6. The Beast Within

Dr Geoff Bunn's ten-part history is a journey through 5000 years of our understanding of the most complex thing in the known universe.

From Neolithic times to the present day, Geoff journeys through the many ideas of what the brain is for and how it fulfils its functions.

What soon becomes obvious is that our understanding of this most inscrutable organ has in all periods been coloured by the social and political expedients of the day no less than by the contemporary scope of scientific or biological exploration.

In this episode, the focus is on localisation.

Following a macabre accident when an iron rod shot through his head, Phineas Gage, a mild-mannered railway worker in Vermont, became capricious and profane.

Meanwhile in France, Paul Broca established that damage to another part of the brain caused aphasia.

While phrenology had it that the brains of 'degenerates' differed from those of poets or scientists, British neurologist John Hughlings Jackson incorporated evolutionary ideas into his theory of brain function: higher centres with more recent evolutionary origins kept lower, more primitive ones in check.

Featuring the voices of:

* Paul Bhattacharjee
* Jonathan Forbes
* Hattie Morahan

Producer: Marya Burgess

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in November 2011.