Brain Specialisation

About the lecture

In this lecture, we think about brain specialisation, focusing in particular on: (i) the early work of Paul Broca in isolating a language production area of the brain in the left frontal lobe; (ii) the role that patient Tan’s lesion and resultant expression of language played in enabling Paul Broca to make the assessments that led to these findings; (iii) Wernicke’s area and its somewhat opposing role to Broca’s area; (iv) the importance of sampling from a large number of individuals in order to conclude on the role of a particular brain region.

About the lecturer

Dr Ashok Jansari is a senior lecturer in the Department of Psychology at Goldsmiths, University of London. Dr Jansari’s research interests include memory disorders, prosopagnosia, executive functions, and synaesthesia. Dr Jansari is most famous for his research into prosopagnosia, having made numerous TV appearances, including on BBC1’s The One Show, as well as hosting his own ‘Neuro Talk’ YouTube channel:

https://www.youtube.com/c/DrAshokJansariNeuroTalk/featured

Some of Dr Jansari's recent publications include 'Acquired synaesthesia following 2C-B use' (2019), 'Using virtual reality to investigate multitasking ability in individuals with frontal lobe lesions' (2019), and 'Identification from CCTV: Assessing police super-recogniser ability to spot faces in a crown and susceptibility to change blindness' (2018).