Science

Is the Human Mind Unique?

There’s plenty that goes on in these heads of ours — sometimes more than we want or understand. But just how much does the way our minds work distinguish us from other species?

In the latest series from UC San Diego’s CARTA, scientists from different fields discuss the cognitive abilities that are often regarded as unique to humans, including humor, morality, symbolism, creativity and preoccupation with the minds of others. They assess the functional uniqueness of these attributes, as opposed to the anatomical uniqueness, and whether they are indeed quantitatively or qualitatively unique to humans.

Watch “Is the Human Mind Unique?” and then tell that brain of yours to click on over to the CARTA video archive for more intriguing insights into what makes us human.

April News & Highlights

Featured This Month
Program Highlights
New to Video On-Demand

FEATURED THIS MONTH

An Evening with Poet Billy Collins

Don’t miss this chance to enjoy American poet Billy Collins as he reads a selection of humorous poems and discusses the craft of writing with Dean Nelson and an appreciative audience at the keynote event of the 2013 Writer’s Symposium by the Sea, sponsored by Point Loma Nazarene University.

An Evening with Billy Collins
Premieres April 1 at 8pm

Find more video from past
Writer’s Symposium by the Sea events.

Is the Human Mind Unique?

New from CARTA, scientists from different fields discuss cognitive abilities often regarded as unique to humans, including humor, morality, symbolism, creativity and preoccupation with the minds of others. They assess the functional uniqueness of these attributes, as opposed to the anatomical uniqueness, and whether they are indeed quantitatively or qualitatively unique to humans.

Is the Human Mind Unique? Premieres April 8.

To Be Musical Concludes

We wrap up the six-part series on what makes music musical this month with two fascinating presentations. On April 2 at 9pm, Grammy-winning soprano and UCSD Professor of Music Susan Narucki presents “Utterance, Ritual, Expression: Why Singing Makes Us Human.”

Then on April 16, Diana Deutsch, UCSD Professor of Psychology, shows the striking difference in how people hear simple musical patterns in “Musical Illusions, Perfect Pitch and Other Curiosities.”

Browse all To Be Musical programs.

PROGRAM HIGHLIGHTS

All programs repeat throughout the month. Visit the Program Schedule on our web site for additional air dates and times.

Ocean Science Surpasses 10 Million!

When people want to learn about the ocean, they turn to Birch Aquarium at Scripps’ “Perspectives on Ocean Science” lecture series, available on TV and online through UCSD-TV and its sister station, UCTV.

How do we know? The collection of 130+ videos, available on the channels’ websites, YouTube and iTunes, just surpassed 10 million views, making it UCSD’s most popular science series and UCTV’s 14th most popular series, out of a whopping 350!

Learn more about this accomplishment and the importance of Birch Aquarium‘s public outreach program, then dive in to the “Perspectives on Ocean Science” video archive! Stay tuned April 10 at 8pm for the TV premiere of the latest installment, “Genetics and Gray Whale Behavior,” which is also available online now.

Exploring Beyond the Abyss: The Deep Sea Challenge Expedition

James Cameron Deep Sea Challenge — Explorer-filmmaker James Cameron emerges from his sub after returning from Challenger Deep. Photograph by Mark Thiessen, National Geographic

In spring 2012, the Deep Sea Challenge Expedition, with film director and National Geographic Explorer in Residence James Cameron, conducted submersible operations in the deepest point on Earth, the Mariana Trench.

In “Exploring Beyond the Abyss: The Deep Sea Challenge Expedition,” Scripps Institution of Oceanography’s Doug Bartlett, the chief scientist of this headline expedition and a leading expert in microbial life in the planet’s most remote and extreme places, describes what the journey was like and how his research is providing greater insight into how organisms thrive in such extreme depths of the ocean.

The program premieres tonight (Feb. 13) at 8pm. Or you can watch it online now and take your own expedition inside the video archive of the fascinating “Perspectives on Ocean Science” series from Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

Can the World Breathe Easy?

UCTV Prime’s series “Lifting the Blanket: The Pursuit of a Climate Change Solution” has been following the remarkable journey of Scripps Institution of Oceanography’s Veerabhadran Ramanathan, whose scientific curiosity took him from a refrigeration plant in his native country of India to becoming a globally recognized leader in climate change research.

Episodes one and two tracked the progress of his groundbreaking research that identified the significant contribution of CFCs and black carbon soot to global warming. In episode 3, “Can the World Breathe Easy?,” Ramanathan returns to India with an international collaboration to demonstrate that improving cooking methods in the developing world could slow global warming and improve public health along the way.

Watch episode 3 now, or catch up with Ramanthan’s quest to find human-scale solutions to climate change at the series website. Stay tuned February 12 for the fourth and final installment, “Scientific Authority Meets Moral Authority.”

FEATURED THIS MONTH

An Evening with Poet Billy Collins

PROGRAM HIGHLIGHTS

Health & Medicine

Public Affairs

Arts & Music

Check out the latest additions to our online video archive