The Inner Workings of the Mind

You did it last night, and you will do it again tonight. And you're not alone, because every organism with a brain needs to do it: sleep. For something so critical to our well-being, it's remarkable that we don't understand why we need sleep. What our brain is doing during sleep hints at what many neuroscientists believe to be a fundamental role of sleep. This talk will cover the critical role of sleep in consolidating memories by looking at brain activity during sleep. How are memories revisited while sleeping, and do our memories depend on what we "dream" about?

Our internal clocks control our biology so that critical events occur at the best time of day. Body temperature and blood pressure fall at night, as the desire to sleep increases. And our livers turn on the enzymes necessary to break down alcohol in the early evening, leading to a longer and less drunken social life. Things go slightly "wrong" when we fly away on holiday, and our clocks are now incorrectly set to local time (jet-lag), a possible factor leading to increased English drunken behaviour and sun burn!

There is a widespread view that there are certain people whose brains are different from ours, and who due to that are capable of acts of evil the rest of us would never contemplate. Drawing on his experience at Wormwood Scrubs Prison, Dan Reisel will question this myth in the light of striking recent neuroscientific findings.