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David Eagleman is about as close to a rock star that a neuroscientist can be.

Eagleman was excited to talk to SmartPlanet about his work at both the Initiative on Neuroscience and Law, a national, interdisciplinary organization he founded that’s looking at how to remake the U.S. legal system; and the Laboratory for Perception and Action, at Baylor College of Medicine. The former initiative tackles topics such as how brain imaging and analyses of “Big Data” on crime patterns can help communities better understand and prevent violent behavior in new ways. The latter looks broadly at how individual brains are not at all alike — and how the differences might be significant for how we construct and manage our societies.

His work is particularly relevant in policy-related discussions in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook Elementary School tragedy in Connecticut.

Zull begins his journey with sensory-motor learning, and how that leads to discovery, and discovery to emotion. He then describes how deeper learning develops, how symbolic systems such as language and numbers emerge as tools for thought, how memory builds a knowledge base, and how memory is then used to create ideas and solve problems. Along the way he prompts us to think of new ways to shape educational experiences from early in life through adulthood, informed by the insight that metacognition lies at the root of all learning.

he argues that self-knowledge, awareness of how and why we think as we do, and the ability to adapt and learn, are critical to our survival as individuals; and that the transformation of education,

Savants can perform extraordinary cognitive feats much like trained experts, but unlike experts they usually cannot describe what makes them so talented, seemingly relying on intuition rather than conscious deliberation to quickly make choices.

he consensus among many researchers is that intuitions are judgments made by unconscious processes in the brain.

Studies have shown that inhibiting activity in certain areas of the brain can facilitate solving geometric puzzles.

how culture drove human evolution

cultural brain hypothesis—this is the idea that the real driver in the expansion of human brains was this growing cumulative body of cultural information, so that what our brains increasingly got good at was the ability to acquire information, store, process and retransmit this non genetic body of information.

but tools and artifacts (the kinds of things that one finds useful to throw or finds useful to manipulate) are themselves products of cultural evolution.

In the Zen Brain retreats, prominent scientists and Zen practitioners explore Buddhist, neuro-scientific and clinical science perspectives on topics like altruism, compassion and consciousness. Lectures and discussions with participants are embedded within zazen (meditation) practice throughout each day.

In these unusual programs, participants explore constructs like “affective stickiness,” a phrase coined by Dr. Richard Davidson, Research Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. This is the phenomenon by which we interpret an experience as negative and then become so strongly identified with it that it becomes a fixed part of “us.”

The particular kind of misinterpreation of self-identification can prevent us from accessing our full range of consciousness and often limits our capacity to make choices regarding a situation.

The emerging field of social neuroscience has also begun to address this debate, by imaging humans while performing tasks demanding the understanding of an intention, belief or other mental state.

The theory of mind (ToM) impairment describes a difficulty someone would have with perspective taking. This is also sometimes referred to as mind-blindness.

Individuals who experience a theory of mind deficit have difficulty determining the intentions of others, lack understanding of how their behavior affects others, and have a difficult time with social reciprocity.[27]

what I'm proposing is that if AI was a real thing, then it probably would be less of a threat to us than it is as a fake thing.

it adds a layer of religious thinking to what otherwise should be a technical field.

we can talk about pattern classification.

Kim Peek, who lent inspiration to the fictional character Raymond Babbitt—played by Dustin Hoffman—in the movie Rain Man, was a remarkable savant.

He could read both pages of an open book at once, one page with one eye and the other with the other eye

He would retain 98 percent of the information he read.

To guide us in our Mission, Vision and Strategy, the Mind & Life Institute has adopted a set of core values: Love, Mindfulness and Compassion Trust and Integrity Teamwork and Collaboration Impeccability and Continuous Improvement Open Communication and Transparency

Vision The Mind & Life Institute sees the potential of a world that fully understands the critical importance of training the mind in ways that reduce individual and societal suffering and promote individual and planetary peace, health, well-being and cooperation. Moreover, we envision a world where everyone has access to age-appropriate and culturally appropriate mental and emotional fitness practices.

we implement a practical, results-oriented Mission and Strategy based on scientific research to understand how we, as humans, can train our minds

his contention that consciousness is not merely a by-product of brain activity, but is a necessary function of the body as a whole, including the brain.

he proposes at least four levels of self, from least complex to most complex:1. Neural Self (or proto-self) - a short term collection of neural patterns of activity which represent the current state of the organism2. Core Self - a second-order entity which maps the state of the proto-self in rather the same way the proto-self maps the current state of the body: whenever an encounter with an object impinges on the proto-self, the change is registered by activity in the core self3. Autobiographical Self - draws on permanent (though modifiable) memories instead of just the immediate experiences which power the core self. At this point, there is a real, though still pre-linguistic, sense of self. Damasio thinks chimpanzees and probably dogs enjoy this level of consciousness4. Reflective Self - greater use of longer-term memory, delivers the kind of foresighted, reflective consciousness which we typically associate with human beings

In Damasio's view, one which I share, emotions are body states that then are interpreted by the brain to assign a label based on memory and previous learning.

Psychologists and neurobiologists have begun studying what goes on in our minds as we read literature, and what they’re discovering lends scientific weight to Emerson’s observation.

“aesthetic emotions” that we feel when we view art from a distance, as a spectator:

We create our own version of the piece of fiction, our own dream, our own enactment.” Making sense of what transpires in a book’s imagined reality appears to depend on “making a version of the action ourselves, inwardly.”

Study after study after study, the results are always consistently babies feeling positively towards helpful individuals in the world. And disapproving, disliking, maybe condemning individuals who are antisocial towards others.

first published their findings about baby morality in the journal "Nature" in 2007, and they've continued to publish follow-up studies in other peer-reviewed journals ever since

babies seem to view the ball thief "as deserving punishment."

It's a question people have asked for as long as there have been people: are human beings inherently good? Are we born with a sense of morality or do we arrive blank slates, waiting for the world to teach us right from wrong? Or could it be worse: do we start out nasty, selfish devils, who need our parents, teachers, and religions to whip us into shape?

The philosopher Rousseau considered babies "perfect idiots...Knowing nothing,"

for most of its history, her field agreed.

The youngest kids in the study will routinely choose to get fewer prizes for themselves just to get more than the other kid

Around age 8, they start choosing the equal, fair option more and more. And by 9 or 10, we saw kids doing something really crazy --

-- deliberately giving the other kid more.

From this Wynn concludes that infants prefer those "who harm... others" who are unlike them.

We are predisposed to break the world up into different human groups based on the most subtle and seemingly irrelevant cues, and that, to some extent, is the dark side of morality.

Karen Wynn: I think, we are built to, you know, at the drop of a hat, create us and them.