Jad Abumrad

There would be a hole from the memory being erased, such as in the movie Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind when Clementine said, “Nothing makes any sense to me! NOTHING MAKES ANY SENSE!” This was tested when a scientist played a tone for a rat before it was shocked. On an episode from the scientific podcast Radiolab titled "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Rat" Jad Abumrad said, “The moment it hears the tone and feels the shock, inside its head, a bunch of neurons start to build. Whenever you create a memory, it 's an active cellular connection. What we 're talking about here is associative memories, an association between two things in the outside world.” Basically, a connection was built between the tone brain cell and the shock brain cell. After playing the tone a second time, the rat would brace itself for the shock. Succeeding trying it out on a rat, they actually tried it on a human who had an unpleasant memory. Jad Abumrad continued, “She improved dramatically, to the point where she was telling it on TV.” Just think about when conditions end up downhill. It makes it real easy to think of all sorts of atrocious conditions, emotional pain. Correspondingly, when something happens, the best emotions are what we think about. We start imaging what could happen, depending on which emotion we feel respectively. We have all experienced an “OH YEAH, I ALMOST FORGOT!” moment. If you have…

Radiolab is a podcast that focuses on discussing a wide variety of topics that are found in our world today. A concept that was discussed on the podcast was one that connects one of the largest creatures in the world to a human. In the Radiolab podcast episode titled, “Animal Minds”, Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich, along with their guest, Mick Menago, analyze the idea that animals can express emotions similar to those of humans. In today’s society, people often associate human qualities, such…

and, nowadays, even dull. Beethoven’s classic musical pieces have been passed down through the generations. Each new performance or recording is judged against the interpretive choices of the artists before them (Saving). But what if the way we are accustomed to hearing the pieces preformed now, is not the way that Beethoven himself intended when he wrote the pieces (Abumrad)? According to Beethoven’s original tempo markings on his sheet music, the pieces should be played much faster than they…

People should be compelled to understand other individuals who may have different cultures, so the same should be said for Artificial Intelligence. The planet would be shared by both humans and intelligent machines. Artificial Intelligence that is sentient should receive the same amount of respect that is given to other individuals, that is the effective way to spread cosmopolitanism. AI can spread ideas, thoughts and cultures just as people do, and for that reason would they be beneficial to…

On “The Bad Show,” an episode from Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich’s popular Radiolab, respected psychology professor Alexander Haslam provides his own take on Nazi motives in the context of the Milgram experiment. Haslam references a speech from Heinrich Himmler to other leaders of the Schutzstaffel, in which Himmler gave German officers tasked with killing thousands of innocent people the moral tools required to carry out unthinkable crimes against humanity (Krulwich, Abumrad, Haslam). Himmler…

“When Brains Attack” Podcast By: Robert Krulwich & Jad Abumrad (1 hour long) Brains are amazing. They have so much power and control over us; that sometimes one feels as if they are a completely separate force from us that can go against our will. In this podcast they tell us four stories of how the brain took a course of it’s own. From a fiber optic wire in a mouse’s brain, to a change in space position, to secrets our brain keeps from us, to a complete power out of a section of the brain, we…

Martín Peters tested his monkeys and found the closest match to HIV in her chimps. In 2006 it was determined that HIV comes from chimps in Southeastern Cameroon. Since scientists are unable to determine exactly who caused the spillover, they made a hypothesis called Cut Hunter. This hypothesis states that a Bantu man who lives in the forest and hunts monkeys most likely cut himself while gutting a monkey to eat. The blood to blood contact is what would have caused the spillover into humans. This…