Gresham College provides outstanding educational talks and videos for the public free of charge. There are over 2,500 videos available on our website. Your support will help us to encourage people's love of learning for many years to come.
A good night's sleep is anything but quiet: a myriad of processes occupy our brains, crucial for every aspect of our waking lives. Our increased understanding of the neuroscience of sleep – that sleep may not affect the brain in its entirety – provides a window into the human experiences of sleep deprivation, lucid dreaming, spiritual visitations and a range of clinical sleep disorders, such as insomnia, dream enactment and sleep paralysis.
Psychosis is a mental state where people experience a 'different' world. If, as clinical psychiatry and neuroscience suggests, it is our 'default mental state' why isn't everyone psychotic? Psychosis does not arise de novo; external sensory input and cognition actively inhibit its expression. It is important to understand: how thin the boundary is between sanity and madness and what leads from one to the other; and to appreciate the frailty of rational thought.
Clinical practice depends on the acquisition and analysis of evidence - detailed information from each patient’s clinical history, laboratory tests, imaging scans and biopsies. Yet data on its own is not enough, and must always be interpreted in the context of each unique person.
In this talk, Dr Wilkins will discuss the astrophysical origins of the chemical elements, almost all of which have an origin ranging from the big bang, to exploding white dwarfs, the collapse of massive stars, and the merger of ultra-compact objects, neutron stars.
The origin of life is one of the biggest questions in science, but until recently it was, experimentally, a question in chemistry. Now, gene sequences and a better understanding of cell growth under extreme conditions are giving insights from biology.
Professor Fletcher proposes that it can be understood in terms of the normal functioning of the mind, which seeks to construct a working model of reality even though it has very little direct contact with that reality.
This talk shows that the incorporation of a simple salt can lead to a flexible plastic with mechanical properties similar to oil derived plastics. Most importantly these plastics are recyclable and ultimately compostable.
Control measures including vaccination have reduced the risk of some, but not all, of these very serious infections. This lecture will cover how infections get into the brain, their effect and how we can prevent and treat them.