How does your brain create your sense of self? Part 1 with Anil Seth and Michael Pollan
What is it that makes you you? The fact that you are having a subjective experience right now — that there is something it feels like to be you — remains one of the deepest unsolved mysteries in all of science.Watch Part 2 here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujyXgVMNwsA
In this conversation, neuroscientist Anil Seth and author Michael Pollan explore the science and philosophy of conscious experience: how the brain constructs our sense of reality, what it means to have a self, and how far consciousness might extend beyond the human mind into the animal kingdom and the natural world.
This lecture was filmed at the Ri on Saturday 21st March 2026.
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Anil Seth is Professor of Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience and Director of the Centre for Consciousness Science at the University of Sussex. He is also Co-Director of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research Program on Brain, Mind and Consciousness and a European Research Council Advanced Investigator. He has published more than 200 research papers and has been recognized by Web of Science, over several years, as being in the top 0.1% of researchers worldwide. His 2017 TED talk has been viewed over fifteen million times. In 2023 he was awarded the Royal Society Michael Faraday Prize, and in 2024 Prospect Magazine listed him as one of the Top 25 global thinkers.
Michael Pollan is an award-winning author, activist and journalist. His international bestselling books about the way we live today - including How to Change Your Mind, This is Your Mind on Plants, In Defence of Food and The Omnivore’s Dilemma- combine meticulous reporting with anthropology, philosophy, culture, health and natural history. Time magazine has named him one of the hundred most influential people in the world.
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