The brain is the organ of evolution. Millions of years of struggle for survival have sculpted our behaviour around the twin purposes of propagating our genes and eliminating our competitors. In its complexity the human brain stands at the topmost pinnacle of biological development. In its deep core our personalities are embedded. The brain can neither see nor hear objective reality. Indifferent to the static, its aim is to detect change and to change with it. I will talk about how its structure embodies and fulfils these roles.

But, floating effortlessly over all, is that consciousness, that motivation we call the soul, dimly if at all aware of these things, and if it is, unmoved by them. Evidence, logic, and the science of the Enlightenment have given us mastery of our environment, but not of ourselves. Emotion, not logic or evidence, drives us. What we believe is more important to us that what we know. The theory of evolution tells us the story of how we have got here, but is it a guide to where we are going? The human brain has written our long history. Today it writes the history of all life on our planet. In it our future is written. We do well to try to understand.

Geoffrey Raisman, FRS, is Professor of Neural Regeneration at University College London Director of the Spinal Repair Unit at the Institute of Neurology, Queen Square. Son of a struggling family of immigrant tailors in Leeds he has a medical degree from Oxford, studied at Harvard, and was for many years Head of the Division of Neurobiology at the Medical Research Council’s National Institute for Medical Research, Mill Hill, London. His research provided one of the first indications that the brain can form new connections after injury, and recently led to his discovery that an adult stem population in the olfactory system may provide the first method for repair of incurable injuries of the spinal cord, stroke and blindness.

Registration required:

Yes

Free:

No