Where does the brain end and consciousness begin? New research in science and medicine offers new clues, and we'll discuss them with Rita Carter, author of  "Mapping the Mind." New surgery techniques and electro-magnetic manipulations are helping some psychological problems. Rita Carter says "I first came across these brain imaging studies about ten years ago and I was instantly hooked. The first studies were pretty crude but as the technology got better I saw that the images were adding up, like bits in a jigsaw puzzle, to reveal something quite startling: a complete picture of the human mind at work. The biological roots of human behavior, and the neurological differences which create individual personalities, are suddenly being made visible."

From the Author, Rita Carter:

I have always been fascinated by what makes people tick. Why do some people love dressing up while others are happy wearing a sack? Why do certain individuals flock to parties while others do anything to avoid them? How come certain otherwise sensible folk believe that aliens have landed? Why do some people find farting funny? And why are some of us natural artists while others would be hard-pushed to paint their toenails?

Psychologists have done their best to explain these things but until recently they could only guess what was happening in the brain by observing behaviour - there was no way to look inside people's heads and see what caused them to act the way they did. Now, though, scientists can do just that. Imaging tehnology like PET and functional MRI make it possible to watch the human mind at work, and the picture that is being built up as a result is astonishing.

I first came across these brain imaging studies about ten years ago and I was instantly hooked. The first studies were pretty crude but as the technology got better I saw that the images were adding up, like bits in a jigsaw puzzle, to reveal something quite startling: a complete picture of the human mind at work. The biological roots of human behaviour, and the neurological differences which create individual personalities, are suddenly being made visible.

For several years I scoured the bookshops looking for a book which pulled this picture together, but all I could find were dense, jargon-laden tomes or superficial psychobabbble. So I decided to write the book myself. I soon found that it was not enough simply to piece together brain imaging findings. To make sense of them it was necessary to weave them into our existing models of the mind - those we have constructed through evolutionary biology, psychology and studies of eccentric or aberrant behaviour. Then it seemed essential to relate what happens in "the" brain to what happens in "my" brain - and yours ....to put the neuroscience into the context of everyday experience and behaviour.

"Mapping the Mind" is the result. I know it is about the only illustrated and easily understandable guide to what happens in the brain because I still scour the bookshops and I still haven't found anything else like it. And I know it is up-to-date because I was adding new findings to it (much to my publisher's inconvenience) right up to the moment it went to press. And it is almost certainly accurate as far as current knowledge allows, because every word was checked by my eminent consultant, Professor Chris Frith of the Wellcome Department of Cognitive Neurology in London.

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