Why Neuroscience Matters, with Ilya Monosov

Ilya Monosov, Ph.D., invites us to rethink our understanding of the brain — and to wrestle with the implications of how we define “curiosity”.

Still, I didn’t anticipate our conversation would take us to the importance of neuroscience and information seeking for the fate of humanity, or to how achieving an “engineer’s understanding” of the brain could be helpful for those living with mental health challenges like OCD.

“The driving principle is really to get a mechanistic understanding of cognition at the lowest level possible…but the way to get there is through a large amount of exploration. And partly that’s because, I think at this moment, we don’t really know how the brain works.” ~ Ilya Monosov

Ilya Monosov, Ph.D. studies neuronal circuits of motivation, emotion, and learning at the Department of Neuroscience at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

Choose to be Curious is an independently-produced, weekly half-hour show all about curiosity. We talk about research and theory, but mostly it’s conversations about how curiosity shows up in work and life.

Choose to be Curious won the Alliance for Community Media’s Hometown Media Award for best information talk show series in 2021 and Arlington Magazine’s Editor’s Pick for best local podcast in 2020.