces of that history in you, and maybe even asked — half-joking, half-serious — whether a machine could ever really be aware.
Most explanations treat these as separate questions, answered by separate experts, in separate books.
Psychobiologist Bernard Baars explores the many different paths to studying consciousness with neuroscientist David Edelman and clinical neuropsychiatrist and child-development researcher, Dr. Jay Giedd. They trace a single thread — connectedness — through four scales: how a child’s brain wires itself together, how climate and time shaped the human brain across deep evolutionary history, how something as ordinary as shame reveals the architecture of your own selfhood, and how close or not we really are from building a “conscious” machine.
One dynamic conversation, flowing in the way real understanding actually moves — restlessly, across boundaries, following and tracing the connections.
By the end of this course, you’ll gain vital facts about brain development, evolution, and AI; you’ll also have the thread that ties them together — the same one all three speakers, independently, land on by the end of the hour. Trace a single concept across radically different scales, carrying the idea of “connectedness” fluently between development, evolution, selfhood, and technology.
Enroll and press play. See where it takes you.
Psychobiologist Bernard Baars explores the many different paths to studying consciousness with neuroscientist David Edelman and clinical neuropsychiatrist Dr. Jay Giedd. They thoughtfully examine how the brain grows and matures throughout life, and explore dynamic aspects of consciousness and the brain from an evolutionary perspective.
This course is for you if you are interested in, or teach, or study any of the following subjects: Psychology, Neuroscience and Education, Cognitive Science, Health Education, or Philosophy. And anyone working in AI who wants to understand the biological basis of consciousness before assuming machine minds.
Psychology, Cognitive Neuroscience, AI
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Transcripts & Downloadable PDFs
The common thread running through scientific pursuits of Nobel Laureate Gerald Edelman was an enduring interest in the relationship between biology and experience. Neuronal Group Selection, or Neural Darwinism, is the culmination of his efforts to reconcile the two.
Our journeys into the nature of consciousness are a tribute to my Dad, Nobel Laureate Gerald Edelman, to his verdant imagination, immense creativity, prodigious output, and discussions on the scientific study of consciousness and biology that were shared within these walls.
Psychobiologist, FAU
Clinical Neuropsychiatrist
Neuroscientist, Dartmouth
Course Foundation
