Neuroscience in the 20th century

In Our Time: Science

BBC

History

4.5 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 24 December 1998

⏱️ 28 minutes

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Summary

Melvyn Bragg and guests marvel at our brains and discuss how at the end of a century of research we still understand so little about how they work.Developments in the understanding of the brain represent one of the major leaps forward in science in the 20th century, and the research is gathering pace and intensity. It’s a subject which captures the imagination, particularly the search for consciousness whatever that might be, and brings together some of the newest technology and the oldest belief systems. What a piece of work is the brain - a grain-of-sand-sized piece contains one hundred thousand neurons, two-million axons and one billion synapses which all talk to each other. How far we have got with our understanding of the brain and what can it tell us about ourselves and the world we live in?With Professor Susan Greenfield, director of the Royal Institution, Professor of Pharmacology, Oxford University and Professor of Physics at Gresham College; Professor Vilayanur Ramachandran, Professor of Neuroscience and Psychology, Director of the Brain Perception Laboratory, University of California in San Diego and Professor at the Salk Institute.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Thanks for downloading the In Our Time podcast. For more details about In Our Time and for our terms of use, please go to BBC.co.uk.
0:09.0	I hope you enjoy the program.
0:12.0	Hello, we'll be talking about the brain and the latest work on that most fascinating of subjects, which is also an incredible object.
0:18.0	I'm joined by Professor Susan Greenfield, who is the current director of the Royal Institution, the first woman of
0:23.4	Haldepost. She is also professor of pharmacology at Oxford University and
0:27.0	professor of physics at Gresham College. She has written several books including
0:30.7	the Human Brain A Guided Tour.
0:33.4	And Professor of Neuroscience and Psychology and Director of the Brain Perception Laboratory
0:38.4	of the University of California in San Diego and a professor at the Sulk Institute. His new book is called
0:43.8	Phantoms in the brain, human nature and the architecture of the mind. The Nobel Prize
0:49.0	winner Francis Crick said of this book, if you're at all interested in how your
0:52.4	brain works, then this is
0:54.2	the book you must read I begin by quoting from the preface of that book quote the
0:58.6	famous saying may you live in interesting times has a special meaning now for those
1:02.2	of us who study the brain and human
1:04.4	behavior. On the one hand, despite 200 years of research, the most basic
1:09.5	questions about the human mind, how do we recognize faces, why do we cry, why do we laugh, why do we dream,
1:15.4	and why do we enjoy music and art remain unanswered, as does the really big question
1:19.7	what is consciousness. On the other hand, the advent of novel experimental approaches and
1:23.8	imaging techniques is sure to transform our understanding of the human brain.
1:27.9	Looking at one way, Susan, after 200 years and all your work in that, why don't we know a few of these things?
1:35.0	I think one of the problems is that we're getting a bit carried away with the techniques
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