The Human Brain: What We Know (and what we don’t)

Duration 01:41:55

Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai

Heather Berlin is a cognitive neuroscientist, clinical psychologist, and Professor of Psychiatry at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York. Dr. Berlin is a committee member of the National Academy of Sciences’ Science and Entertainment Exchange, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s (AAAS) Committee on Science and Technology Engagement with the Public. She co-hosts StarTalk with Neil DeGrasse Tyson, and hosted the PBS series Science Goes to the Movies, and the Discovery Channel series Superhuman Showdown.

Overview

How Much Do We Know About the Brain?

You are your brain, according to modern neuroscience, but how exactly do your thoughts, feelings, perceptions and sense of self derive from this three-pound organ locked inside the black box of your skull? Cognitive neuroscientist Dr. Heather Berlin has been seeking answers to those questions for decades, and finding surprising answers in the brains of people with psychiatric and neurological disorders. What happens in the brains of people who can’t control themselves, or whose sense of self is fragmented, or lost entirely? By tracing the distinct brain circuits that give rise to her patients’ disorders, Dr. Berlin is revealing the neurophysiology that makes each of us who we are.

How Does the Human Brain Work and How Much Do We Know?

Join us on a journey deep into the brain, the mind, and the self, as Professor Berlin reveals the startling and exciting recent findings of cutting-edge neuroscience. How does your brain accomplish spontaneous creativity? How much self-control or “free will” do we really have? And what does the future hold, once brains begin to integrate with “neural prosthetics”? Get to know your dynamic unconscious mind, a bigger part of “who you are” than you could ever guess, with Dr. Berlin as your guide.

Learn More About How The Brain Works

For more lectures about the human brain check out the rest of Professor Heather Berlin’s lectures in our video library. Sign up for One Day University Membership today for unlimited access to hundreds of talks and online lectures.

Heather Berlin / Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai

Heather Berlin is a cognitive neuroscientist, Professor of Psychiatry at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and Visiting Scholar at the New York Psychoanalytic Society and Institute. She is a committee member of the National Academy of Sciences’ Science and Entertainment Exchange, and host of the PBS series “Science Goes to the Movies,” and the Discovery Channel series “Superhuman Showdown.” Professor Berlin has been the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships including a Young Investigator Award from the American Neuropsychiatric Association, the International Neuropsychological Society Phillip M. Rennick Award, and the Clifford Yorke Prize from the International Neuropsychoanalysis Society.