What happens to the temporary scaffolding cells that help build the brain during development, and could their remnants explain cognitive disorders? Neuroscientist Zoltan Molnar from the University of Oxford returns to the Convergent Science Network podcast after 11 years to discuss how transient cell populations in the subplate regulate cortical circuit formation, and why the prolonged timeline of human brain development may be both a vulnerability and an evolutionary advantage. Subscribe for more from the Convergent Science Network podcast series. Zoltan Molnar, a leading expert on cortical development and subplate neurobiology at the University of Oxford, joins Paul Verschure and Tony Prescott at the BCBT school for a follow-up conversation more than a decade after his first CSN interview. The discussion centers on how the brain's prolonged developmental timeline, particularly in humans, creates extended periods where transient circuits coexist with maturing adult connectivity. Molnar explains that human brain development is remarkably prolonged compared to other mammals. Thalamic projections arrive near the cortex early but accumulate in the subplate for months before making their final connections, a process that takes hours in mice but months in humans. This raises fundamental questions about whether developmental time scales with life expectancy and whether a meta-level controller ensures stability during this extended self-organizing process. The conversation explores the subplate as a transient scaffolding layer: the earliest-generated neurons that receive the first synapses, guide thalamocortical connectivity, and then partially disappear through programmed cell death. Molnar argues that similar transient populations exist elsewhere, particularly in the thalamic reticular nucleus, which may serve as the subplate equivalent for corticothalamic projections. The discussion addresses an ongoing scientific debate about whether subplate cells truly disappear or persist into adulthood. Molnar presents evidence for preferential cell death between postnatal days 2-8 in rodents, while acknowledging that subpopulations born at different times may have different fates. The remaining interstitial cells appear to regulate local arousal, attention, and sleep states in the adult brain. The broader implication is that abnormal development of these transient circuits may underlie cognitive disorders, connecting developmental neurobiology directly to clinical neuroscience. Part of the Convergent Science Network podcast series from the BCBT School.

What if the standard anatomical maps of the brain have been wrong for over a century, and the molecular evidence was there all along? Neuroanatomist Luis Puelles from the University of Murcia explains how developmental biology and gene expression mapping overturned the dominant columnar model of brain organization, revealing a segmental architecture that had been proposed and forgotten decades earlier. Subscribe for more from the Convergent Science Network podcast series. Luis Puelles, one of the leading figures in developmental neuroanatomy, joins Paul Verschure and Tony Prescott at the Convergent Science Network podcast to discuss his career-long effort to replace the columnar model of brain organization with a prosomeric model grounded in embryological evidence. The conversation traces Puelles' intellectual trajectory from an initial interest in how the mind emerges from the brain, through frustration with psychology disconnected from neurobiology, to decades of work on the spatial organization of the developing neural tube. The central argument is that brain boundaries are transversal to the neural tube axis, not longitudinal as the dominant American school proposed since 1910. Puelles describes how he arrived at this conclusion through morphological observation of embryos long before molecular genetics provided confirmation. When gene expression mapping became possible, the data immediately validated his model, showing that genes code for boundaries exactly where his framework predicted them. The conversation explores the historical context of the competing columnar model proposed by Herrick, which extrapolated brainstem nerve component analysis to the entire forebrain without embryological support. Puelles explains why this model persisted for 60 years despite being inconsistent with developmental biology: it offered functional interpretations that appealed to the field, even though those interpretations lacked causal mechanisms. His collaboration with molecular biologist John Rubenstein proved pivotal, combining Puelles' morphological expertise with gene expression data that other embryologists had dismissed as meaningless. The discussion addresses the relationship between structure and function in neuroscience, with Puelles arguing that understanding morphology requires understanding development, and that functional analysis must be consistent with the causal mechanisms operating in the embryo. Part of the Convergent Science Network podcast series from the BCBT Winter School.

How do you track what an animal's brain is doing when the animal itself is moving through space in complex ways? Neuroscientist Jonathan Whitlock from NTNU Trondheim describes the technical odyssey of building a markerless motion capture pipeline for rats, and explains why simplifying your behavioral paradigm can unlock deeper scientific insights. Subscribe for more from the Convergent Science Network podcast series. Jonathan Whitlock, who studies neural representations of posture and movement in the posterior parietal cortex, joins Paul Verschure and Tony Prescott at the Convergent Science Network's Alicante Cognition, Brain and Technology Winter School. The conversation explores the practical challenges of tracking animal behavior with enough precision to decode neural signals, and how those challenges led Whitlock toward a radically simpler experimental approach: having rodents chase a visual target on a screen. The discussion opens with the technical hurdles of markerless motion capture. Whitlock's lab spent years trying different marking methods, from tattoos to retroreflective paint to infrared pigments, before settling on marker-based tracking. Synchronizing neural recordings with postural data proved equally difficult, with months of data initially unusable due to insufficient temporal alignment. The payoff was substantial: discovering that even primary sensory areas encode body posture, something invisible without precise 3D tracking. The conversation then pivots to Whitlock's new paradigm: a prey-chasing task where rodents pursue a moving dot on a screen, reinforced by medial forebrain stimulation. This approach collapses the behavioral problem to two variables, distance error and heading error, while tapping into innate predatory intelligence honed by evolution. Mice and rats learn the task rapidly with minimal training, demonstrating anticipatory behavior and strategic pursuit. The discussion draws connections to predation research using crickets, subcortical circuitry in the superior colliculus and amygdala, and the broader question of how to balance technical complexity against scientific clarity. Whitlock argues that the chasing paradigm opens access to forms of biological intelligence that have been optimized through natural selection, making it a goldmine for studying sensorimotor integration, prediction, and decision-making in freely behaving animals. Part of the Convergent Science Network podcast series from the BCBT Winter School.

How do adversarial lawyers, disagreeing judges, and competing branches of government collaborate to produce justice? Ernst Numann, recently retired Vice President of the Dutch Supreme Court, reveals the hidden collaborative architecture of the legal system , and why the rule of law is far more fragile than most people believe. Subscribe for more episodes exploring collaboration across institutions. Ernst Numann spent 20 years on the Supreme Court of the Netherlands after a career spanning district courts, appellate courts in Curaçao, and private legal practice. His perspective on collaboration operates at three distinct levels simultaneously: between opposing parties in a courtroom, between judges deliberating a decision, and between the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of government. The conversation opens with a deceptively simple observation: even adversarial legal proceedings require collaboration. Two lawyers with completely opposing goals must cooperate within a shared procedure, supervised by a judge whose goal is a fair outcome. This structured antagonism , where collaboration serves justice precisely because it channels conflict rather than eliminating it , offers a model rarely considered in discussions of teamwork. At the level of judicial deliberation, Numann describes how Supreme Court judges with different views must reach a single binding decision. The process demands genuine listening, willingness to be persuaded, and ultimately acceptance of outcomes you may personally oppose. The ambition, he explains, was always to reach decisions acceptable to all judges, including dissenters, through the quality of reasoning rather than majority force. The most revealing segment addresses collaboration between branches of government. Numann explains how the Dutch system distributes rather than divides power: sometimes the government has legislative functions, sometimes the legislature has governmental ones. He illustrates this with a concrete case where the Supreme Court declared anti-squatting legislation partially invalid, the parliament revised it, and the Court then accepted the revision , a collaborative loop between institutions designed to check each other. The conversation takes a striking turn when Numann notes that in Dutch, the word "collaboration" specifically means working with the enemy , a direct reference to World War II occupation. The Dutch use "samenwerking" (cooperation) for constructive joint work. This linguistic distinction, shared with Danish, reveals how historical trauma shapes even the vocabulary available for discussing collective action. On the vulnerability of democratic institutions, Numann is sobering: the rule of law and democracy are opposite sides of the same coin, and that coin is extremely fragile. Western Europe's stability is not guaranteed , eighty years ago, the entire system was overthrown, and there are no automatic mechanisms ensuring its return. When asked what he would change about humans to improve collaboration, Numann's answer is characteristically precise: good memory. The ability to remember what was agreed, what was promised, and what happened before is the foundation on which institutional collaboration rests. Part of the Ernst Strüngmann Forum series on Collaboration, produced with the Convergent Science Network.

From a hut on the Arabian Sea to building a 1,500-bed hospital and 100,000 houses for the underserved , Swami Shantamritananda Puri's journey through monastic life, disaster relief, and humanitarian collaboration across every continent reveals what happens when spiritual practice meets large-scale collective action. Subscribe for more episodes on the deepest roots of human collaboration. Swami Shantamritananda Puri, known as Shanti, brings a perspective unlike any other in this series. Trained in philosophy and Asian studies, he served briefly in the armed forces before joining a traditional ashram in South India at age 25. That ashram grew into a worldwide humanitarian mission active in virtually every country, and Shanti's collaborative work has spanned hospital construction, disaster relief in Japan and the Philippines, public health in Papua New Guinea, interfaith dialogue with Buddhist communities in Tokyo, and scientific research initiatives in Chicago. His distinction between cooperation and collaboration is intuitive but precise: cooperation is dividing a task among more people to finish faster; collaboration is becoming something greater together , more adaptable, more resourceful, yielding intangible benefits that no participant could have achieved alone. This definition, drawn from decades of humanitarian fieldwork rather than academic theory, captures something that formal frameworks often miss. The conversation explores how spiritual communities organize collaboration at massive scale. The ashram's humanitarian projects , building housing for 100,000 underserved people, operating disaster relief across multiple countries simultaneously , require coordinating volunteers, professionals, governments, and local communities with radically different expectations and capabilities. The binding force is not contractual obligation but shared spiritual commitment and what Puri calls the love dimension of collaboration. The most powerful segments are the stories. Puri describes volunteers building houses for elderly widows in rural India , a karate master who spent days showing off his strength, only to collapse in tears on the final day because the 70-year-old widow he was building for had been scurrying around the neighborhood each morning to gather coffee grounds and sugar to serve her builders. These moments of genuine human connection, Puri argues, are not sentimental additions to collaboration but its actual foundation. On the relationship between spiritual practice and collaborative capacity, Puri draws from both Eastern philosophy and practical experience. The concept of oneness , seeing others not as separate entities to negotiate with but as extensions of a shared humanity , transforms collaboration from a strategic calculation into a natural expression of human connection. The mother-child relationship serves as his primary metaphor: before birth, there is literal oneness; after birth, the emotional bond persists as the template for all genuine collaboration. His vision for sustainable collaboration combines administrative holism with philosophical oneness , practical organizational design informed by the recognition that every human being shares the same fundamental longing for connection and meaning. Part of the Ernst Strüngmann Forum series on Collaboration, produced with the Convergent Science Network.

What if everything we think we know about collaboration is based on only 5% of the world's population? Developmental psychologist Heidi Keller challenges Western assumptions about teamwork, parenting, and collective action by drawing on decades of cross-cultural research with families across Africa, Asia, and South America. Subscribe for more episodes exploring how collaboration works across cultures. Heidi Keller, director of Nevet at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, brings an evolutionary and anthropological lens to a concept most researchers treat as universal. Her longitudinal studies of families across multiple continents reveal that collaboration means fundamentally different things depending on cultural context , and that ignoring this difference has real consequences for policy, development aid, and migrant integration. The core distinction is precise. In Western middle-class contexts, collaboration is dyadic: two individuals jointly define goals and contribute as equals. In rural farming communities across Africa, Asia, and South America, collaboration means contributing to goals defined by the community , not imposed, but mutually understood as serving collective well-being. Neither model is superior, but treating the Western version as the default distorts research, policy, and intervention programs worldwide. Keller traces how these differences emerge in early childhood. Western parenting emphasizes individual agency, verbal negotiation, and autonomous decision-making from infancy. Children in rural Cameroonian Nso communities, by contrast, learn collaboration through observation, participation in household tasks, and responsiveness to the needs of others , without explicit instruction. By age three, these children demonstrate collaborative competence that Western children of the same age typically lack. The conversation challenges the assumption that collaboration requires explicit communication and shared intentionality in the way Western psychology defines it. Keller describes how Nso toddlers seamlessly coordinate household tasks, anticipate others' needs, and contribute to collective goals through what she calls "keen observation and eager participation" , a form of collaboration that Western developmental frameworks fail to recognize because they are looking for verbal negotiation and joint attention. The ethical implications are direct. Keller argues that organizations like UNICEF, WHO, and major foundations export Western middle-class developmental norms as universal standards, intervening in cultural systems worldwide with frameworks that do not apply. The result is wasted resources and deep disrespect toward other cultures. The same dynamic plays out in how Western countries treat migrant families , pathologizing parenting practices that are adaptive in their original context. When asked whether humanity can achieve sustainable global collaboration, Keller is pessimistic: economic interests override collective well-being, and corruption undermines cooperative structures everywhere. Her proposed change is deceptively simple: stop viewing yourself as the center of the world, and develop genuine interest in how others live, believe, and raise their children. Part of the Ernst Strüngmann Forum series on Collaboration, produced with the Convergent Science Network.

How do you push 27 EU member states toward a single climate target when every country has different interests? Former EU Climate Commissioner Connie Hedegaard reveals the invisible mechanics of political collaboration , from backroom negotiations to cross-sector coalition building. Subscribe for more episodes on how collaboration works under real-world pressure. Connie Hedegaard brings a rare combination of journalism, national politics, and EU-level policymaking to a conversation about what collaboration actually looks like when the stakes are planetary. Having served as Denmark's Minister of the Environment and then as European Commissioner for Climate Action, she led the political process that produced the EU's 40 percent climate targets for 2030 , a precursor to the Paris Agreement. The central insight is that political collaboration operates nothing like the textbook version. Hedegaard describes a process where formal institutions are only one layer of a much more complex system. Achieving climate targets required simultaneous engagement with knowledge institutions, businesses, NGOs, civil society, and informal networks , pushing buttons inside and outside the political world that most observers never see. Hedegaard draws a sharp distinction between political and academic collaboration. Researchers can pursue their own truth; politicians must find landing zones. Compromise is not a weakness but the operating system of democratic policymaking. This creates a fundamental tension when scientists produce relevant knowledge but fail to understand the decision-making processes through which that knowledge must travel to have impact. The conversation addresses the Copenhagen COP15 experience directly. Hedegaard describes how the failure to reach a binding agreement revealed the limits of multilateral collaboration when trust breaks down between major powers. The lesson was not that collaboration is impossible at scale, but that process design matters enormously , who is in the room, how information flows, and whether participants feel ownership of the outcome. On building coalitions, Hedegaard offers a concrete example: the Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance. It started not with governments but with philanthropic foundations convening stakeholders, broadening the circle, building shared understanding, and only bringing the initiative to the political arena when it was mature enough to succeed. This staged approach, starting small, building trust, then scaling, emerges as her model for effective collaboration. She identifies short-term thinking as humanity's greatest obstacle to sustainable collaboration. If she could change one thing, it would be replacing instant self-interest with a genuine sense of responsibility for future generations , not as a catchphrase but as embedded behavior. Part of the Ernst Strüngmann Forum series on Collaboration, produced with the Convergent Science Network.

Can mathematics compose music? Can robots create art that is genuinely good for people? Brazilian mathematician and composer Jonatas Manzolli explores the collision between understanding and interpretation , and why collaboration between art and science may be essential for humanity's survival. Subscribe for more episodes on how collaboration works across disciplines. Jonatas Manzolli occupies a rare intersection: trained in mathematics, driven by music composition, and committed to building bridges between algorithmic understanding and artistic interpretation. As head of the Interdisciplinary Center for Sound Communication at the University of Campinas in Brazil, he has spent decades pushing students and collaborators to confront a fundamental question , whether the purpose of human endeavor is to understand the world or to live in it. The conversation opens with Manzolli's formative tension. Studying mathematics and music simultaneously, he found himself caught between two demands: mathematicians wanted him to understand; musicians wanted him to interpret and feel. His PhD in music composition was an attempt to resolve this by emphasizing creation, but the resolution came not as a choice between the two but as a commitment to being an interface , translating between the possibilities of understanding and the necessities of expression. This personal trajectory becomes a lens for examining collaboration itself. Manzolli argues that the most productive collaborations happen when participants bring genuinely different modes of thinking , not just different expertise within the same paradigm. His work with Paul Verschure on robotic systems that interact with human performers illustrates this: the question shifted from "how does the robot talk to the system?" to "how do we produce artifacts that are good for people?" , a move from technical capability to human benefit. The pandemic reshaped Manzolli's understanding of collaborative practice. Isolated in a small space, experiencing what he calls "the aesthetics of compression," he began writing musical letters , short scores sent to friends as a form of connection. When 15 dancers responded with movement to a poem he wrote, he used algorithmic composition to merge their movement and voice into something he calls music, even though it contains no traditional notes. The result demonstrates how collaboration can emerge from constraint when participants trust each other enough to respond authentically. On the relationship between art and survival, Manzolli is direct: not all problems can be solved by science alone. Environmental crises have layers, ecological, historical, relational, that require cultural and artistic engagement alongside technical solutions. A future society that eliminates space for art, science, and culture in equal measure will not survive its own intolerance. His proposed change to humanity is the capacity to believe in other people and to become tolerant of others , a deceptively simple formulation that connects mathematical precision with artistic generosity. Part of the Ernst Strüngmann Forum series on Collaboration, produced with the Convergent Science Network.