VS Ramachandran on your mind

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V.S. Ramachandran is a mesmerizing speaker, able to concretely and simply describe the most complicated inner workings of the brain. His investigations into brain disorders allow him to explore and begin to answer the most basic philosophical questions about the nature of self and human consciousness.
Ramachandran is the director of the Center for Brain and Cognition at the University of California, San Diego, and an adjunct professor at the Salk Institute. He is the author of Phantoms in the Brain, the basis for a Nova special, and A Brief Tour of Human Consciousness; his next book, due out in January 2008, is called The Man with the Phantom Twin: Adventures in the Neuroscience of the Human Brain.

Here he talks about phantom limb pain, synesthesia and the intriguing Capgras delusion.

Here he

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Figs contain particularly abundant amounts of fruit biochemicals called flavonoids which boost the levels of neurotransmitters in our brains. These biochemicals make our brains work better and produce a feel-good effect. Furthermore, in ancient times they triggered an effect whereby the pineal gland produced more of its own hormones. This changed the way our DNA was read so that our brains grew bigger and our sense of conscious awareness expanded. This may be the underlying reason why the tree has religious significance and is considered in some traditions to be the 'Tree of Life'. In fact the Bodhi tree under which the Buddha was said to be sitting when he was enlightened or 'awakened' was a banyan fig tree. The trees such as fig trees that made the most attractive fruit, that made the early humans feel good, would have been eaten more and their seeds more widely distributed, increasing the prevalence of these trees. This is the symbiotic relationship between humans and fruit trees, a connection we still sense today.