Royal Institution Christmas Lectures - Season 46 / Year 2011

Season 46 / Year 2011
Meet Your Brain
Episodes

Meet Your Brain: What's in Your Head?
Why does the brain look like a giant walnut, how does it fit in enough wiring to stretch four times around the equator, and why could a magnet on the head stop someone mid-sentence? In the first of this year's Christmas Lectures, Professor Bruce Hood gets inside the human head to explore how the brain works. He measures the brain's nerve cells in action, reads someone's mind from 100 miles away, and reveals how the brain ultimately creates its own version of reality.

Meet Your Brain: Who's in Charge Here?
The brain is constantly being bombarded with information, so how does it decide what to trust and what to ignore, without the person even being aware of it? Professor Bruce Hood gives the second of this year's Christmas Lectures - testing the limits of the memory, finding out how humans learn, how the brain takes shortcuts and why multitasking can be dangerous. Bruce makes people say the wrong thing and fail to see what is right in front of them. Can one really believe one's eyes? Possibly not.

Meet Your Brain: Are You Thinking What I'm Thinking?
Have you ever seen a face in a piece of burnt toast, or given your car a name? Why do you feel pain when someone else is hurt? Why are people so obsessed with other people? In the last of this year's Christmas Lectures, Professor Bruce Hood investigates how our brains are built to read other people's minds. With a little help from a baby, a robot and a magician, Bruce uncovers what makes us truly human.
Recently Updated Shows

Ancient Aliens
Ancient Aliens explores the controversial theory that extraterrestrials have visited Earth for millions of years. From the age of the dinosaurs to ancient Egypt, from early cave drawings to continued mass sightings in the US, each episode in this hit History series gives historic depth to the questions, speculations, provocative controversies, first-hand accounts and grounded theories surrounding this age old debate. Did intelligent beings from outer space visit Earth thousands of years ago?

Survivor
Eighteen to twenty castaways will compete against each other on Survivor. All castaways will compete to outwit, outplay, outlast and ultimately be crowned Sole Survivor.

Lioness
Lioness, inspired by an actual U.S. Military program, follows the life of Joe while she attempts to balance her personal and professional life as the tip of the CIA's spear in the war on terror. The Lioness Program, overseen by Kaitlyn Meade and Donald Westfield, enlists an aggressive Marine Raider named Cruz to operate undercover alongside Joe among the power brokers of State terrorism in the CIA's efforts to thwart the next 9/11.

Doc
Doc centers on the hard-charging, brilliant Dr. Amy Larsen, Chief of Internal and Family Medicine at Westside Hospital in Minneapolis. After a brain injury erases the last eight years of her life, Amy must navigate an unfamiliar world where she has no recollection of patients she's treated, colleagues she's crossed, the soulmate she divorced, the man she now loves and the tragedy that caused her to push everyone away. She can rely only on her estranged 17-year-old daughter, whom she remembers as a 9-year-old, and a handful of devoted friends, as she struggles to continue practicing medicine, despite having lost nearly a decade of knowledge and experience.
