Almost everything you think you know about differences between the brain hemispheres is wrong. The topic was taken over and distorted by pop psychology,and hence understandably, but nonetheless irrationally, neglected by the mainstream.So why is the brain, an organ that exists only to make connections, divided and asymmetrical? What does it tell us about the structure of the world we inhabit?

Iain McGilchrist will argue that lateralisation is now the topic in neuroscience of greatest significance for understanding the human condition. Dr Iain McGilchristis a former Fellow of All Souls College,Oxford, a Fellow of the RoyalCollege of Psychiatrists, a Fellowof the Royal Society of Arts, andformer Consultant Psychiatrist and Clinical Director at theBethlem Royal & Maudsley Hospital, London. He has been a Research Fellow in neuroimaging at Johns Hopkins Hospital,Baltimore. He is best known asthe author of The Master and his Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World(Yale 2009).