The Ockham Lecture - The Merton College Physics Lecture
Oxford University
5 episodes
7 months ago
A lecture given by Professor Irene Tracey, Nuffield Chair of Anaesthetic Science and Head of the Nuffield Department of Clinical Neuroscience at the University of Oxford, and Warden-elect of Merton College. With over 85 billion neurons making approximately 1.5x1014 connections (synapses) and a similar quantity of non-neuronal cells all within the adult human brain, it's a feat of brilliance and beauty that our perceptions and creative thinking arise from their interplay. Our knowledge of how this occurs has grown significantly in the past few decades, and physicists have been at the forefront of this wave in understanding. In this talk, Professor Irene Tracey, Nuffield Chair of Anaesthetic Science and Head of the Nuffield Department of Clinical Neuroscience at the University of Oxford, and Warden-elect of Merton College walks you through some of the landmark discoveries and their application to the brain, highlighting Oxford’s major role in developing the modern field of neuroscience. Finally, she gives a brief overview of her own work using advanced neuroimaging to understand pain perception, pain relief and anaesthesia-induced altered states of consciousness.
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A lecture given by Professor Irene Tracey, Nuffield Chair of Anaesthetic Science and Head of the Nuffield Department of Clinical Neuroscience at the University of Oxford, and Warden-elect of Merton College. With over 85 billion neurons making approximately 1.5x1014 connections (synapses) and a similar quantity of non-neuronal cells all within the adult human brain, it's a feat of brilliance and beauty that our perceptions and creative thinking arise from their interplay. Our knowledge of how this occurs has grown significantly in the past few decades, and physicists have been at the forefront of this wave in understanding. In this talk, Professor Irene Tracey, Nuffield Chair of Anaesthetic Science and Head of the Nuffield Department of Clinical Neuroscience at the University of Oxford, and Warden-elect of Merton College walks you through some of the landmark discoveries and their application to the brain, highlighting Oxford’s major role in developing the modern field of neuroscience. Finally, she gives a brief overview of her own work using advanced neuroimaging to understand pain perception, pain relief and anaesthesia-induced altered states of consciousness.
The 23rd Ockham Lecture - 'Twisting the Neutron Wavefunction'
The Ockham Lecture - The Merton College Physics Lecture
1 hour 9 minutes
8 years ago
The 23rd Ockham Lecture - 'Twisting the Neutron Wavefunction'
Given by Professor Charles Clark, Fellow of the Physical Measurement Laboratory at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and Fellow and Adjunct Professor at the Joint Quantum Institute, University of Maryland, USA. Wave motions in nature were known to the ancients, and their mathematical expression in physics today is essentially the same as that first provided by d'Alembert and Euler in the mid-18th century. Yet it was only in the early 1990s that physicists managed to control a basic property of light waves: their capability of swirling around their own axis of propagation. During the past decade such techniques of control have also been developed for quantum particles: atoms, electrons and neutrons. I will present a simple description of these phenomena, emphasising the most basic aspects of wave and quantum particle motion. Neutron interferometry offers a poignant perspective on wave-particle duality: at the time one neutron is detected, the next neutron has not yet even been born. Here, indeed, each neutron "then only interferes with itself." Yet, using macroscopically-machined objects, we are able to twist neutron deBroglie waves with sub-nanometer wavelengths.
The Ockham Lecture - The Merton College Physics Lecture
A lecture given by Professor Irene Tracey, Nuffield Chair of Anaesthetic Science and Head of the Nuffield Department of Clinical Neuroscience at the University of Oxford, and Warden-elect of Merton College. With over 85 billion neurons making approximately 1.5x1014 connections (synapses) and a similar quantity of non-neuronal cells all within the adult human brain, it's a feat of brilliance and beauty that our perceptions and creative thinking arise from their interplay. Our knowledge of how this occurs has grown significantly in the past few decades, and physicists have been at the forefront of this wave in understanding. In this talk, Professor Irene Tracey, Nuffield Chair of Anaesthetic Science and Head of the Nuffield Department of Clinical Neuroscience at the University of Oxford, and Warden-elect of Merton College walks you through some of the landmark discoveries and their application to the brain, highlighting Oxford’s major role in developing the modern field of neuroscience. Finally, she gives a brief overview of her own work using advanced neuroimaging to understand pain perception, pain relief and anaesthesia-induced altered states of consciousness.
