NEUROTIC NEURONS:
AN INTERACTIVE EXPLANATION


Neurons only skims the surface of psychology/neuroscience, so if you want a deeper dive, do check out this Crash Course video on conditioning, and these Wikipedia articles on Hebbian Learning and Anti-Hebbian Learning.

But the most important concept I wanted to introduce here was exposure therapy, which is part of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. CBT is basically being mindful of your crappy neural connections, and gaining skills to retrain those connections. The article that most helped me understand CBT — and had a huge impact on my personal life — is this article, CBT is for Hackers.

(Also, go read the book on CBT, Feeling Good by David Burns.)

So that's the further reading on brain stuff. The other part of Neurons is its weird interactive format, a hybrid of "game" and animated explainers like Vi Hart, CGP Grey, and Kurzgesagt. I was inspired by Bret Victor's 2011 article, Explorable Explanations, another interactive hybrid.

Here's some behind-the-scenes blog posts I wrote on Neurotic Neurons: the creation process, the design lessons learnt, and my confessions of what I simplified.

If you gots questions, please tweet me at @ncasenmare. Thankies!


DID I MENTION IT'S ALL OPEN SOURCE?

Specifically, I'm dedicating Neurons to the public domain, via Creative Commons Zero. That means, if you want to translate this, show it in your classroom, or use the art/code to build your own thing, you already have my permission!


HOW TO TRANSLATE THEM CAPTIONS
  1. First off, you're awesome.
  2. Translate these lines, but only the parts after the colons. Keep the quote marks the same.
  3. Email your translated lines to . (also: what name you want me to credit & what twitter/website you'd like me to link to!)
  4. Wait for me to finally get off my bum and add your translation.
  5. Party!
There Are 32(!) Translations So Far:
Español (Spanish) captions by Clau González
Nederlands (Dutch) captions by Daan
Português (Portuguese) captions by Joao Fernandes
Português do Brasil (Brazilian Portuguese) by André Kishimoto
Deutsch (German) captions by Kudusch
Italiano (Italian) captions by Deva Mati
Esperanto (Esperanto) captions by Jason Reed
Čeština (Czech) captions by Jan
中文 (Chinese) captions by Gwen Kwan (关征宇)
Slovenščina (Slovene) captions by Barb
Français (French) captions by Thalie & Luc
Română (Romanian) captions by Raluca Iancu
Polski (Polish) captions by Ewa
Ελληνικά (Greek) captions by Sotiris
العربية (Arabic) captions by Ahmed Abu Zuraiq
Türkçe (Turkish) captions by ciun
Norsk (Norwegian) captions by Bjørn Sætrevik
한국어 (Korean) captions by June-Seek Choi
Tiếng Việt (Vietnamese) captions by evoli_lamina
日本語 (Japanese) captions by Sho Nakagome (中込翔)
Русский (Russian) captions by Andrey Shevchuk
Magyar (Hungarian) captions by Nexx Mowarek
српски језик (Serbian) captions by Aleksandar Zivkovic
Filipino (Filipino) captions by AU Gonzales
Svenska (Swedish) captions by Elias "Ageuxo" W
српски језик (Serbian) captions by Sanja Ignjatović
Українська (Ukrainian) captions by irnerne
עברית (Hebrew) captions by Shahar E16
lietuviškai (Lithuanian) captions by Debesyla
മലയാളം (Malayalam) captions by Bibin Mathew
Bahasa Indonesia (Indonesian) captions by Brandon Louis Gunawan
中文(臺灣)(Taiwanese) captions by K.C. Yang



Made by Nicky Case   ::   Music by Phyrnna   ::   Here's the code
SHARIN'
BONUS: Because you're cool, here's the background music, for your listening pleasure.
(CC-BY license. Please attribute to @Phyrnna!)