The Brain is Wider Than the Sky
Discussions on the brain with three of today's leading thinkers.
The Brain is Wider Than the Sky
— Emily Dickenson
That brain of mine is something more than merely mortal, as time will show.
— Ada Lovelace
Your Control Freak Left Brain
Iain McGilchrist is a former Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, an associate Fellow of Green Templeton College, Oxford, a Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, a Consultant Emeritus of the Bethlem and Maudsley Hospital, London, a former research Fellow in Neuroimaging at Johns Hopkins University Medical School, Baltimore.
He is committed to the idea that the mind and brain can be understood only by seeing them in the broadest possible context, that of the whole of our physical and spiritual existence, and of the wider human culture in which they arise – the culture which helps to mould, and in turn is moulded by, our minds and brains.
Your Brain Is Not For Thinking
Lisa Feldman Barrett, PhD, is among the top 0.1% most cited scientists in the world for her revolutionary research in psychology and neuroscience. She is a University Distinguished Professor of Psychology at Northeastern University. She also holds appointments at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, where she is Chief Science Officer for the Center for Law, Brain & Behavior.
In addition to the books Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain and How Emotions are Made, Dr. Barrett has published over 275 peer-reviewed, scientific papers appearing in Science, Nature Neuroscience, and other top journals in psychology and cognitive neuroscience, as well as six academic volumes published by Guilford Press.
You Are Not Your Brain
Marjorie Woollacott, Ph.D., is an Emeritus Professor of Human Physiology, and member of the Institute of Neuroscience, at the University of Oregon. She is Research Director for the International Association of Near-Death Studies (IANDS) and is President of the Academy for the Advancement of Postmaterialist Sciences (AAPS).
Woollacott has published more than 200 scientific articles and written or co-edited eight books. She is the co-author, with Dr. Anne Shumway-Cook of the textbook for health care professionals, titled: Motor Control: Translating Research into Clinical Practice.
I don't know if you did this on purpose, but Dr. Barrett embodies (pun intended, if you're familiar with Iain's work) the kind of one-sided analytic, linear mind set that Dr. McGilchrist has so eloquently described over the past 30 years. Her near incomprehension of what his research is about is almost a caricature of the kind of thinking he describes as endemic in the modern world.
On the other hand, Dr. Woollacott, as an initially physicalist neuroscientist whose mind began to open to "more things on heaven and earth that are dreamed of" in Dr. Barrett's rather barren philosophic world, is a wonderful embodiment (no pun intended) of the kind of integrative thinking that Dr. McGilchirst identifies as needed for the very survival of humanity.
Great combination of videos!!