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
The 1920s marked a sea of insecurity and instability for many citizens of France, but especially for one woman in particular, a lady we’ll refer to as Marie, who observed something rather disturbing in her personal life. Marie began to suspect something was off within her own home. In fact, she was ...
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...
Heavy metals like mercury and arsenic.Â
Perchloroethylene.Â
Trichloroethylene.Â
Toluene.Â
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These chemicals are all neurotoxins that have been confirmed to accelerate cognitive decline upon inhalation. Among the symptoms that arise from repeated exposure to these substances are cerebellar dysfu...
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...
The slamming of a door as loud and sudden as a gunshot.Â
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The fall of angry footsteps on a wooden floor.Â
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The clang of an alarm bell.Â
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All of these are events that can easily trigger an episode of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). A psychological condition that occurs in response to ...
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
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After suffering from a concussion herself, Sarah became driven to unde...
By Danielle Steinbach
In 1810, apothecary John Haslam published Illustrations of Madness and described the struggles of his patient James Tilly Matthews and his mysterious psychological condition.  Â
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Matthews was a patient at the Bedlam psychiatric ward in London who had been detained and impri...
By Danielle Steinbach
If you have read my previous blogs, you may know that I often reflect on the ways our species has changed over the past hundreds of thousands of years of its existence. We’ve come a long way and morphed quite a bit from our ancestors, whose shelters were mere caves with walls ...
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
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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...