The Life Scientific

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The Life Scientific: Hannah Critchlow on the connected brain

Hannah Critchlow on the connected brain

BBC Radio 4 - The Life Scientific, Hannah Critchlow on the connected brain

Neuroscientist Hannah Critchlow on connections within - and between - brains.

Professor Jim Al-Khalili meets neuroscientist Dr Hannah Critchlow to explore the idea that our character and behaviours are hard-wired into our brains before we’re even born.

With 86 billion nerve cells joined together in a network of 100 trillion connections, the human brain is the most complex system in the known universe. 

Dr. Hannah Critchlow is an internationally acclaimed neuroscientist who has spent her career demystifying and explaining the brain to audiences around the world. Through her writing, broadcasting and lectures to audiences – whether in schools, festivals or online – she has become one of the public faces of neuroscience.

She tells Professor Jim Al-Khalili that her desire to understand the  brain began when she spent a year after school as a nursing assistant in a psychiatric hospital. The experience of working with young patients - many the same age as her - made her ask what it is within each individual brain which determines people’s very different life trajectories. 

In her books she’s explored the idea that much of our character and behaviour is hard-wired into us before we’re even born. And most recently she’s considered collective intelligence, asking how we can bring all our individual brains together and harness their power in one ‘super brain’.

And we get to hear Jim’s own mind at work as Hannah attaches electrodes to his head and turns his brain waves into sound.

Producer: Jeremy Grange

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Professor Jim Al-Khalili talks to leading scientists about their life and work.

Professor Jim Al-Khalili talks to leading scientists about their life and work, finding out what inspires them and asking what their discoveries might do for us in the future.

Professor Jim Al-Khalili talks to leading scientists about their life and work, finding out what inspires and motivates them and asking what their discoveries might do for us in the future

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