Jessamyn Fairfield
speaker
401 appearances
5 recordings
1 series
first heard Apr 2026
last heard 30 Aug
Jessamyn Fairfield’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 5 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 2.
Appearances
Futureproof with Jonathan McCrea · Did we find evidence of life on Mars in the 1970’s? · 30 Aug 2026
podcast
It's about our brains.
Not just our brains, but who's calling the shots in them?
Like, are we making the decisions that we think we're making and why?
So this is based on a new paper by Professor Tom James from Indiana University about perception, the things that we perceive around us, and how we translate our perceptions into action.
This is what's called decision-making.
We're all familiar with it, even if we're not actively thinking about it as we make each and every decision in our day.
And for a long time, decision-making has been treated
As this sort of abstract process within cognitive science that is situated in lots of different brain regions.
You know, we know different parts of the brain that are responsible for it, especially this part in the front that's called the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, which, you know, you can do brain scans, you can see it light up, all this kind of thing.
Mm-hmm.
But what Professor Tom James has proposed is that in a way, decision making is not as concrete as all that.
It's not a thing that we can pin down.
On one sort of circuit in the brain necessarily.
Whereas perception, you know, we have organs of perception.
We have our eyes, we have ears, nose, our skin.
We know when inputs are coming in, and then we're able to take action based on them, right?
We're able to like kick a ball or open a door.
We we do muscular actions based off of those.
But what's happening in between?
The word decision making is kind of being used to cover up a big messy process that involves, you know, not.
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