Rewiring the Brain – Dr. William Hurlbut
The Thomistic Institute
The Thomistic Institute
4.8 • 873 Ratings
🗓️ 14 January 2026
⏱️ 63 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Dr. William Hurlbut examines how natural neuroplasticity, education, lifestyle, and new neurotechnologies are “rewiring the brain,” highlighting both their therapeutic promise and their dangers in an age of addictive digital culture, standardized schooling, and powerful biotechnological interventions.
This lecture was given on October 27th, 2025, at University of Rochester.
For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events.
About the Speakers:
William B. Hurlbut is a physician and Adjunct Professor in the Department of Neurobiology at Stanford University Medical Center. After receiving his undergraduate and medical training at Stanford, he completed postdoctoral studies in theology and medical ethics, studying with Robert Hamerton-Kelly, the Dean of the Chapel at Stanford, and subsequently with the Rev. Louis Bouyer of the Institut Catholique de Paris.
His primary areas of interest involve the ethical issues associated with advancing biomedical technology, the biological basis of moral awareness, and studies in the integration of theology and philosophy of biology. He was instrumental in establishing the first course in biomedical ethics at Stanford Medical Center and subsequently taught bioethics to over six thousand Stanford undergraduate students in the Program in Human Biology.
Dr. Hurlbut is the author of numerous publications on science and ethics including the co-edited volume Altruism and Altruistic Love: Science, Philosophy, and Religion in Dialogue (2002, Oxford University Press), and “Science, Religion and the Human Spirit” in the Oxford Handbook of Science and Religion. He has organized and co-chaired three multi-year interdisciplinary faculty projects at Stanford University, “Becoming Human: The Evolutionary Origins of Spiritual, Religious and Moral Awareness,” “Brain Mind and Emergence,” and the ongoing “The Boundaries of Humanity: Human, Animals, and Machines in the Age of Biotechnology.” In addition, he was Co-leader, together with U.C. Berkeley professor Jennifer Doudna of “The challenge and opportunity of gene editing: a project for reflection, deliberation and education.”
Keywords: Addiction and Digital Media, Attention Formation, Brain Development, Brain Plasticity and Education, Dyslexia, Ethical Neurotechnology, Neuroplasticity, Pornography and the Adolescent Brain, Standardized Schooling, Technology
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Tomistic Institute podcast. Our mission is to promote the Catholic intellectual tradition in the university, the church, and the wider public square. The lectures on this podcast are organized by university students at Temistic Institute chapters around the world. To learn more and to attend these events, visit us at |
| 0:21.6 | to mystic institute.org. So I'm really happy to be here and look forward to talking with you |
| 0:28.2 | directly after the presentation, which is on a really fascinating subject, an enormous subject. |
| 0:44.3 | I hope I can get through what I've written because there's so much here that is both scientifically and philosophically and theologically relevant to the future of our species |
| 0:53.3 | and even our individual lives in some cases. |
| 0:57.0 | So a while back, I saw an article about how archaeologists are using high-resolution |
| 1:06.0 | satellite images to peer into the past from the distance of space. |
| 1:11.9 | These multispectral images drawn from the NASA database allow remote subsurface sensing |
| 1:19.2 | and the identification and analysis of layer upon layer of ancient human sites buried under |
| 1:26.7 | the millennial drift of sediments and sand. |
| 1:30.3 | There's an evident drama in this jarring juxtaposition of high technology, humans unearthing |
| 1:40.3 | the primitive remnants from their earliest ancestral origins. |
| 1:45.0 | In a dry river bed, a tallyless slope, or the plowed rows of upturned sod, |
| 1:53.0 | there is a flint arrowhead, a bright bead, or a jagged fragment of painted pottery. |
| 2:00.0 | Then, there's iron, bronze, and glass, the plow and the wheel, |
| 2:08.6 | then engines powered by steam, radios, radar, and in another hundred years, |
| 2:15.6 | were lifted to orbit above the earth and are looking back down |
| 2:20.3 | on the cradle of our creation. One can only imagine the individual lives, the hands and minds, |
| 2:29.3 | through whom this creative assent toward comprehension and control has come. |
| 2:36.1 | Struggling forward against all adversity in the face of disorder, disease, and death, |
| 2:42.5 | they set the foundations and forged the living link from the challenges of basic biological |
| 2:49.4 | survival to the high technology culture of the modern world. |
... |
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