The Reith lectures 2003: The Emerging Mind. BBC Radio 4, Wednesday 2 to 30 April at 8 pm (repeated Saturdays at 10 15 pm). www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/reith2003/. Rating: ★★★★
On first impression, the Reith lectures may seem somewhat old school in concept. They were inaugurated in 1948 to bring cutting edge intellectual thought and debate to the masses. Surely, in these times of multimedia and information overload and “dumbing down” of the main media channels, the days when we might be expected to tune into such worthy disputations have long gone. What can be said about this particular radio series that will urge you to break through your midweek fatigue and focus those neurons for one more hour?
Quite simply, this year's lecturer—Professor V S Ramachandran, director of the centre for brain and cognition at the University of California—is the genuine article. He is a neuroscientist with a mellifluous gift of clarity, imagination, and wit that lesser medical media stars might ransom their daughters for. He has a unique and inspirational vision. And he will wake you up and dare you to think.
Ramachandran's theme in these five, weekly lectures is that having gone through the Copernican, the Darwinian, and the Freudian revolutions, we are now poised for “the greatest revolution of all—understanding the human brain.” His strategy is to explore and to explain various discrete neurological syndromes that reveal new insights into how the normal brain works. He harnesses these discoveries (many of which are his own) to the increasingly prominent evolutionary perspective and lifts the revealed issues to a fascinating level, for consequent debate.
So, in a rush of detail that is surprisingly clear and (dare I say it) entertaining, the professor steers us through clinical accounts of prosopagnosia, Capgras syndrome, and synaesthesia, while stopping off to carefully explain the relevant neuroanatomy on the way. What marks out this series of programmes from so many other attempts to “bring science into the living room” (as Lord Winston has put it) is what Ramachandran then does with his account. He leads the listener down his personal journey of inquiry and discovery, yoking the disparate elements of neuropathology to his invented concept of neuroaesthetics—a new science of art. In addition he tackles huge imponderables such as “how and why did language develop?” and takes us with him, over the (scientific) top. I was staggered by Ramachandran's ability to take relative lay people on an audio journey through the mysteries of neuropathology, which had the resultant effect of making us feel like fellow researchers and original, insightful thinkers. Reithianism lives, I dared to muse.
As well as the talks themselves, the programmes include stimulating debate afterwards, with varied questions from the floor, deft facilitation by broadcaster Sue Lawley, and charmingly blunt verbal dissection by Ramachandran.
The first four talks have already been broadcast, but can be heard again on the website (and downloaded as transcripts).