Season 3

Episode 18 - Autism, Neuroscience of Empathy and Pain, and Placebo Effect - ft. Dr. Ben Rein

Episode 17	Episodes list	Episode 19

Today is part two of Bea's conversation with Ben Rein, a science communicator and postdoc at Stanford University. This time, they are talking about the research that Ben did during his PhD, studying Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD).
Ben describes using the mouse model to study the link between genetic changes, prefrontal cortex activity, and social behaviour, and how studies done in mice can be a step on a long road towards clinical trials. Ben explains the diagnostic criteria and how one goes about getting an ASD diagnosis in the US, and discusses the known causes of autism. Ben and Bea also talk about Andrew Wakefield's falsified data and emphasise the abundant evidence demonstrating that vaccines do not cause autism.
Ben talks about the neuroscience of pain and empathy, studies done on the social transfer of pain, and the implications these findings can have for treatment. Bea and Ben also discuss the placebo effect, how powerful it is, and if there is a way to utilise that power outside of research.

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