• 17:30 - 18:30
• Bristol-Myers Squibb Lecture Theatre, Cambridge

The origins and history of feedback control systems will be traced from the ancients through the industrial revolution and to modern times, with demonstrations. Also outlined will be the later development of the theory of control systems, which began with James Clerk Maxwell's 1868 paper on governors, together with examples including suspension systems, rocket landing, nuclear fusion, and feedback in biology. The lecture concludes with a discussion on whether human understanding will be needed to design control systems in the future.

• 17:30 - 18:30
• A V Hill Lecture Bristol-Myers Squibb Lecture Theatre, Cambridge

Our behaviour is characteristically organized in a hierarchical structure of goals and subgoals, with many fragments of behaviour contributing to an everyday activity such as making breakfast or attending a lecture.  Such goal-directed structures are often impaired following major damage to the frontal lobes of the brain.  I shall describe a core discovery of human brain imaging – a nine-patch network recruited for addressing a very broad range of cognitive challenges, based in frontal cortex but with additional components elsewhere.  This network is strongly activated by a standard test of “fluid intelligence”, known to predict success in all kinds of activities and presumably requiring mental operations of very widespread importance.  From human brain imaging, I shall move on to electrophysiology in the behaving monkey.  In a network of frontal lobe regions, putatively homologous to regions of the human network, I shall show encoding of core components of a goal-directed plan – current state, goal, component moves and hierarchy.  Damage to this network, I suggest, underlies the broad behavioural impairment that can follow frontal lobe damage.