V S Ramachandran - Laurel & Hardy TV - Stan Richard Dawkins TV - Weird or What? TV - Horizon TV - Alice Roberts TV - Stephen Hawking - Francis Crick - Great Thinkers in Their Own Words TV - Michael Mosley TV - Mankind: The Story of All of Us TV - Jacob Bronowski TV - Leslie Aiello - The Human Spark TV - Tony Robinson TV - Dara O’Briain’s Science Club TV - Through the Keyhole TV - Emily Dickinson - A A Milne - Lord Byron - Woody Allen - William Shakespeare - Albert Einstein - Alan Turing - Groucho Marx - Carl Sagan - Robert Frost - Secrets of the Occult TV - J B S Haldane - Betty Edwards - David Pederson - Bruce Hood - Graham Gynn & Tony Wright - Michael Mosley TV - Arthur Conan Doyle - Kurt Vonnegut - Justin Bieber - Steven Pinker - Aesop - Will Cuppy - Charles Scott Sherrington - Samuel Butler - Maria Montessori - John Steinbeck - Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra - Helen Morrison - Star Trek TV - David Attenborough TV - Peter Wheeler - Virginia Woolf - The Office US TV - L Frank Baum & The Wizard of Oz 1939 - Young Frankenstein 1974 - Decoding the Brain: Breakthrough TV - Dracula: Dead and Loving It 1995 - David Eagleman TV - Derek Johnson - Louis Theroux TV - Andrew Marr TV - Monty Python’s Flying Circus TV - Incredible Medicine: Dr Weston’s Casebook TV - The Boy With No Brain: Extraordinary People TV - Hannah Fry: Size Matters TV - 54 Hours: The Gladbeck Hostage Crisis TV - Hamilton’s Pharmacopeia TV - Dark Net 2016 - Inside the Criminal Mind 2018 - In Search of … TV - Eric Kandel -
How can a three-pound mass of jelly that you can hold in your palm imagine angels, contemplate the meaning of infinity, and even question its own place in the cosmos? Especially awe inspiring is the fact that any single brain, including yours, is made up of atoms that were forged in the hearts of countless, far-flung stars billions of years ago. These particles drifted for eons and light-years until gravity and change brought them together here, now. These atoms now form a conglomerate – your brain – that can not only ponder the very stars that gave it birth but can also think about its own ability to think and wonder about its own ability to wonder. With the arrival of humans, it has been said, the universe has suddenly become conscious of itself. This, truly, it the greatest mystery of all. V S Ramachandran, The Tell-Tale Brain: A Neuroscientist's Quest for What Makes Us Human
At last you are using my brain. (Film & Comedy & Brain) Stan to Laurel, cited Laurel & Hardy: Their Lives & Magic, Sky Arts 2020
Our brains are in some sense predisposed to be religious. Richard Dawkins, interview BBC Hardtalk
In humans the brain has taken over in such a big way that it becomes positively misleading to try to explain human behaviour in a simple-minded naive vehicle for the genes ... What governs how humans behave is an extremely complicated mixture of our genetically provided brains overlain by a massive infusion of culture. Richard Dawkins
Natural selection drove the development of the human brain ... A brain arose which was able to look around the world and ask perhaps for the very first time the question – Why? Why are we here? Richard Dawkins, Why Are We Here?
There’s sure enough plenty of variation in brain power – all the way from Einstein on the one hand to Sarah Palin at the other. Richard Dawkins, interview Bill Mayer 2nd October 2009
I mean I think that when you’ve got a big brain, when you find yourself planted in a world with a brain big enough to understand quite a lot of what you see around you, but not everything, you naturally fall to thinking about the deep mysteries. Where do we come from? Where does the world come from? Where does the universe come from? Richard Dawkins
This is arguable the most complicated thing in the universe ... There are perhaps a hundred billion nerve cells, neurons, in there, and maybe two hundred trillion connections between them. Richard Dawkins
Is human hibernation possible? Can we literally freeze out death? A small child froze in sub-zero temperatures. Clinically dead for two hours. She amazingly survived. How is this possible? Weird or What? Human Popsicle, Discovery 2010
Erica survived her ordeal without suffering any form of brain damage. ibid.
Over a hundred years ago the Big Brain Theory of human evolution was born. Horizon: The Ape That Took Over the World, BBC 2001
It was not the skull of an antelope but of an ape-like creature. And it seemed to have an unusually large brain. The question was, Did it cross the magical cerebral Rubicon of six-hundred cubic centimetres? ibid.
Lucy ... Just older than #1470 ... This ape-like creature had one clear human characteristic. And it wasn’t a big brain ... She walked on two legs, not four ... They found Lucy’s footprints ... Lucy’s brain was just too small. ibid.
Why intelligence should have evolved from moving on two legs doesn’t seem obvious. ibid.
These people suffer from one of the strangest of all brain disorders. It makes them think they have been touched by God. But their unusual condition is giving scientists an unusual insight into faith and the human mind ... Could it be that the physical make-up of our brain programs us to believe in God? Horizon: God on the Brain, BBC 2003
Professor Gregory Holmes, one of the world’s leading experts in paediatric neurology, believes the fact that Ellen White’s visions followed a head injury is no coincidence. ibid.
St Paul is a case in point. He famously encountered God who appeared to him in a blinding flash. And what about Moses the bringer of the Ten Commandments? He believed he heard the voice of God speak to him from a burning bush. ibid.
Professor Ramachandran of the University of California decided to pursue the link between the temporal lobes of the brain and religious experiences. ibid.
Scientists now believe what happens inside the mind of temporal lobe epileptic patients may just be an extreme case of what goes on inside all our brains. For everyone it now appears that temporal lobes are key in experiencing religious and spiritual belief. This explosive research studying how religious faith affects the brain is the inspiration for a completely new field of science: neuro-theology. ibid.
Dr Persinger has taken his research a stage further. He believes naturally occurring electromagnetic fields might also be capable of generating this sensed presence. This explains, he argued, not just our sense of God but perhaps also other supernatural experiences too. ibid.
So Horizon decided to set Dr Persinger’s theory and machine the ultimate test. To give a religious experience to one of the world’s most strident atheists Professor Richard Dawkins. ibid.
Despite the setback with Professor Dawkins, Dr Persinger’s research shone over a thousand human guinea-pigs has gone further than any other to establish a clear link between spiritual or religious experience and the temporal lobes of the human brain. It has put his research at the very cutting-edge of neuro-theology. ibid.
Could it be we somehow evolved religious belief as a survival mechanism? But if religious faith is somehow a by-product of evolution, does that mean belief in a God can be dismissed as a quirk of Nature? ibid.
For some reason our brains have developed specific structures that help us believe in God. Remarkably it seems, whether God exists or not, the way our brains have developed we will go on believing. ibid.
There is a moment in the near future that scientists believe will transform the notion of what it is to be human. By conducting some of the most controversial experiments, scientists are unlocking the secrets of the human brain, moving us towards the moment when it will be possible to store our minds in machines. Then we will be able to change what we are and who we are. Horizon: Human v2.0, BBC 2006
So Rex Jung’s research suggests that high IQ brains are different from ordinary brains. Horizon: Battle of the Brains, BBC 2007
Whatever the reality even the most hardened critics agree our brains mean God is here is stay. Horizon: The End of God? A Horizon Guide to Science and Religion, BBC 2010
We like to believe we are in control of everything we think and everything we do. But scientists are discovering that at every moment of our lives an unseen presence is guiding us all. Now, they are exploring the world of your unconscious mind. Horizon: Out of Control? BBC 2012
There’s more going on than you can consciously take in. ibid.
Your unconscious is often in control. ibid.
A rose-tinted and inaccurate view of the world. ibid.
Your unconscious mind will re-wire itself to share the load. ibid.
The sophisticated centre of everything we ever do. ibid.
We all know it when it happens – the moment when the light seems to go in your head. The instant when you experience a flash of inspiration. Scientists are beginning to understand how these moments come about. Horizon: The Creative Brain: How Insight Works, BBC 2013
The thing about these insight moments is that they are fleeting, elusive and really hard to study. ibid.
This aspect of creative insight seems to happen in the right hemisphere. ibid.
A burst of gamma waves – and this is what you experience as a moment of insight. ibid.
Mind wandering has a long history in mind creativity. ibid.
Slowly I saw him slip into a coma … I knew he was probably going to die … Once the swelling had gone down the catastrophic effect of the stroke was plain to see. Horizon: My Amazing Brain, wife, BBC 2018
It looked like he’d lost half his brain. ibid.
He was having huge problems with understanding concepts such as the shape and colour. ibid.
Richard was becoming reconnected to himself. ibid.