Mindset Neuroscience Podcast · Stefanie Faye

Our Body Keeps the Score, Our Cells Remember w/ Dr. Nikolay Kukushkin

·1 hr 7 min·4 clips

A kidney cell can tell 12 continuous minutes from pulses separated by 10 minutes.

The conversation starts with a simple claim: memory is not just in the brain. Nico's work is presented as a way to test that claim at the level of cells, tissues, signaling, and molecular change. The host then lays out his own angle. He looks at cells inside the brain and asks how that activity becomes brainwaves, while Nico looks across species and across organs, using the same instinct to understand what is happening under the hood before leaping to behavior or psychology. The two approaches meet quickly. Both assume that zooming in can help explain bigger patterns in human development and lived experience. The interview does not stay abstract. Nico spends time on the methods, the details of cellular functioning, and the research logic behind the claims. That technical stretch is part of the point. The discussion keeps circling back to what neuroscientists mean by memory. Here, memory is not mainly an introspective feeling or a private image from the past. It is something that changes later behavior. A skill counts. So does episodic memory. The host and guest then use that overlap to argue that the term should stretch further. If the same process can shape other cells in the body, then memory-like effects do not have to stay confined to conscious recall. The kidney-cell example makes that concrete. A cell can show consequences that people have not been aware of without the usual subjective texture of remembering. By the end, the episode has widened the frame from memory as recollection to memory as embodied change. It closes with a brief promotional note about brain maps, how they are applying this to their work, related blog articles, and the usual request to subscribe and leave a review.

As heard by us

This episode treats memory as something carried by the body as well as the brain, with uncommon technical depth.

This episode follows Bessel van der Kolk's idea that memory is not only held in the brain, pushing it further into the body's cells and tissues.

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Why you'd press play

For when you want neuroscience that treats memory as something the body does, not just the mind.

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