Hello, everyone and welcome to Talk Nerdy. Today is Monday, August 25th, 2025. And I'm the host of the show, Dr. Kara, Santa Maria. And like I always say right here at the top

of the show, I do want to thank those of you who make Talk Nerdy possible. Remember, this show

is and will always be 100% free to download as long as I am able and willing to keep producing

episodes. Gosh, we've been doing this for 11 years now. Today's

episode is actually number 565. So yeah, as always, I want to thank my top patrons of the week.

They include Anu Badawaj, Daniel Blel, ooh, nope, I just mixed up two names. Anu Badaavaj, Chuck Ble, Daniel Lang, David J.E. Smith,

Joseph Lomore, Mary Neva, Brian Holden, David Compton, Gabrielle F. Haramillo, Joe Wilkinson,

Pasquale Jalati, and Ulrika Hagman. And of course, there are hundreds more of you who keep

this show going. I thank you so much from the bottom of my heart.

All right, let's dive into it.

This week's episode is one that's very near and dear to my heart,

one that's very interesting to me as a psychologist

and as somebody who studied neuroscience before I went back to school.

This week I had the opportunity to chat with Dr. Virginia Sturm.

She is the John Douglas French Alzheimer's Foundation endowed professor

in the departments of both neurology and psychiatry and behavioral sciences

at the University of California, San Francisco.

So she's an affective neuroscientist and neuropsychologist at the UCSF Memory and Aging Center,

where she focuses on research involving emotions, empathy, and social behavior,

but specifically with neurodegenerative disorders and neurodevelopmental conditions.

She recently co-wrote a book with her colleague Bruce Miller called Mysteries of the Social Brain,

Understanding Human Behavior Through Science.

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