Noted neuroscientist V.S. Ramachandran, a professor of psychology at the University of California, San Diego and director of the UCSD Center for Brain and Cognition, has been selected to deliver the Reith Lectures, a prestigious lecture series founded by the BBC in 1948.

While many of the lectures are taking place in England, the final lecture in the series will be held in La Jolla, April 8, at The Neurosciences Institute. The Reith lectures will be broadcast on BBC Radio 4 throughout the month of April. The lectures can be heard on www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/reith2003 after April 2. The subject of this year’s lecture series is “The Emerging Mind.�

Ramachandran, known for his groundbreaking work in neurology and visual perception, is the first physician/experimental psychologist to be given this honor since the series began with Bertrand Russell in 1949. He has published more than 120 papers in scientific journals on topics ranging from how the brain perceives art to the phenomenon of phantom limbs. He is the author of the critically acclaimed book “Phantoms in the Brain,� which has been translated into eight languages and was the basis of a public television series in the UK and the USA.

The Reith Lectures were inaugurated in 1948 by the BBC to mark the historic contribution made to public service broadcasting by Sir John Reith, the corporation’s first director-general. Each year, the BBC invites a leading figure to deliver a series of lectures on the radio. The aim is to advance public understanding and debate about significant issues of contemporary interest. In addition to philosopher Bertrand Russell, the very first Reith lecturer, other honorees have included historian Arnold Toynbee, scientist Robert Oppenheimer, and economist John Kenneth Galbraith.