When Life Gives You a Brain
Hi! I’m Suzi.
Welcome to When Life Gives You a Brain, where I explore everything interesting about having a brain! Each week, I write an article that covers topics at the intersection of consciousness, neuroscience, & AI.
A Bit About Me
I'm a neuroscientist turned data scientist.
Imagine a Venn diagram with three circles: neuroscience, consciousness, and AI. My favourite discussions are where they all intersect. When Life Gives You a Brain is the result of my twenty-plus years spent researching, pondering, and often being baffled by this captivating intersection of ideas.
My curiosity in these topics started with consciousness and the philosophy of mind but quickly broadened to include other disciplines within philosophy, psychology, and science. Eventually, this led to a PhD in neuroscience from the Queensland Brain Institute, where I used machine learning to gain insights into how attention and consciousness might work in the brain. Now, I run an AI and data consultancy.
If you’d like to know more, suzitravis.com
What to Expect
You can expect a fair bit of discussion about consciousness, both from a scientific and a philosophical perspective. But don't expect dense academic jargon — I like to make things easy to understand.
Conversations on consciousness can be difficult. It's a topic that fascinates many, yet its complexity often leaves people feeling lost or overwhelmed. The beauty of the internet is that we can outsource the rummaging and synthesising to those who love to fossick and draw connections (me).
Each week, I write an in-depth article that answers a single question. These might be practical questions like, how does memory work? to more philosophical questions like, If AI becomes conscious, how would we know?
Some topics surrounding consciousness can be frustrating. Many of the key questions don’t have clear answers. My hope is that these articles provide some structure for thinking about these complex questions.
So please subscribe and share it with people you think might be interested. Feel free to send me your thoughts, suggestions, and requests. I would love to hear from you.
