Welcome to brain science, the show that explores how neuroscience is unraveling the mystery of how our brains make us human.

I'm your host Dr. Ginger Campbell and this is episode 141.

My guest today is Dr. Rodrigo Keon-Kiroga, author of The Forgetting Machine, Memory, Perception, and the Jennifer Aniston

Neuron.

Like many neuroscientists, Dr. Keeroga started his career as a physicist, but this allowed him to bring a unique set of

computational skills to his study of memory. In this interview we will talk about

his research and the discovery of what might more accurately

be called concept cells, rather than the better known term Jennifer Aniston Neurons.

I will be back after the interview

to review the key ideas and to share a few brief announcements.

As always, you will find complete show notes and episode transcripts on our website at brainscience podcast.com.

You can send me feedback at brainscience podcast at gmail.com, or if you prefer to leave audio feedback you can do this via the

Speak Pipe app or by going to Speak Pipe.com forward slash dock Artemis

Welcome to the show Rodrigo

Thanks. So at the beginning of the forgetting machine, you mentioned that you began your career as a physicist.

Will you tell us a little bit about yourself and how you ended up in neuroscience?

So, yeah, it's a long way.

So I started in physics and when I was a student I was fascinated by relativity,

time travels, I mean, I guess I like science fiction a lot. I like these ideas of getting

into a ship and traveling closer to the speed of light and then like going to the future or if it is possible to pass the speed of light and so on.

And then I was very interested in cosmology, but as I kept on progress in my career, I started to get less and less interesting into that because I thought

too far the touch to reality for my liking.

...