Cambridge BRAINFest - 23-25 June

Cambridge BRAINFest is a public free festival of brain research that will bring together >130 neuroscientists from across Cambridge to present ground breaking research in 30 interactive exhibits covering themes of Development', 'Brain & Body', 'Pain & Pleasure', 'Imagination & Perception' and 'Learning & Forgetting', spanning research from molecule to man. In addition, we will have Q&A sessions with experts at Café Scientifique, BRAINArt (featuring local schools), secret cinema, build-a-brain workshops, an historical self guided neurotrail and interactive neurotheatre, an evening 'Variety Showcase' (with public lectures covering the dyslexic brain, the degenerating brain and the obese brain interspersed with the story of Parkinson's disease through dance and living with dementia through poetry) and an evening of 'Brains & Mental Health' (a question time styled panel discussion, hosted by Professor Sir Simon Wessely, featuring an expert panel). The theme of the evening will focus on how mental illnesses are disorders of the brain, the ongoing research that will help us better understand and treat these disorders and how we can bridge the existing gap between neuroscience research and current practice in the health service. Please see programme flyer attached.

We hope that Cambridge BRAINFest will not only provide opportunities for mutual learning between scientists and members of the public, but also facilitate the transition of research findings into real life applications within a diverse range of public policy areas including health, education and law.

Join the conversation on @CamNeuro #CambridgeBRAINfest and on Facebook

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Programme of events | Open to the public, FREE |
Bookings now open! (for evening events)
No booking required for the Cambridge Corn Exchange daytime events

Friday 23rd June 2017

19:00-21:00 Cambridge BRAINFest Variety Showcase

Babbage Lecture Theatre, University of Cambridge

Booking now open!

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Saturday 24th June 2017

10:00-15:30 Thematic Showcase, Corn Exchange main auditorium

10:30-15:30 Café Scientifique @ Cambridge BRAINFest, St John's room

10:00-15:30 BRAINArt @ Cambridge BRAINFest, Corn Exchange foyer

10:00-15:30 Secret Cinema @ Cambridge BRAINFest, The King's room

19:00-21:00 Brains & Mental Health @ Cambridge BRAINFest

Babbage Lecture Theatre, University of Cambridge

Booking now open!

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sunday 25th June 2017

10:00-16:00 Thematic Showcase, Corn Exchange main auditorium

10:00-16:00 Café Scientifique @ Cambridge BRAINFest, St John's room

10:00-16:00 BRAINArt @ Cambridge BRAINFest, Corn Exchange foyer

10:00-16:00 Secret Cinema @ Cambridge BRAINFest, The King's room

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Additional notes

BRAINArt is an exhibition of brain associated art by local children. In the lead up to Cambridge BRAINFest, we visited 1400 students, talked about the brain and 'hopefully' inspired the students to create brain art. A selection of their artwork will be on display throughout the festival in the foyer of the Cambridge Corn Exchange.

Secret Cinema - The King's Room at the Corn Exchange will be transformed into the Cambridge BRAINFest secret cinema. Festival goers will be able to take a break from the showcase exhibit downstairs and view a collection of films from across the Cambridge Neuroscience community. The secret cinema will run for the duration of the festival and details will be provided in the programme and on information screens throughout the festival.

Cambridge Neurotrail is a walking self guided map of Cambridge with neuroscience points of historical interest. We can provide copies of this to you and your guides/ambassadors.

Hopefully this has been useful to you but please let me know if you need any more details.

Seminar - 'Brainwashing the Cybernetic Spectator: The Ipcress File, 1960's Cinematic Spectacle and the Sciences of Mind'

14 March 2017, 12:00 - 13:30pm, Seminar room SG2, Alison Richard Building, CRASSH

Dr Marcia Holmes (History, Birkbeck)
Discussant: Dr Dan Larsen  (History, Cambridge) 

This paper argues that the mid-1960s saw a dramatic shift in how 'brainwashing' was popularly imagined, reflecting Anglo-American developments in the sciences of mind as well as shifts in mass media culture. The 1965 British film, The Ipcress File (dir. Sidney J. Furie, starr. Michael Caine) provides a rich case for exploring these interconnections between mind control, mind science, and media, as it exemplifies the era's innovations for depicting 'brainwashing' on screen: the film's protagonist is subjected to flashing lights and electronic music, pulsating to the 'rhythm of brainwaves'. This paper describes the making of The Ipcress File's brainwashing sequence, and shows how its quest for cinematic spectacle drew on developments in cybernetic science, multimedia design and modernist architecture (developments that were also influencing the 1960s' psychedelic counterculture). I argue that often interposed between the disparate endeavours of 1960s mind control, psychological science, and media was a vision of the human mind as a 'cybernetic spectator': a subject who not only scrutinizes how media and other demands on her sensory perception can affect consciousness, but seeks to consciously participate in this mental conditioning and guide its effects.

(Dr Holmes's paper will be pre-circulated and may be read in advance. You can receive a copy by emailing lsp33@cam.ac.uk)

Talk - 'Polyphonic Minds'

Peter Pesic (St. John's College, Santa Fe)
Sunday 19 March: 1400-1500 -- Faculty of Music, Lecture Room 1

Peter Pesic is Tutor and Musician-in-Residence at St. John's College, Santa Fe. He is the author of Labyrinth: A Search for the Hidden Meaning of Science; Seeing Double: Shared Identities in Physics, Philosophy, and Literature; Abel's Proof: An Essay on the Sources and Meaning of Mathematical Unsolvability; and Sky in a Bottle, all published by the MIT Press.

Victorian Network - Issue on 'The Victorian Brain'

The Summer 2016 issue of Victorian Network, entitled "Victorian Brain" and guest edited by Professor Sally Shuttleworth (University of Oxford), is now available.

'The AI Revolution'

Attendees of last term's session on 'Beyond the Brain' might be interested in this post discussing Artificial Intelligence. Part II is available here.

Recap - Beyond the Brain

Our final, festive, meeting for Michaelmas 2014 attracted a select group of participants who, fuelled by port and stollen, grappled with tricky questions of consciousness, artificial intelligence, neurology, logic, and ethics. Given Stephen Hawking's comments earlier that day, the singularity was a fitting topic with which to close our series of conversations on the brain. Adrian introduced us to Greg Egan and to the more general current scientific and philosophical arguments about the possibilities for artificial entities of increasingly superior intelligence. This is, he revealed, a serious and relevant academic debate, but one in which fiction and philosophy can play a particularly important role. Simon then contributed a typically imaginative presentation of Chalmers' ideas, augmented with charming illustrations (see above). The following discussion took in everything from economic modelling to brain upgrades ('Ambition 2.0'), new forms of evolution, the independent life of mathematical equations, and the molecular mechanism of Star Trek transportation systems.

Overall, it has been a fantastic term of meetings - my thanks to everyone who had participated, and particularly to those who prepared introductions to the readings. We have covered an enormous range of time, genre, and topics, as we have tried to get inside the heads of peoples past, present, and future.

1st December - Beyond the Brain

Our final meeting of term will be held on Monday 1st December in the Newnham Terrace Upstairs Seminar Room at Darwin College. We will be reading the following texts, to conclude our series of sessions on the brain, as well as holding our usual end-of-term party:

• Greg Egan, "Permutation City", Prologue and Chapters Two and Three (also available in the University Library)
• David Chalmers, "The Singularity: A philosophical analysis".

I hope to see you then!

Recap - Memory

Another very successful meeting of the Reading Group, where the warmth and wit of the conversation hopefully offset the rather chilly conditions of the room!

Liz and Robin gave thought-provoking introductions to our two set readings. First, Liz detailed further biographical background to the 'Dickens of the ghetto', Israel Zangwill, whom most of the Group were encountering for the first time. Thoroughly enjoying his short story, I'm sure it won't be the last we read of his writings, however. In particular, Liz drew attention to Zangwill's self-aware commentary on the position of writers, on the dangers of genius, and on the references to and mimicry of both realist and sensation fiction of the late nineteenth century. Through his description of one particular invention, its subsequent commercial and social applications, further development, and effects (potentially fatal) on purchasers, Zangwill was able to provoke consideration of the very nature of memory itself, not to mention identity. Liz also drew on a fascinating analogy with the recently-widespread publishing technology of electrotyping, and wondered whether this was one influence on the story's rather elusive memory-removing mechanism.

Robin followed with his introduction to the extract by Wells, usefully reminding us of key connections and experiences in his life, as well as pointing out his many non-fictional pieces that are not as well remembered as his science fiction writings. He discussed in particular how Wells' technological determinism provided one influence on these proposals for a universal encyclopaedia; a repository of human knowledge fit for the global age of the automobile and aeroplane. Once again, Robin drew on a helpful analogy to a contemporary publishing project, this time the development of card indexing systems in libraries, and the Dewey Decimal System, another attempt to itemise and organise pieces of knowledge, under curatorial care. Whilst he warned us against easy identifications between such proposals and the current state of the internet and its wiki-projects, he also showed us the trailer to a recent film, 'Google and the World Brain', which drew such comparisons.

The following discussion was rather inexpertly captured in my sketchy notes, but dealt both with close readings of the texts in question, as well as pondering wider considerations of personhood and morality, knowledge and information. We talked, for instance, about the history of attempts to determine the precise physical location of memories within the brain, connecting back to the discussions of phrenology in our first meeting, as well as to neurology, biochemistry, and medical scanning technologies. We thought about the metaphor of the clearing house, present in both texts, and the need to filter or suppress memories: when to retain and when to discard memories, and can this be a conscious process? What happens if you were to acquire someone else's memory? Does this become your experience and identity - would you think you are another person, or be another person? What about non-human entities given memories - how are they to be viewed, ethically? All of these being debates, of course, that will continue in our discussions next fortnight, when we will be accompanied by mince pies and mulled wine as we go beyond the brain...

17th November - Memory

Our third meeting of term will be held on Monday 17th November from 7.30-9pm in Newnham Terrace First Floor Seminar Room at Darwin College (please note change of venue from previous sessions). All welcome!

We will read and compare two discussions of memory and the brain: let me know if you have trouble accessing either of these links:

•  Israel Zangwill, ‘The Memory Clearing House’, in The King of Schnorrers (1893), pages 183-204.
•  H.G. Wells, World Brain (1938), pages 45-62.

If anyone would like to volunteer to introduce the reading then do get in touch! I hope to see many of you at the meeting.

Recap - Cerebral Forms

Last night witnessed the second meeting of the Michaelmas 2014 Science and Literature Reading Group, as we gathered for a thorough dissection of Thomas Willis and his writings on the brain.

Lizzie Swann gave a marvellous introduction to Willis himself and his posthumous reputation, the selected passages (English translations of his renowned earlier Latin writings), as well as wider cultures of seventeenth-century religion, philosophy and medicine. In particular, she analysed the rhetoric and language deployed by Willis as he struggled to translate his experimental practice into verbal descriptions. Willis claimed at the outset that he would base his writing on 'Nature and ocular demonstrations', yet suffused his prose with classical and Biblical allusion, and with myriad metaphors, from honeycomb to helmet. Just as different bodily theories could be discerned in Willis's writing, including Aristotelian sensory 'species', Paracelsian iatrochemistry and Galenic humours, so too were both the practices and objects of dissection likened to a series of more familiar analogues. Both wit and knives could be sharp. Lizzie characterised these as falling into two broad categories, the more pastoral, fluvial, agricultural or arboreal 'exterior' metaphors, and the more architectural 'interior' metaphors. She asked us to consider how rigorously, then, Willis upheld his commitment to first-hand observation; whether his religious beliefs were apparent and represented in the text; and the relationship between practices of dissection and visual and artistic skills.

The discussion took up these themes, to discuss in particular the marked use of metaphor throughout the text, and its varied figuring as model or metanoia, to point up similarity or difference, or as part of a more general debate over the metaphorical language of 'handling' subjects. Was this something that was part of a contemporary commitment to empiricism and virtual witnessing, we wondered, or a common way to think with and about books, or even inherited from older, classical sources? The multisensory world and practices of the dissecting room was another strand of the discussion; as was the relationship between soul and 'animal spirits', where they were located, which creatures owned them, and how they moved around: was it via Willis's favoured hydraulic imagery? Other early modern attempts to poetise the body, as well as comparisons between the microcosm and macrocosm, body and body politic, were also commented upon in the varied discussion, and I for one certainly left with much food for thought.

3rd November - Cerebral Forms

Our second meeting of term will be held on Monday 3rd November from 7.30-9pm in the Newnham Grange Seminar Room at Darwin College. All welcome!

We continue our readings on the brain by exploring one piece of early modern writing on cerebral dissection, structure and function:

• Thomas Willis, 'The Anatomy of the Brain' (1681), from his Five Treatises, preface, chapters I, III, VI, XIX.

 If anyone would like to volunteer to introduce the reading then do get in touch!

Recap - Phrenological Genres

Our first meeting of the academic year brought together Sci-Lit stalwarts with first-time attendees (with a particularly strong showing from the HPS MPhil cohort!), to discuss all things phrenological.

As ever, the conversation ranged widely, from discussions of the impact of urbanisation to the characters of software engineers, Walt Whitman's phrenological reading to the psychic effects of Fantastic Voyage-style adventures inside one's own head. Amongst other topics, we explored the role of physical analogies in these texts, from the cartographic nature of phrenology as mapping the mind and brain, or constructing a chambered house inhabited by different faculties; as well as the roles of analogy and allegory more generally. We thought about how these texts could reveal the consequences of a society based solely (from dress and jewellery to doctors and jurisprudence) on phrenological principles, or of the role for free will if character were truly fixed by crania. We discussed the perennial appeal of phrenology as a test-case for policing the boundaries of scientific disciplines and practitioners, right from its first development: was this really an 'outré science', as Tennyson had it, and if so what did that mean? As highlighted from the outset, generic form was also analysed as one way of accessing an early 19thC world of interdisciplinary (or predisciplinary?) writing and reading of texts.

Finally, as promised, a performance of the 'Phrenology' song from Broadway Musical Florodora (1899) can be found here.

13th October - Phrenological Genres

The Michaelmas Term meetings of the Science and Literature Reading Group begin this evening from 7.30-9pm in the Newnham Grange seminar room at Darwin College. I will be at the Porter's Lodge at 7.25pm to meet those unfamiliar with the college.

We commence our explorations of all things cerebral with that perennially popular topic, phrenology. All readings can be found online (click titles for links):

• Thomas Hood, 'Craniology' (1827)
• Charles Tennyson, 'Phrenology' (1827)
• John Trotter, Travels in Phrenologasto, chapter II, pages 17-26. (1829)
• 'A Phrenopatetic History' (1826)

 Optional additional reading:

•  The Craniad; or, Spurzheim Illustrated (1817)
  
• Craniology Burlsequed, in Three Serio-Comic Lectures, Lecture II (1816)

I hope to see old friends and new faces this evening - please feel free to come along and join in the discussions even if you don't manage to complete all of the readings.

Michaelmas Term 2014 - The Brain

This term features four sets of readings on cerebral themes from the past, present, and future. For full reading lists please see the links available from the beginning of October here or on the HPS seminars website; hard copies will also be made available in the Reading Group’s boxfile in the Whipple Library.

We return to Darwin College, the original home of the Reading Group, for meetings on Monday evenings from 7.30-9pm. All are very welcome to join us!

13th October – Phrenological Genres

• Thomas Hood, 'Craniology' (1827)
• Charles Tennyson, 'Phrenology' (1827)
• John Trotter, Travels in Phrenologasto, chapter II, pages 17-26. (1829)
• 'A Phrenopatetic History' (1826)

3rd November – Cerebral Forms

• Thomas Willis, 'The Anatomy of the Brain' (1681), from his Five Treatises, preface, chapters I, III, VI, XIX.

17th November – Memory

• Israel Zangwill, ‘The Memory Clearing House’ (1893)
• H.G. Wells, World Brain (1938), pages 45-62.

1st December – Beyond the Brain

• Greg Egan, "Permutation City", Prologue and Chapters Two and Three (also in the University
• Library)
• David Chalmers, "The Singularity: A philosophical analysis.