The Brain with Dr. David Eagleman

- Season 1

(2015)

Dr. Eagleman takes viewers on an extraordinary journey that explores how the brain, locked in silence and darkness without direct access to the world, conjures up the rich and beautiful world we all take for granted. "What is Reality?" begins with the astonishing fact that this technicolour multi-sensory experience we are having is a convincing illusion conjured up for us by our brains. In the outside world there is no colour, no sound, no smell. These are all constructions of the brain. Instead, there is electromagnetic radiation, air compression waves, and aromatic ...

Episode two, "What Makes Me?", explores the question of how the brain gives rise to our thoughts, emotions, our memories and personality. Philosophers and great thinkers have for millennia pondered the question of how physical stuff can give rise to mental processes. Last century, the new field of neuroscience joined the discussion, and Dr. David Eagleman explains that to a neuroscientist, the answers to such questions lie in a deep understanding of the brain. The process of becoming who you are begins at birth. The human brain starts life remarkably unfinished, which...

A scientific look into the control aspect of the brain/mind. Does free will exist? Are we entirely the products of our genes and our environment. Does our unconscious mind make most of our decisions? What does our conscious awareness do, what is it for? Take a deeper look at these questions and others, in a quest to better understand the human brain.

The human brain is the most complex object we've discovered in the universe, and every day much of its neural circuitry is taken up with the tens of thousands of decisions we need to make. "How Do I Decide?" is a journey through the unseen world of decisions, and how they get made. We start with a simple one: choosing a flavour of frozen yoghurt, and learn that every decision we make is born of a "winner takes all" competition between rival neural networks. As David ponders the choice before him - mint verses lemon - inside his brain, two rival networks are fighting ...

In "Why Do I Need You?" Dr. David Eagleman explores how the human brain relies on other brains to thrive and survive. This neural interdependence begins at birth. Dr. Eagleman invites a group of babies to a puppet show to showcase their ability to discern who is trustworthy, and who isn't. Brain scans reveal that when we see someone in pain, we feel it too. Circuits within the brain's pain matrix light up in both cases. And this is the basis of empathy. Our social brain draws us together into groups. In groups humans have accomplished great things - from football ...

In "Who Will We Be?" Dr. Eagleman journeys into the future, and asks what's next for the human brain, and for our species. Mother nature has evolved a brain that is able to rewire itself according to its environment, which means that as technological advances continue apace, our technology is on a crash course with our biology. Dr. Eagleman describes ways in which we'll be able to plug new sensory inputs into our brains, to perceive more of physical reality than we currently do. For instance, although we now see in the visible spectrum new technologies could allow us ...