Baroness Susan Greenfield at the British Library

Tomorrow I am catching the train down to London again - this time to see Baroness Susan Greenfield at the British Library. A few years ago she gave a memorable series of lectures for children (part of the series at Christmas at the Royal Institution) on the brain and then a little while later presented a very interesting series of television programmes on the same subject. The message from both, but particularly from the second, seemed to me to be how little we know about the human mind. It looks like this theme will be explored further in this lecture:

From the British Library Events Brochure: Beautful Minds

'Is human nature about to change forever? Can we envisage a world where everything we take for granted about ourselves - imagination, free will, love, desire - becomes obsolete? The science and technology that are already at the heart of our lives will soon come to transform not just the way we live, but the way we think and feel.

'Baroness Greenfield will explore the prospect of a world free of pain and disease, where we can manipulate our bodies with machinery and our moods with 'smart drugs'. In this virtual realm of 'dreams and shadows', the notion of our individual self may, in fact, be obliterated entirely.'