Podcast Series: Today’s Neuroscience, Tomorrow’s History, Part 2

The second instalment of the 'Today's Neuroscience, Tomorrow's History' podcast series, compiled by the Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at UCL, is now available for download. The series documents the history of neuroscience featuring eminent scientists in the field. The second instalment consists of s with UCL's Professor Richard Frackowiak, as well as Professor Terry Jones, Professor Sir Peter Mansfield and Professor Roger Odridge. In 1995, as Professor of Cognitive Neurology the UCL Institute of Neurology, Professor Richard Frackowiak established the Functional Imaging Laboratory (now the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging), where he developed new techniques for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). In a now famous study ' produced with his team at the UCL Wellcome Neuroimaging Unit ' Professor Frackowiak showed that in London taxi drivers, there was a connection between an area of the brain (the hippocampus) and their highly developed spatial and navigation skills. The hippocampus had enlarged as a result of navigational experience. Professor Terry Jones was responsible for installing one of Britain's first Positron Emission Tomography (PET) scanners at the Hammersmith Hospital in 1979, where he recruited Richard Frackowiak, among others, to conduct research.