The balanced brain: The science of mental health

There are many routes to mental well-being, and award-winning neuroscientist Camilla Nord is at the forefront of finding them. In this lecture, she offers a revelatory tour of the scientific and technological developments that are revolutionising the way we think about mental health, showing why and how events - and treatments - can affect people in such different ways.

In this lecture, Nord reframes mental health as an intricate, automated process that is different for all of us. She examines a considerable diversity of treatments, from therapy and medication to recreational drugs and electrical brain stimulation, to show how they work and why they sometimes don't. In doing so, she reveals how the small things we do to lift our mood during a day - a piece of chocolate, a coffee, chatting to a friend - often work on the same pathways in our brain as the latest pharmacological treatments for mental health disorders. Whether they help us manage pain, learn from experience or expend energy on the things necessary for our survival, these conscious actions are part of a complex process unique to each individual and the constant backdrop to our everyday lives.