Friday 27 January lecture on sex differences in the brain
Dick Swaab is known for his work on sex differences in the brain and this will be the subject of his lecture at the Ganymedes Borrel, entitled: ‘Sexual differentiation of our brain: relation to gender-identity and sexual orientation.’
The Leiden Ganymenes Borrel

Monday 6 February lecture the clock in our brain
Swaab’s discovery relating to sex differences in the brain was only a small part of what is at the crux of the research: that almost everything in our brains – our personality, our abilities and limitations as well as our predisposition to brain diseases such as Alzheimer’s – is determined in the uterus already. This is the essence of the message of ‘We are our brains’. In his lecture, Swaab will focus on a number of strategies relating to our twenty-four hour schedule with the aim of improving the function of the clock in our brains. The lecture has been organised by the Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition (LIBC).
The clock in our brains

Swaab’s book ‘We are our brains’ sparked a flood of reactions, which took him by surprise, ‘I thought you could write what you want and people would put it into perspective, but people are more emotional than you think. It was also new to me that whole groups such as psychologists would react emotionally. They said you can have the brain but the spirit is ours.’ Dick Swaab quote from NRC newspaper’s reading group (NRC Leesclub): ‘I hadn’t yet heard a good argument to the contrary’

Brain researcher Dick Swaab was Professor of Neurobiology at the University of Amsterdam and director of the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience.