Prof Thorpe is a neuroscientist who studies how we recognise natural images and sounds, often showing that even a single model neuron can perform seemingly complex tasks (like ultra-fast detection of an animal in a photograph). His behavioural experiments are as surprising: we start moving our eyes towards animals in images even before there is time for the message to have been passed through the visual cortex of the brain. He has set up spin-off companies for practical applications of these neural models. He is currently testing how reliable people's long-term memory is for vision and hearing, using obscure TV programmes and advertisements that haven't been aired for decades.