Lecture 1 – What's in your head?
Your brain may look like a big walnut, but it has the ability to create an almost unlimited stream of images, thoughts, memories and dreams. Undoubtedly the most complex material in the universe, and yet it's just a collection of simple cells.
Join Bruce Hood as he gets under your skull and takes a peek inside. What do brainwaves look like? How fast is a neuron? Why does your brain create its own version of reality?
Bruce uses technology to measure brain activity and follow eye movement, build a virtual brain out of audience volunteers and play some guessing games with your mind. In the process, he shows how everything you perceive is just an interpretation of the nerve impulses that your brain receives – which isn't really that much.
Ultimately, we are all experts at filling in the blanks.
About the 2011 CHRISTMAS LECTURES
Inside each and every one of us is the most marvellous structure in the known universe – the human brain. Our brains make us who we are, yet how they work has long been a mystery. We all know that we think, but not how we think.
But in the last few years, science has started to reveal this hidden and complex world. In these lectures, Bruce Hood explores what we know about how our brains work, and how these remarkable organs make us truly human. He looks at how you create your own version of reality, what makes your brain decide which information to trust and which to ignore (without you even knowing) and why you are programmed to read other people's minds.