THE Christmas lectures from the Royal Institution have been popular since their inauguration by Michael Faraday 165 years ago in London. This year Susan Greenfield (left) takes her listeners on a journey to the centres of the brain. Her lectures will be broadcast from Wednesday, 28 December on BBC2 for five days.
Originally a classics student, Greenfield studied pyschology before taking a doctorate in neurochemistry. She now researches Parkinson鈥檚 Disease at the University of Oxford. The first woman to present the Christmas lectures, she will begin with 鈥淭he Electric Ape鈥�, an examination of the brain鈥檚 structure, before considering how to study the brain, whether the brain is a computer or a chemical factory, and how the brain develops from the 25th day after conception into adult life. Her final lecture discusses what makes us human: is memory the key to consciousness and personality?
