Runtime: 68 hr, 39 min

Lectures: 48

A 48-Lecture Odyssey Through the Architecture of Thought in Animals, Fungi, and Swarms

From octopus arms that think for themselves to slime molds that solve mazes without neurons, NeuroZoology takes listeners on an astonishing journey through the minds of creatures great and small-and some without brains at all.

Spanning 48 richly narrated lectures optimized for audiobook format, this course redefines what it means to think, feel, decide, and remember in the animal kingdom. With the rigor of neuroscience and the wonder of natural history, it explores the evolutionary inventions that gave rise to cognition: mycelial signaling networks, insect mushroom bodies, echolocation in bats and whales, grid cells in birds and rats, mirror neurons in apes and parrots, and the tools and cultures of corvids, cephalopods, and primates.

Structured as a tour through deep time and neurodiverse lifeforms, NeuroZoology challenges anthropocentric models of intelligence and introduces a radically ecological view of the mind. You’ll meet brains that regenerate themselves, brains that operate without a cortex, and collective intelligences where no individual is in charge-but the group computes nonetheless.

Whether you’re a neuroscientist, ethologist, educator, or simply someone who wonders what it’s like to be a squid-or a bee, or a bird-this course will change how you think about thinking.

It is not just a study of nervous systems. It’s a meditation on what minds are, where they reside, and how many ways nature has solved the problem of cognition.

69 hours of content across 48 lectures. Full bibliography of 500+ sources included.

Syllabus:

Lecture 1. The First Nerve – Origins of Intelligence

Lecture 2. Distributed Minds

Lecture 3. Origins of Brain–Body Mapping

Lecture 4. Tools, Tongues, and Tentacles

Lecture 5. Neural Time: Introduction

Lecture 6. Mirror Minds: Origins of Empathy

Lecture 7. Neuroplasticity

Lecture 8. Neural Time 2: Duration, Sequence, Rhythm

Lecture 9. Tools, Tricks, and Teleology

Lecture 10. Cognitive Maps and Navigational Intelligence

Lecture 11. Neural Lateralization

Lecture 12. Swarm Systems

Lecture 13. The Shape of Thought: Neural Morphology

Lecture 14. Convergent Minds: Evolutionary Reuse

Lecture 15. Animal Models of Neuroscience

Lecture 16. Architecture of Sensory Worlds

Lecture 17. Memory Without a Brain

Lecture 18. Emergent Intelligence in Swarms

Lecture 19. Cephalopod Brains

Lecture 20. Avian Architects: Corvids and Parrots

Lecture 21. Echolocation and 3D Mapping

Lecture 22. Neural Choreography: Dancing and Synchronization

Lecture 23. The Plastic Brain: Regeneration and Rewiring

Lecture 24. Mirror Minds in Non-Humans

Lecture 25. Neural Cartography and Internal GPS

Lecture 26. Insect Intelligence

Lecture 27. Glial Networks and Non-Neuronal Intelligence

Lecture 28. Comparative Cortices

Lecture 29. Cortical Substitutes in Invertebrates

Lecture 30. Tool Use 2

Lecture 31. Other Minds: Electromagnetic Sensation

Lecture 32. Neural Timing 3: Oscillations and Entrainment

Lecture 33. Intellect: Corvids, Primates, Cephalopods

Lecture 34. Sleeping, Dreaming and Consciousness Across Brains

Lecture 35. Neuroethology of Social Behavior

Lecture 36. Plasticity Without a Cortex

Lecture 37. Brain–Body Coevolution

Lecture 38. Swarm Computation

Lecture 39. NeuroEcology and Niche-Driven Brains

Lecture 40. The Concept of Umwelt

Lecture 41. Tool Use and Abstraction

Lecture 42. Adaptations of the Deep Sea

Lecture 43. Parasitic Minds

Lecture 44. Eusociality: Brains That Serve the Hive

Lecture 45. Tool Use 4: A Final Look

Lecture 46. Mycelial Minds

Lecture 47. Craniocentric Bias

Lecture 48. Future NeuroEcology

You May Also Like: