Neuroscience of the Conscious Mind

The School of Human and Community Development will be hosting a public lecture by its Mellon visiting scholar, Prof. Oliver Turnbull of Bangor University, Wales, entitled The Neuroscience of the Conscious Mind. Addressing questions of whether we possess an immortal soul independent of the brain - the mind-body problem - and, if not, what the neural basis of conscious mental life might be, has a number of moral and practical implications. These include whether non-human animals are conscious (and if so, which species?) and whether the in utero foetus might be conscious (and if so, by which week of development?). Neuroscience provides tentative answers to these questions. This lecture surveys some of these answers, and in doing so, will cover important issues in philosophy, some of the problems in studying the mind, and the empirical question of which brain areas ‘produce’ mind. Credit: 2 CPD points