Cognitive neuroscience

My guest today is Peter See.

He's a professor of cognitive neuroscience at Dartmouth and currently a visiting professor at Cambridge.

He's one of very few working neuroscientists arguing that we have genuine free will and that its real engine, which is what I'm fascinated by, is the imagination.

His claim, in short, the human imagination began as a breakdown in the animal mind and everything we are came pouring out through the crack.

So I argue that that pressure to imagine things before you do them or did them came under a lot of selective pressure and became the basis of the mental operations that allowed us to carry out things virtually that other animals can't.

So...

I guess I kind of wear two hats, one in philosophy or neurophilosophy and one in cognitive neuroscience.

In cognitive neuroscience there's been a lot of focus on certain kinds of operations, so I think the focus should be on mental operations before actions.

And we love getting your questions about psychology, and we'll be tackling one from an All in the Mind listener about why some sounds can make us feel spine-tinglingly good.

And joining me to kick off the new series is Catherine Loveday, who's professor of cognitive neuroscience at the University of Westminster.

And Catherine, we're gonna get your view on the way we talk about mental health in a bit, but what else have you got for us?

Something maybe a little bit more light-hearted, which is the kind of mysteries around tickling and what's going on in our mind and our body.