Below are episodes of the NeuroBeacon Podcast  & my companion Blog
(NeuroBeacon Podcast also available on Spotify and Apple Podcast)
Professor George Perry on Evolutionary Mismatch Theory
In this episode we speak with Anthropology Professor George Perry of Penn State University about his research work on Evolutionary Mismatch Theory in a wide ranging discussion covering this theory and its implications on modern human health. Here is a link to Professor Perry's work at Penn State: https://anth.la.psu.edu/people/ghp3/
Sarah Frances on Social Determinants of Health
Sarah Frances is my latest guest on the NeuroBeacon podcast, and we discuss her work at Columbia University involving Social Determinants of Health including her work on this area in concussions and how Social Determinants can impact this condition. Sarah is a medical student at McGill University and has completed a Master of Public Health degree at Columbia University, with dual Bachelor of Science undergraduate degrees in neuroscience and public health.
Kate Falla on Spatial Context Discrimination
Kate Falla, undergraduate at Columbia University, speaks to us about her neuroscience research on Spatial Context Discrimination, performed in the lab of Professor Attila Losonczy, at Columbia University and the Zuckerman Institute.
Ms. Isabel Garcia on Social Reflections from Literature
Ms. GarcĂa is an AP Spanish Literature teacher who analyzes the significance of Spanish literary movements at an in-depth level. We discuss how different genres of Spanish literature have impacted Spanish culture and the fundamental truths that famous works reveal about society and human psychology.
The NeuroBeacon Blog
By Danielle Steinbach
When I first became interested in brain-computer interfaces, one description appeared again and again: mind reading. I can understand why people use it. It is much easier to imagine a computer reading a thought than to explain how electroencephalography (EEG) records small changes in electrical acti...
Many people think of brain surgery as a highly modern affair that has really only become particularly trustworthy in the late twentieth century. Certainly, there was much more risk for patients going under for brain surgery in the 1950s than there is now in 2026. Indeed, the number of surgeries that...
Throughout the history of life, it is often the case that animals must wait for an advantageous mutation to come along that saves the species and allows them to survive their environment. Among the billions of species that have lived and languished and thrived on the face of this Earth, there has be...
One of the most finely tuned natural systems in the world is the human brain. Despite being such a finely tuned system, though, the human brain is astonishingly resilient to change. It’s one thing for a system to operate when all the typical pieces are in place, but it’s an extraordinary thing for a...
At the dawn of the late 1800’s, as the industrial revolution changed the face of the world, the most common professions included the following: farmer, factory worker, merchant, clerk, and store owner. Life generally revolved around a schedule dictated by corporate bosses, market demand, and railroa...
A neurosurgeon stands alone in a radiology room while their patient lies down, closed in on all sides by the mammoth magnets of an MRI machine. Hours later, the surgeon reviews the MRI scan – everything appears normal, except for one particularly dark spot that appears to be a hole in the gray matte...
This past Saturday, I was fortunate enough to interview Kate Falla on the NeuroBeacon podcast. Kate is an undergraduate at Columbia who studies spatial context discrimination in mice models with the broader hopes of understanding the mechanism behind spatial memory decline in neurodegenerative disea...
This past Friday (8/15/25), on the NeuroBeacon podcast, I had the opportunity to interview Sarah Frances, a rising medical student at McGill University who studied public health as a graduate student at Columbia University. Â
Â
After suffering from a concussion herself, Sarah became driven to unde...
By Danielle Steinbach
Whenever you ask someone why humans survived as a species, the answer is generally the same: “Our intelligence”. Yes, the thing that carried us through near-extinctions and famines and droughts was always our ability to think our way around it and innovate.Â
Â
In the world o...
By Danielle Steinbach
When I tell people my age that I don’t have social media, I occasionally receive looks of surprise.
“No Instagram?”
“No.”
“Snapchat?”
“No.”
“TikTok?”
“No.”
When people ask me why, I tell them my parents don’t allow it. The truth is I just don’t want it. I don’t see the ...
By Danielle Steinbach
The human species is really a rather remarkable case of what can happen by pure chance, when some free-floating nucleic acid and lipids just happen to be in the same primordial lake at the same time. And from that lake emerged all of life. Granted, it took rather a long time f...
By Danielle Steinbach
“I just can’t understand it”...
“I’m too dumb for this”...
“I’m not as good as everyone else is at this”...
“I wish I could be as smart as her and as talented as him”...
These are things we’ve all thought to ourselves one time or another. In moments of frustration, the ten...