The Secret Lives of the Brain

If the conscious mind - the part you consider you - accounts for only a fraction of the brain’s function, then what is all the rest doing? This is the question that David Eagleman has spent years researching and which he will answer in this state-of-the-science talk. Our behavior, thoughts, and experiences are inseparably linked to a vast, wet, chemical/electrical network called the nervous system. The machinery is utterly alien to us, and yet, somehow, it is us. In this talk, Eagleman will take us into the depths of the subconscious to answer some of our deepest mysteries. Why does the conscious mind know so little about itself? What do Ulysses and the subprime mortgage meltdown have in common? Why is it so difficult to keep a secret? Eagleman charts new terrain in neuroscience and helps us understand how our perceptions of ourselves and our world result from the hidden workings of the most wondrous thing we have ever discovered: the human brain.

Speaker:  David Eagleman is a neuroscientist, an international bestselling author, a Guggenheim Fellow, and the writer and presenter of The Brain, an Emmy-nominated television series on PBS and the BBC.