The Anatomy of a High. When someone snorts or smokes cocaine, which is composed of small crystalline alkaloid molecules, the drug enters the bloodstream and from there eventually crosses into the heart, brain, and other organs.
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Nervous System, the body’s communication network. The discovery of the nervous system is a fascinating story which begins in ancient Greece and is still going on today.
Jim Al-Khalili meets neuroscientist Barbara Sahakian. Neurotransmitters are chemicals in the brain which effect our memory and understanding, and neuropharmacology is the study of drugs which can be used in conditions like Alzheimer's disease or depression. But can new treatments improve the performance of surgeons or pilots and could they even be used to make us more entrepreneurial?
Colin Blakemore is a neuroscientist who specialises in vision and the development of the brain, he pioneered the idea that the brain has the ability to change even in adulthood. But he also fought a 13 year battle with animal rights campaigners.
Good Stuff
The Human Connectome Project Mapping the human brain is one of the great scientific challenges of the 21st century. The Human Connectome Project (HCP) is tackling a key aspect of this challenge by elucidating the neural pathways that underlie brain function and behavior.