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Alexandra Morton-Hayward knows more than most about the human brain. Every night her own brain causes her excruciating pain in the form of a ‘cluster headache’ — a pain so bad it’s often described as the most pain a person can physically experience. But despite this, she is a forensic anthropologist leading the effort to understand why some brains preserve for thousands of years without any embalming, freezing or fossilisation. From her lab at Oxford University, she holds the world's largest collection of preserved brains, some older than the Great Pyramid of Giza.

Today Dr Irene Pepperberg is regarded as the mother of avian cognition. But that accolade comes decades after being overlooked and ridiculed, both for being a female scientist in the 1970s and for daring to think that birds, with their walnut-sized brains, might have the ability to understand language. Alex, an African Grey parrot, would help Irene to change people's minds about what a 'bird-brain' can really do.

Uruguayan nature recordist Juan Pablo Culasso has a rare skill that only one in 10,000 people have — perfect pitch. His memory is as impressive as he can also identify hundreds of birds from listening to their song alone. Juan Pablo relies on his sense of hearing and ability to identify birds because he is blind. His talent led to a transformative moment on the Latin American TV gameshow, Super Cerebros.

Presenter: Asya Fouks
Producer: May Cameron

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(Photo: Cassette tape. Credit: Getty Images)