Who's in Charge Here Anyway? Royal Institution Christmas Lectures

Watch this. I've been practising at least two months.

Why won't my brain let me juggle?

APPLAUSE

Welcome to the 2011 Royal Institution Christmas lectures.

I'm Bruce Hood. I'm a scientist, not a juggler, as you've just seen.

In tonight's lecture we're going to look at how the brain works.

I wasn't born to juggle and it is hard

because it requires coordination, and if you lose concentration everything falls apart.

But it is a skill you can acquire. All of us have the potential to gain new skills like juggling,

or improve on the ones that we have.

This is because we have brains that are flexible, that are adaptive.

Brains that can learn.

In tonight's lecture, we're going to look at how the brain learns

because learning is what makes us intelligent.

As human beings, much of who we are is how we learn.

All the memories, all the actions, all the experiences shape us.

There's a lot of stuff out there to learn and we have to make choices.

So how does our brain make those decisions?

Who's in charge here anyway?

We're going to start by investigating a key aspect of this - our memory.

Ladies and gentlemen, give a very warm welcome

to someone who has one of the world's best memories.

He has been world memory champion eight times. Dominic O'Brien!

APPLAUSE

Dominic, we gave out a pack of 52 cards to the children before the lecture started.

We got them to write their name and birthday on that card.

-Then we gave the same cards to you to memorise.

-Yes.

-So do you think you've been able to do that?

-Well, in the time I had,

there was a lot of information there.

Three lots of sequences and dates

so it's all jumbled up in my head but I think I've got a hold of it.

OK, let's put you to the test.

I am going to blindfold you, just so you don't recognise the children.

-Would you mind taking the blindfold, and pop that on.

-All right.

When that's on, I'm going to get the children who had the playing cards earlier to stand up.

So the children that had the playing cards, stand up, please.

Oh, wow, OK. So I'm just going to select one at random. How about you?

-Just hold up your card, say what the card is.

-Nine of hearts.

-The nine of hearts, Dominic. The nine of hearts.

-The nine of hearts.

-Is your name...Iona?

-Yes.

-And is your birthday the 30th... of September?

-Yes.

-Is that correct?

-Yes.

-OK, let's try another.

Hold up your card.

-Eight of clubs.

-Eight of clubs.

-Oh, we're doing it that way round.

-OK. Eight of clubs. Is your name Nick?

-Yes.

And your birthday, I think, is in December, is that right?

-Is it the 6th December?

-Yes.

-OK.

-Good, well done.

-Sir, with the white T-shirt. What's your card?

-The three of clubs.

-OK.

-The three of clubs, let's start with your birthday.

-I think you were born in J... January.

-Yes.

The 19th January, and your name is Charlie.

-Yes.

-Is that right? Round of applause.

APPLAUSE

OK, congratulations. That's amazing. We're going to have to find out how you do that.

Would you mind coming back later on and explaining?

I'll reveal some of the secrets later.

A round of applause for Dominic!

APPLAUSE

Please take a seat, everyone. So, does Dominic have a special brain?

Is he from outer space? No, he has a normal brain.

And you all have the potential to train your brain to be as good, to acquire new information.

But how do you go about this? Well, it's all to do with learning.

Learning takes place whenever we remember experiences from the past.

Each time you encounter an experience,

this creates a pattern of electrical activity in your brain.

Memories are patterns of electrical activity in the connections between the brain cells, called the neurons.

When you repeat experiences, you're repeating the patterns of firing until it becomes familiar.

Your brain is simply recognising similar events.

This explains why you often don't notice things that you've encountered many times

because your brain has got it well encoded and got used to it.

But it also explains why you suddenly notice something that you didn't expect.

LOUD BANG

SURPRISED SHRIEKS

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

So your brain was alerted to this new experience.

Warning bells were set off, telling you to pay special attention

to deal with what could be a potential problem.

However, if I do it again - shall I?

Yes? Ready?

LOUD BANG

So this time you expected it and were less bothered.

Eventually, if I kept pressing it, you wouldn't respond at all.

This is because you've learnt it. It's a form of learning called habituation.

Your brain has become familiar with the event and you anticipate it.

Even animals with very simple brains can learn through habituation

and we know this learning is due to changing connections in the brain.

But you don't have to be aware. Habituation is a type of learning that's unconscious,

you don't have to think about it.

The brain is simply processing

and storing experiences without you even realising it.

But what's remarkable is that this kind of unconscious learning

is at the very heart of one of our most sophisticated

and unique abilities as a species, our ability to learn language.

If you think about it, we don't teach our babies to speak at first,

and yet most babies learn their first words by their first birthdays.

In fact, any baby has the potential to learn any language

wherever it is raised in the world.

Is the baby really trying to learn the language?

I don't think so. I think their brains are programmed

to rapidly encode the languages they hear, but this ability deteriorates as you get older.

So I'm going to test this audience.

Let's test how good you are at telling the difference between languages you may have never heard.

First of all, listen to the sounds from the English language. This is me speaking.

See if they're the same or different.

Ba. Da.

Are they the same? Hands up if you think they're the same.

Hands up if you think they're different.

OK, let's try these next two.

TWO SIMILAR SOUNDS

Are they the same?

Or are they different?

Now actually, do we have any Hindi speakers here?

-Are they the same or different?

-Different.

-Your name is?

-Preeta.

-Preesal.

-Preeta.

-Preeta. What's the first word?

SHE SAYS HINDI WORD

Can you say it, we can't hear it very well?

SHE SAYS HINDI WORD

And the second one is...

And what do they mean?

-The first one means till tomorrow.

-Till tomorrow.

-Yeah, and the second one doesn't mean anything.

It doesn't mean anything at all? It's not even a word?

Can we hear it one more time?

HINDI WORDS

So the first sound means till, as in till tomorrow, and the second word is just nonsense.

But to us, we can't hear the difference. It's quite remarkable.

Unless you heard Hindi as a baby, you wouldn't know it.

This ability to encode information and early experiences is called plasticity, brain plasticity,

which comes from the Greek "to be moulded".

So when you're born,

you have almost all the neurons you'll ever have in your brain.

There's about 100 billion of them, but they're not connected up yet.

So let me show you with a diagram, a model of my brain.

So this is a picture of me as a baby. Let's see if I can get it.

-AUDIENCE: Ahhh!

-Yes.

It's my christening dress. As you can see, I'm very happy(!)

It is actually me. Here's a model of my brain.

Each one of these little nodes here, these are the neurons I was telling you about, the brain cells.

Between the neurons are the connections, the dendrites,

which are the ways the neurons talk to each other.

When you're born as a newborn, there's very few connections.

Now this is me at six months. Now don't laugh.

LAUGHTER

I knew that was coming! OK, now here's the brain model of my brain.

Again, we have these same neurons,

but there's actually many more connections now.

It's as if the neurons are wiring themselves up. The brain is sending out the communications

telling the brain cells to talk to each other.

In fact, there's almost the same number of brain cells.

You have almost all the brain cells you'll ever have, as a baby.

Here's me as a three-year-old.

There's something about me not wearing clothes, OK? I get it. It was hot, it was!

Now look at the brain mould here.

Again, we have the same number of brain cells,

but the connections are much thicker because the brain cells are communicating.

As they communicate, these connections become thicker.

This connection, this thickening reflects the experience

as the brain is moulding itself to the world around it.

But whether it actually forms connections or not depends on experience.

If you never experience events, the connections never come.

This is because you lose them.

Effectively... The brain, if it doesn't get the experience,

prunes back those connections to make it more efficient.

In this way, the brain is moulding itself

and becoming much more tuned into the environment.

Many aspects of pruning happen early in childhood,

which is one of the reasons why brains are better when you're younger

for learning new skills than older brains.

This partly explains the saying, "It's hard to teach an old dog new tricks".

When it comes to neural connections, the brain needs to keep them active or they wither away.

In other words, you have to use them or you lose them.

Someone mentioned earlier the urban myth that you only use 10% of your brain.

It can't possibly be true because, if you weren't using those parts of your brain, they would wither away.

And without 90% of your brain, you'd be in a lot of trouble.

When early connections are formed, they can lead to long-term consequences.

What happens when I play this...?

GREENSLEEVES PLAYS

Anybody else fancy an ice cream?

Well to me, when I hear that, I think about ice cream

and my mouth starts to water and salivate.

That's because, when I was a child, I used to buy ice creams from a van,

they used to play those sorts of jingles.

So just the sound of that stays with me,

and when I'm an adult now my mouth starts to water.

Because I'm anticipating the ice cream I'm about to have.

It's a classic Pavlovian response, named after the famous Russian scientist, Ivan Pavlov.

Ivan Pavlov was working on the digestion system of dogs

when he discovered that if you flashed a light or rang a bell

at the same time you delivered the food, the dogs would associate

the light to the food and begin to salivate, even though there was no food there.

Pavlov proved that sights and sounds that don't normally signal food can be learned by repeated association

to trigger our stomachs and mouths and make our mouths water.

So the brain has learnt by associating different neural patterns,

one thing should lead to another.

This explains why you feel hungry when you're in the playground and you hear the dinner bell ringing.

Salivating is an automatic behaviour.

However, many behaviours, especially those in higher animals, aren't automatic.

They can be shaped through training, so let's meet one of Britain's best examples of training.

Ladies and gentlemen, a big round of applause for Morgan and Venetia.

APPLAUSE

-Good boy. Wait.

-So this is Morgan.

-Yes.

-Let's see what Morgan can really do.

-Right.

Round.

Round.

Ready? Good.

Good boy.

Weave.

Weave.

Quick. Weave.

Wiggle.

Wiggle.

Wiggle. Good.

Walk. Come. Round. Middle.

APPLAUSE

-Very good.

-Thank you.

-So everyone would like to know,

-what kind of breed is Morgan?

-He's a border collie.

-And how old is he?

-Three-and-a-half.

-Right, and you've trained him to dance, I take it?

-Yes, from a puppy.

-How do you do that?

I use a clicker, and from eight weeks old we just teach him

the basics of sit, give a paw, and any other commands.

-Something very simple.

-So when he hears the click, what do you do?

While he's actually doing the process... Twist. CLICK

You've got to do it while they're in the middle of the process

rather than wait until the end. Twirly. Good boy.

So Morgan has learned to associate the sound with the reward,

and you can use this to shape his behaviour?

Yes, yes, and once they've learned from the clicker, I use my voice,

and I don't need to use the clicker after that.

-He gets to know the commands.

-That's fascinating.

Can we give a big round of applause?

APPLAUSE

Well, that's one dog that can learn new tricks.

Morgan learnt his amazing skills through training.

I mean, after all, he'd never have taught himself to dance on his own.

He's learnt this because Venetia has trained him with a clicker and association.

Humans can also be trained, but as a social animal there's also other things that motivate our learning,

such as rewards, seeking praise from other people.

In fact, as humans, our behaviour is often motivated by our own personal goals.

So the skills and information are stored as memories in our brain.

Initially the first stage of storage is in the short-term memory.

It's a sort of temporary holding bay, but there's a limit

to how much information you can hold and how long you can hold it for.

So let's test someone's short-term memory.

Who wants to be a volunteer in a memory test?

I think we're going to go for the gentleman in the orange.

Would you like to come on down?

APPLAUSE

-So what's your name, sir?

-I'm Tom.

-And how old are you, Tom?

-I'm 11.

-OK, Tom. Would you like to take a seat?

Because we're going to test your memory.

We're going to show you a lot of items and I want you to remember as many as possible,

and I will be assisted by Talia, who will keep track of all the items you've remembered.

After you've seen them, I will ask you to recall as many as possible.

-Do you think you're up to that?

-I'll try.

-Try your best. Are you ready?

-Yep.

-OK, I'll stand back and let's start the game.

A pound coin.

A diamond lattice.

A skull.

A cuddly toy.

A hose.

A pair of die.

A broom.

A hat.

A ball.

A red hat.

A yellow bucket.

A garden blaster thing.

A kettle.

A camcorder.

A truck.

A mirror.

Juggling balls.

An alarm clock.

The world.

A tyre.

A member of the audience!

OK, well done.

I'm going to test your memory. OK, quiet everyone

because this will be very hard. Are you ready?

In 30 seconds, can you remember as many items as possible.

-OK.

-Ready?

-Go.

-A tie. A skull.

A broom. Erm, a coin.

-There was a member of the audience.

-Yes.

There was a kind of atom thing at the beginning.

Atom thing at the beginning.

Diamond lattice. 15 seconds.

-There was a blower thing.

-Blower thing. The odd thing.

There was a...

-It's really hard.

-It's hard.

Oh, well done! Didn't he do well?

APPLAUSE

I've been dying to say that!

Will you return to your seat?

OK, so let's see how Tom did.

OK, let's turn it around.

Now, this is very interesting.

This is very typical for this kind of test. What Tom remembered was everything at the beginning

because he'd just begun the test.

He also remembered the item at the end, partly because it was funny,

but also because it was the last item in the list.

He forgot many things in the middle. The odd thing he remembered was a leaf blower,

which is an odd thing to see.

This reflects the fact that you tend to remember things right at the beginning and at the end,

and odd things which are novel stand out like a sore thumb.

So, other items like a cuddly toy, when we used to watch this programme,

was always the thing people remembered. It's a strange thing to have.

This is a very interesting learning lesson because,

if you, for example, want to be remembered and you're taking part in an audition

or you're trying to get a job,

it's good to be at the beginning of the list or the end

because we remember the people who start off the interview, and at the end.

If you can't be at the beginning or the end, well just be outstanding because...

-Hey! Stop! Thief!

-What the...?! Oh I don't know, another problem tonight!

Did anyone see that? How many of you saw that? Hands up if you saw that.

OK, clearly we have some very dodgy characters around the Royal Institution Christmas lecture.

I need to get on with the lecture. Where was I? Oh yes, memory.

Memory of course can be easily distracted

and it's not that good, quite poor.

So, if our short-term memory is so poor and easily disrupted,

how did our memory expert at the beginning of the lecture succeed in remembering all those cards?

I mean, that's really quite remarkable.

Well, the secret to his success is learning through organisation.

Try this out. How many of you can remember this number...?

191 4191.

Hands up if you think you've got that. Let's test you out.

I'm going to try you.

-191 4191.

-OK, good. What about if I give you a second number?

How about 819 391 945?

819 315...?

Anyone help him out?

391 945.

So the first one, what was the first number, by the way?

-I've completely forgotten!

-You see!

This demonstrates how short-term memory is very limited,

and when you have to remember items that are very similar

you get confused and easily forget them.

One way to improve that is to chunk them together

so if we look up here, these are the numbers I was reading to you.

1914191819391945.

Now, can anyone see some patterns?

Let's just chunk them into smaller groups.

There we've got 1914 1918 1939 1945.

Is there any historians in the audience? What are those numbers?

What do they stand for?

-Shout it out.

-AUDIENCE: The World Wars.

That's right, they just happen to be the start and the end of the World Wars.

Now, of course, not all numbers just happen to fall into place as being memorable,

but you can organise information into more meaningful patterns to make them easier to remember.

If they don't readily fall into a more memorable pattern,

you can learn them to associate them with a pattern that's easier. This technique is called mnemonics.

I've got one... Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain.

Does anybody know what that is? Sir? The colours of the rainbow.

-Has anyone got a mnemonic? Yes? With the hat.

-Never Eat Shredded Wheat.

-Never Eat Shredded Wheat.

-What does Never Eat Shredded Wheat mean?

-North East South West.

So as you can see, if you organise difficult lists into more memorable phrases,

they're much easier to record, or recall.

That's because you can remember them much easier.

This technique, even the word "mnemonics" is difficult to spell,

but I've got a sentence that makes it easier.

For example, if I use "my new experience memorising odd names is clearly selective",

then you have how to spell the word mnemonics.

So let's get back our memory expert, Dominic,

to find out what he's been doing to make such an incredible memory of his.

Welcome back, Dominic.

APPLAUSE

You've been listening to explanations about improving memory and how we can organise memory.

-What's the secret of your amazing memory?

-Exactly as you've been explaining.

-I use mnemonics myself, Dominic's mnemonics.

-Dominic's mnemonics!

So I turn difficult information like playing cards, names, dates

into colourful images and I also use journeys, sequences,

to remember the order of whatever it is I'm trying to remember.

For example, I use a golf course to remember all these names.

I imagine them at each tee along the golf course.

-So let's say we've got the jack of clubs.

-Yes.

And I've got to remember Kate is connected with this and her birthday is 20th October.

So what I think about is an old girlfriend of mine called Kate, many years ago,

and she's skiing on the first tee. Why is she skiing?

Because I associate the jack of clubs with an old friend of mine who used to be a ski instructor.

That's the first two bits of information.

To remember the date, the 20th, I think of Barack Obama

because the second letter of the alphabet is B and zero is 0 - BO.

Not body odour, that's Barack Obama.

And to remember October, I imagine him wrestling with an octopus.

You've got to put it all together. It requires a bit of imagination and put it together

but I had to do that 52 times.

And that takes a lot of practise and a lot of organisation.

Ladies and gentlemen, another big round of applause for Dominic.

Thank you.

APPLAUSE

When you organise your memory like this, you're making it work for you,

which is why we sometimes call it a working memory.

By working our memory, we can prepare information for storage into long-term memory.

This is really part of a system in this part of the brain that we call the hippocampus.

I'm just going to take this brain apart to show you because it is inside the structure here.

There we go. This is one hemisphere.

This is the front part of the brain,

and inside is all these internal structures.

Let me just pop off the front of my brain here.

This is the structure we're really interested in. Let's get this bit out.

This is called the hippocampus.

It's shaped a little bit like a seahorse, which is why it's called hippocampus,

because that comes from the Greek word for seahorse.

It's the hippocampus we think, well we know,

is really where your long-term memories are stored.

I'm not sure exactly how all the memories get encoded

but we know this structure must be used because, for example,

if you damage it you lose your long-term memories, and taxi drivers in London, for example,

are very proud of their hippocampi, because there are two of them,

because taxi drivers have enlarged hippocampi.

Not only are they larger, but they're more active.

We think this must be due to the fact that

when they have to memorise the whole of the streets of London,

you know, the Knowledge, they're encoding this information.

What's remarkable is the hippocampus or the hippocampi are one of the few structures in the brain

where you can actually grow new brain cells.

When you damage this area, you lose your memories.

The consequences of damaging your long-term memory can be quite devastating.

I'm sure many of you may have some relatives who are starting to lose their memory

and it can be a very devastating type of experience,

because when you lose your memory you effectively lose your identity.

Because who we are is really a sum of our memories.

So let's consider our own memories.

You guys, what about your autobiographical memories?

What's the first thing you can remember? Hands up if you can remember being six years of age.

Pretty good. Five?

Keep them up. Four?

Three?

Two?

One?

We've got one person with a memory less than one. Do you remember what that was, by any chance?

It was my first birthday and I had a party,

and it was like my friends from when I was...

It was your first birthday and you remember the party, is that right?

-Yes.

-Most of you put your hands down when I said 2 to 3 years of age.

Why is it that very few of us can remember anything before our second or third birthday?

It's not because babies don't have memories. We know they can learn

so it can't be simply the fact they haven't got memory.

It might be related to the fact the brain isn't very mature in a very young baby,

but I think a more interesting possibility is that very young babies

don't fully understand the world yet so it is difficult for them

to organise their memories, their information, into useful memories.

Because organisation is really important when it comes to storing these things.

SIREN WAILS

Hold on a second.

Oh, I've just heard,

the police have apprehended a suspect in the robbery of the soft toy.

Do you remember the robbery we had just a moment ago?

Hands up if you saw that robbery.

Good, and you all got a good luck at the witness...

Er, the suspect? OK. Yes, they're coming through now. So you think you can identify the suspect?

Hands up if you think you can. That's almost all of you.

Good, all right, let's test you out because the police need to do a line-up

and you're going to have to pick out who the suspect is. OK? Bring them in, Sergeant.

You 'orrible lot, get in here now!

Form an orderly line, quick as you can. Thank you!

All present and correct, sir.

-Over to you, Professor.

-Thank you very much, Sergeant.

So, these are the suspects who are in the line-up.

One of them committed the crime,

so let's see if you can identify the criminal.

I'm going to ask each suspect to step forward and then I want a show of hands if you think it's them.

Will subject A step forward? Miss Behaving.

How many of you think it is Miss Behaving?

OK. Step back, please. Subject B, Miss Demeanour.

Hmm. That's a pretty good show of hands. Subject C, Miss Placed.

Not so many. Subject D. Miss Understood.

Quite a few for Miss Understood. And subject E, Miss Take.

So the majority of you thought it was B.

That's very interesting. Not everyone agreed, but let's see if you were right.

Will the real culprit step forward, please?

It was subject A!

Big round of applause for those who got subject A.

-Take him away!

-All right, you, you're nicked!

The rest of you, sorry for the inconvenience. Be on your way.

Get out of here.

It was a set-up!

Even though you got a good look at the thief

and you thought you'd recognise them, our memory can be very poor.

Studies show eyewitness testimonies are notoriously unreliable and this is quite important

because in some countries, they use this technique to put people into prison,

so we really have to question this as a major legal issue.

So, memory's not like a photograph.

It's not a picture in your mind that you can review -

memories are much more fluid.

And that was a test of face recognition, but I want to test

you all, and those of you at home, with a different type of test -

I want to test your memory for words.

Again, everyone will be involved.

I'm going to read out a list of words and I want you to try

and concentrate and see if you can remember the list, OK?

Simple enough? Let's start.

Thorn.

Thimble.

Point.

Pin.

Eye.

Sharp.

Injection.

Cloth.

Haystack.

Sewing.

Syringe.

Knitting. Hurt.

Thread.

Now let's test your memory.

Hands up if you think I said the word thread.

Very good. Hands up if I said the word banana.

How about the word needle?

Are you sure about the word needle? Hands up if you're sure I said needle.

Well, you're in for a surprise.

Here are the actual words I said,

and nowhere on this list is the word needle.

And yet, you're convinced that I said the word needle.

I implanted a false memory, because the word needle was triggered

by all these other words which are related to the word needle.

So, in your brain, this association with the word needle was stimulated.

So, what I did was I implanted a false memory.

Every time you have to remember something, you have to reconstruct it,

build it back from the fragments of information stored in the neural networks of your brain.

We've shown that the brain can have false memories,

which raises the original question we asked at the beginning of the lecture,

because who's in control anyway?

If your own memories can be wrong and you don't even realise it,

and the memories are the key to your identity, well...who are you?

That's a big question and philosophers have been thinking about this for a long time,

but we know that the answer must lie with the brain.

We know this because people can be changed

when their brains get damaged.

Back in 1838...

TRAIN WHISTLES

..Phineas Gage was working on a railroad as an engineer

and was blasting the rocks with gunpowder to clear the path

for the rail track when a colleague distracted him and he accidentally...

..put the rod onto gunpowder and it shot the rod straight through

his skull and out the top and landed 25 metres away.

Now, remarkably, Phineas survived.

Now, according to the records,

he'd lost the front part of his brain.

Before the accident, he'd been a mild-mannered man,

but afterwards his personality changed.

He swore more frequently, he became more irritable,

and he became emotionally unstable.

In short, Phineas Gage was no longer Phineas Gage.

The region that had been damaged was the frontal lobes

and his accident provided a clue to what the frontal lobes do

and how important they are to our personality and identity.

The frontal lobes are also responsible for flexible thinking and creativity

and regulating behaviours that coordinate our activities.

The frontal lobes are in effect delegating, prioritising jobs,

like a chief in your head office, but of course there's no-one in there.

It just feels as if someone is in there making decisions,

and that's because our brain generates a sense of our self,

the person in control, the YOU in your head.

You don't have to have a metal rod shot through your head

to see the effects of frontal lobe damage.

Frontal lobes can be impaired by disease and drugs,

and one of the most commonly used drugs is alcohol.

Who wants to try out the effects of alcohol?

That's the quickest response I've had for a long time!

I'm going to choose...sir, would you come down?

Let's get someone from this side. Any more volunteers?

Young lady, come on down.

Young lady, come this side. OK, let's find out who you are.

-I'm Flory.

-Flory, OK. And how old are you?

11.

11?

And you want to drink alcohol?

-LAUGHTER

-OK, and you are?

-Oliver.

-Oliver, and how old are you?

-13.

13... Ah, we have a bit of a problem, don't we?

We can't give you alcohol in this country.

-You were hoping for some, yes?

-LAUGHTER

Yes? Right, well, OK, we'll have to improvise.

Let's imagine... What I'll do, let me take you to Paris to a cafe, OK?

Join me in this cafe. If you come this side.

Flory, here. Oliver, here.

-IN FRENCH ACCENT:

-Now, I'll be your wine waiter.

And, sir,

I am...going to pour you some wine

and I want you to celebrate.

If I just pour the wine here.

Would sir like to try the wine, make sure it's tasty?

It's not wine, of course, it's apple juice, but let's go for it.

Is it good enough? Right, it's obviously good enough to drink.

Would you like to drink some as well? OK.

So that's very easy, isn't it? Now, let's imagine this is wine

and you've had a few more bottles, OK?

Let's see what the effects of alcohol could do to your coordination.

Would you like to pop on these goggles?

Sir? If I may, they're a little bit...

Are they tight enough for you? OK.

All right. Now, would you like to again have a glass of your wine?

LAUGHTER

OK, no, that's the bottle! OK, oh, all right!

Have a little drink again.

Maybe you'd like to say cheers and clink your glasses together? Oh, OK!

-LAUGHTER

-Oh, all right, OK.

You've both had a bit too much to drink. Well done, round of applause!

Let's see if we can give the viewers at home and the audience what

an impression of wearing these goggles is really like.

You see, it's distorting everything, isn't it?

And as you try to reach your glass,

you lose all your coordination.

The goggles are really producing a distortion of your vision.

Thank you very much, David.

It doesn't make you drunk, it just creates what it's like

to be drunk, as far as your vision's concerned.

But alcohol doesn't just affect vision, it affects your movement, your decision-making,

all of your coordination is disrupted by that.

And that's why drinking, of course, is very dangerous

if you're controlling a large machine like a car

because your coordination, and also your judgment, is impaired.

Now, we also know that frontal lobes are the last part

of your brain to mature and this explains why often very young

children can be very uncoordinated and very impulsive in many ways.

As teenagers, you're currently also experiencing some of the most

dramatic rewiring of your frontal lobes so your control systems aren't yet up to speed,

but don't worry, you guys are coming up to your prime.

When you get to my age, it's all downhill from here.

I'm afraid so. The frontal lobes are not just responsible for judgment and control,

but they also allow you to see into the future, or at least imagine what a future might be like.

So let's see if any of you can tell the future,

because I have a tale of terror to tell and I need a fortune teller.

LIGHTNING

And I want to take you to...

Zombie Island.

OK, so prepare to be amazed.

So we selected some volunteers earlier on and here they are.

Hello, guys, how are you doing?

-So, who's going to be my research assistant? Your name is?

-Liam.

-Liam, you're going to be Igor for tonight, OK?

-Yeah.

We have a zombie. Who are you?

-Louise.

-This is Louise, the zombie,

-and you're a typical child, aren't you?

-Yeah.

-What are you, typical child?

-Jessica.

Jessica will be our typical child. And you're a bar of chocolate.

-Who are you?

-Alice.

-Alice is our bar of chocolate.

Now, Igor, you're my trusty research assistant, aren't you?

I need you to transport all the bars of chocolate and the children

and zombies to my laboratory, which is over on Zombie Island there.

Let's take all the items from my laboratory and stand over there.

OK, you stand there. OK.

Now, what we have to do here,

this is a real task and a real problem

where Igor has to use his frontal lobes to figure out and solve the problem.

Because the problem is, Igor,

you can only carry one person at a time, or one zombie

or one bar of chocolate

over to my island.

So you must transport it on the raft and get it over to there.

The problem is, you can't leave children with chocolate

because children eat the chocolate

and you can't leave the zombie alone with the child

because what do zombies eat?

Brains!

OK, so, remember. Don't muck up.

Don't leave them together if they'll eat each other.

-You've got it?

-Yep.

OK, so let's see how Igor gets on. He's got to figure this problem out.

Who are you going to bring over first of all on the raft?

-The child.

-Let's see you do it, then.

Pop on the child, and we'll give you some help here.

Are you thinking the solution, are you working it out in your heads?

See if Igor's going to get it right.

Here we go.

OK. So that's the right solution,

because you left the zombie with the chocolate.

Now, Igor, what are you going to get for me next?

-The chocolate.

-Chocolate, OK.

You see how he's working it out?

He's thinking how to solve the problem.

THUNDER CRASHES

Very good.

Now, Igor.

You left something on the mainland.

I need the rest.

Can you go and get me my zombies?

Can I bring back the child?

OK. That seems a good idea.

OK. On you pop.

Safely down. Very good.

-Is he getting it right?

-Yes.

-Yep?

Very good. Come on, Igor.

What are you going to bring next?

-The zombie.

-The zombie?

THUNDER CRASHES

There we go. Well done, Igor.

Of course, all you need left is...

There we go. The child.

I think it's a solution there. Big round of applause. Well done.

APPLAUSE

Let's come back with zombie. There we go. OK.

We can let you go. Thank you.

So what they were doing there is using their frontal lobes,

because they had to anticipate the consequences of the actions.

If a person with frontal lobe damage was trying to solve Zombie Island,

they would muck up and probably leave the wrong combination

because they can't anticipate what's going to happen next.

It requires planning. Of course, planning becomes more difficult

when you do more than one thing at the same time,

especially if you're under time pressure.

You need to be able to focus your attention on the task at hand

because complicated tasks require coordination.

Now, this coordination enables us

to do more than one thing at the same time,

such as texting your friends or watching television.

So long as the different tasks do not compete

for the same neural parts of your brain, everything should be OK.

But what happens if they do?

Can I get four volunteers for the next one?

OK, let's get some people from the back here.

Uh, lady with the stripy top on the end there.

OK, down you come.

Uh, chap there on the end there. Down you come.

Let's choose someone from over here.

Uh, sir with the red top, down you come.

And let's get someone...

Lady there, with the heart on your sleeve. There we go.

Come on down. Well done. So, who are you?

APPLAUSE

Stand in front of each chair.

You stand there.

Let's find out who our guests are, first of all.

-Nick.

-Nick.

-Emma.

-Emma.

-Sam.

-Sam.

-Isabel.

Isabel. OK.

Why don't you all have a seat, please? Make yourself comfortable.

This is a very simple test of control of your frontal lobes.

I want you to just, with your left leg,

lift it up and rotate it clockwise.

You can try this at home, everyone.

Just rotate your legs clockwise.

In big circles.

Come on, let's see big circles.

Clockwise. There we go. You've got it all now? Very good.

Very easy. OK, now, stop.

Now, with your left hand,

I want you to draw the number six.

OK? That's quite easy, isn't it?

Now, look what happens when we put these things together.

Let's start off with your left leg,

clockwise.

Everyone can have a go.

Now, draw the letter six.

LAUGHTER

It looks like it's all falling to pieces, isn't it?

It's very, very hard.

Yeah? How are you finding it?

OK, very good. Round of applause for our guests.

Thank you very much, volunteers.

APPLAUSE

OK, we're going to make this work. This is called interference.

It's because different parts of the body, when you move them,

you're trying to coordinate them.

They're both trying to work with the same area

so moving your leg in one direction

interferes with moving your hands in the opposite direction.

You need your frontal lobes to be able to coordinate.

It's hard to coordinate those movements.

But hark! I think I hear a man who can.

MUSIC: HARMONICA, BANJO, DRUM

Hello, sir!

Hello!

-Big round of applause!

-APPLAUSE

Let me introduce Jake Rodriguez,

a one-man band. Jake, how long have you been playing this one-man band?

-I did my first one-man band when I was about 18.

-18?

-Yes.

-And how many instruments do you have now?

Erm... I've got two jingle bells...

-Two jingle bells.

-DRUM BANGS

That foot's attached to the bass pedal.

HORN TOOTS This one's attached to, uh, the...

the cymbals on the top and the tambourine.

So that's one, two, three, four...five.

Banjo, harmonica, couple of these.

Oh, it's about eight, nine, ten, round about that.

Horns and things.

Eight, nine or ten instruments? Obviously when you learnt them,

did you start with all of them, or did you pick them up one at a time?

Um, yes. Especially the horn,

took a lot of work, that one, to get that together.

And do you find, when you think about what you're doing,

does it get complicated? Do you just go for the rhythm? How do you do it?

-Well, it's quite instinctive to do a walking rhythm.

-Right.

-What's harder is to add a few more bits to it.

-Right.

So, if you get yourself in a bit of a pickle,

you've got to be playing at the same time and unpickling your head

-at the same time.

-I've got it.

-That's not the hardest thing.

So the automatic things, you don't have to think about, like walking,

-so that's easy.

-Yes.

-And things which need a lot of thought,

-they require more of your frontal lobes working, is that right?

-Yes.

Give a big round of applause to Jake Rodriguez.

APPLAUSE

MUSIC RESUMES

HORN HONKS

LAUGHTER

He wouldn't make a very good robber, would he?

Jake coordinated all these through practice.

He was using his frontal lobes.

Things which didn't need much thought, like walking,

he didn't have to really monitor or consciously control,

and all the other things, he had to really pay attention

to make them work together.

So when he gets really good at this, he doesn't have to think about it.

Some activities are not under conscious control,

like breathing and walking. Other activities,

like doing your homework and sitting in front of the television,

that requires the executives in your frontal lobes,

when you have to concentrate.

But in some cases your brain has to block out information too.

When you stop yourself doing something,

you have to make a real effort, especially if the behaviour is automatic.

In other words, not doing something

often requires you doing something.

And that's what your frontal lobes are doing.

So let's see if all of you can stop doing a very automatic behaviour

using your frontal lobes and mental effort.

For this test, I want you to turn to the person next to you.

I want you to try and stare at them without blinking,

and I want you to take turns trying to make them blink

by simply poking their eyes.

We'll try this. OK, you try and stare.

And...try and not stare.

There we go. OK. See if you can break their stares.

OK. OK.

What you'll notice

is that, actually, it's really quite hard to do.

Some of them, some of you are very good at this. One of the reasons,

typically, if you're used to putting mascara on

or anything near your eyes,

you don't have a problem. Or if you have contact lenses,

you often stick these in your eye. But if you don't do this often,

it's difficult to avoid, because that blink is a reflex.

That's the brain trying to protect your eyes

from anything damaging them.

And that requires conscious effort to try and stop it.

It's not just reflexes if you think about it.

The world is full of distractions.

It's like being a kid in a candy store. There are too many things

trying to grab your attention.

Sometimes, we need the ability

to stop doing one thing in order to do something else.

The frontal lobe has to work out

which bits of information to block out.

So let me try another test with you.

This is something that's going to be a surprisingly difficult task,

and again, you can try this at home.

In this task, I want you just to read the colour of the ink.

I don't want you to read the word.

And I want you to do it as fast as you possibly can.

So let's see if you're ready yet.

-Go.

-Red!

Green!

Blue!

Green!

Red!

Blue!

-Black...

-Black, very good!

Very good. That wasn't bad, actually. So let's try that again.

I'll try and go a bit faster.

Red!

Blue!

Red!

Green! Green!

Blue!

Black!

LAUGHTER

Royal Institution crowd.

Very smart. OK.

So you're really good at this, aren't you? OK, ready?

Blue!

Red! Green!

Red! Blue!

Green!

Black!

Well, I found it very hard, but you did very well, I must confess.

APPLAUSE

Give yourselves a round of applause.

That's called a Stroop test

and a Stroop test reveals that

reading is such an automatic behaviour,

when you're very good at it, you don't think about it much.

So when you see the word written in one colour,

you tend to read the word, not say the colour of the ink,

which you don't normally do.

And if you have damage to your frontal lobe,

it's very difficult to do the Stroop test

because it reveals that this part is controlling behaviours.

So our frontal lobes are important for vigilance and attention.

Throughout evolution, we've had to look out for danger.

In the olden days, it was things like sabre-tooth tigers.

Today, it's Jaguars travelling at 40mph up Mayfair.

Avoiding danger requires attention.

When not paying attention,

you can easily miss things that are right in front of your very eyes.

So, I'm going to show you a scene outside San Francisco.

I want you to watch the scene.

Does anyone notice anything different here?

Let's see.

Does it look like the same scene to you, each time it flicks on?

Put your hands up if you think it's the same scene.

Yeah. Oh, yes, no, yes.

It's the same thing, isn't it?

Or is it? Are you sure?

Well, let me show you what happens when I remove the blink.

There we go. That's what's actually happening.

You can see now that when I take the blink away,

every frame has a different change.

Things you would never believe that you would ever miss.

For example, there goes...the tree!

SURPRISED GASPS

And then, when I put the blank in,

you no longer see the changes. Look.

Isn't that remarkable?

And then I put it back in again.

There they go.

This is really a very strong proof that if you're not paying attention,

you miss things happening right in front of your eyes.

It's called change blindness.

Every time your world disappears in the blink of an eye,

your brain doesn't notice anything different

unless you pay special attention. Your brain is regulating behaviour,

deciding what we pay attention to,

how we learn and what we remember,

all without us even realising.

We started this lecture with the question "Who's in charge?"

And actually, I'm still not really sure.

Is it my memory? My frontal lobes?

They all play an important part,

but there is no individual "me" taking control.

So let's put everything together that we've learnt tonight

into one final demonstration.

I began with juggling, not very good,

but I'd like to introduce you to some really great jugglers

all the way from Croydon.

Ladies and gentlemen, Croydon Juggling Club.

APPLAUSE

CIRCUS MUSIC

OK, right.

So, I'm going to get the audience to try out their frontal lobes here.

I'm going to test them on a task of concentration.

-To juggle takes a lot of concentration.

-Absolutely.

Can you show us a single juggle where you toss the orange batons?

And I want you to count the number of times they toss, OK?

So let's see, give us an example of this.

One. Two.

Three.

Four.

Five. OK, six.

Can we stop there a moment? That's the task for tonight.

I want you to count the number of times the baton passes.

I want to find the person who has the best memory.

The best observation skills, the best vigilance.

Keep the answer to yourself. At the same time,

I'll get the back jugglers to juggle to confuse you.

And so, as the orange baton crosses,

I want you to count the number of times

and remember it. So pay special attention. OK.

On your mark.

You can start.

Don't shout it out, keep the answer to yourself.

CIRCUS MUSIC

OK.

OK.

Round of applause.

APPLAUSE

So, um...

OK, so, um...

who thought the answer was, um...

24?

Um...

Well, you're right. So, 24, stand up.

OK.

So, young lady.

Did you, um...did you notice that...

Did you notice anything strange when you were counting there?

Did you notice anything strange, for example, about me?

You'd taken your jacket off.

Taken my jacket off. Anything else, about the stage?

The skull, yeah. Did you notice the skull had changed?

That the top hat had gone? No?

Did everyone get the top hat going?

And of course...did you notice this? Have a look at the video.

Did you see the gorilla?

Have a look.

LAUGHTER

You didn't see the gorilla?

All right, big round of applause.

I know some of you know this demonstration, but hands up

if you honestly didn't see the gorilla.

I think that's a pretty dramatic demonstration

that you don't always notice everything in the world.

Thank you, Croydon Juggling Club.

APPLAUSE

When you focus your attention, it's difficult to miss everything.

We began by asking who's in charge, and ended up questioning

if there's a single "you" inside your head in the first place.

In the final lecture, we'll explore whether we are individuals

or rather individuals born with a social brain

to learn from each other and coexist in groups.

So, thank you for watching so attentively.

And it's goodnight from me,

or rather it's goodnight from my frontal lobes,

goodnight from my hippocampus.

In fact, it's goodnight from my brain. Thank you.

APPLAUSE AND CHEERING

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