Abstract

This public lecture coincides with Brain Awareness Week and the Cambridge Science Festival. Attendance is free and registration for the event is not required.

Using evidence from brain imaging, psychological experiments, and patient studies, Professor Chris Frith will take you on a journey to explore the relationship between the mind and the brain.

Chris Frith is Emeritus Professor of Neuropsychology at the Wellcome Centre for Neuroimaging at University College London (UCL) and Niels Bohr Visiting Professor in the Interacting Minds project at the University of Aarhus in Denmark. Since completing his PhD in 1969 he has been funded by the Medical Research Council and the Wellcome Trust to study the relationship between the mind and the brain. He is a pioneer in application of brain imaging to the study of mental processes. He has contributed more than 300 papers to scientific journals and is known especially for his work on agency, social cognition, and understanding the minds of people with mental disorders such as schizophrenia. For this work he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2000.

He was a visiting fellow at All Souls College, Oxford in 2006 and has been awarded honorary degrees by the University of Salzburg and the University of York. He has published several books, including, most recently, (with Eve Johnstone) Schizophrenia: A Very Short Introduction (2003), and (edited with Daniel Wolpert) The Neuroscience of Social Interaction: Decoding, Imitating and Influencing the Actions of Others (2004). His latest book, Making up the Mind: How the Brain Creates our Mental World (Wiley-Blackwell 2007), was long-listed for the Royal Society Prize for Science Books, 2008.