This is a BBC podcast. You can get all our podcasts and our terms of use at

bbcworldservice.com slash podcasts. And now the mysteries of the brain. In the

first part of this series about the brain, Professor Barry Smith explores

language and the senses.

I'm here in a small village in the south of England to meet one of the world's

leading chefs. Heston Blumenthal has been running the three Michelin star fat

duck restaurant for many years. He knows if people are going to enjoy a culinary

experience, it's not just the tongue that matters, it's all their senses.

Why do we like and dislike certain foods? The information gets sent to the brain via

the eyes and the nose and the ears and the mouth. It's multi-sensory. So the most

important thing in the whole tasting process is not the tongue on the nose or the

ears, it's the brain. So the brain has got the arduous task of joining all of

those things together. In this BBC series, Mysteries of the Brain, with the help

of leading researchers, I'll be exploring the way neuroscience is addressing the

ultimate scientific challenge. Namely, how our brain, that one and a half

kilograms of pink, grayish matter, makes us the conscious creatures we are

capable of language, thinking and feeling. Before children acquire language at

around the age of two, they're using their senses to explore the world around

them. And it's been commonly assumed that the senses deliver separate pieces of

information, seeing and hearing, touching, tasting and smelling. But now this

view of the senses is working independently of one another is being seriously

challenged. The eyes and the ears are always talking to each other, the nose and

...