Interview with Jim Ranck, discoverer of Head-Direction cells

May 7, 2019,  Andre Fenton and I interview Jim Ranck. The interview is quite long — 90 minutes — and is organized in a decade-by-decade manner. For each segment we discuss Jim’s personal history, his scientific accomplishments, and some major events in Neuroscience.

watch, above, or go directly to youtube: https://youtu.be/i6hIVqXPNdQ

The interview contains lots of hippocampal minutia. Best suited for people in the field … but I think there are other gems.

The timeline is something like this:

0:00:00    1930-40s birth thru college: 
0:04:50    1950s  med school, Univ chicago, Public Health 
0:20:10    1960s  Univ Washington, Biophysics, Brain Impedance, Mich
0:31:00    1970s  Hippocampal Neurons, O'Keefe & Nadel
                  Phil Best, place cells are real
0:48:00    1975   Move to Brooklyn, single neurons
1:08:43    1980s  (part 1) computerized data collection and
                  analysis
1:10:40    1980s  (part 2) Head-Direction cells. Ego and allocentric
1:22:55    1990s  Cognitive Neuroscience, the book.

Most important segment is on discovery and description of Head-Direction Cells,
1:10:40 – 1:23:00

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