#79.5: Randy Gallistel on Upsetting Neuroscientists (The Story)

This is Cognitive Revolution, my show about the personal side of the intellectual journey. Each week, I interview an eminent scientist, writer, or academic about the experiences that shaped their ideas. The show is available wherever you listen to podcasts.

This is the second part of my conversation with Randy Gallistel. In the first part, we talk about his ideas around why the neuroscience of memory is completely inadequate to the task of understanding… memory. In this episode, we get into the backstory on those ideas, as well as Randy’s major influences. We talk about the influence of foundational experiments by Tony Deutsch, why neuroscientists “squirm” when you bring up the problem of representation, which of Randy’s research projects didn't work out the way he thought, how his academic mentor introduced him to his future wife, and what a good theory should not look like.

Randy’s Three Books:

* The Eighth Day of Creation, Horace Freeland Judson

* The Logic of Life, Francois Jacob

* Spikes: Exploring the Neural Code, Rieka et al

* Honorary mention: Endless Forms Most Beautiful, Sean B Carroll

Books we talked about:

* Randy’s Memory and the Computational Brain

* The Structural Basis of Behavior, J. Anthony Deutsch

Papers we talked about:

* Randy’s recent paper on the Physical Basis of Memory

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