My Head

Every year around a quarter of a million people suffer traumatic brain injury in the UK. James Piercy is one of those. On 30 January 2011, a nail pierced the tyre of the car he was travelling in. The car left the road and hit a tree. This is his story of recovery and what he learned about this common condition along the way.

He meets the policeman who held his head and kept him breathing, the air ambulance team who rushed him to hospital and the surgeon who drilled a hole in his skull in the middle of the night. James also takes a journey through our current understanding of the brain, and how studying injuries like his are helping to shape the modern, very different, explanations of how our brains work.

(Photo: A boy suffering from head trauma gets his head bandaged. Credit: Thinkstock)