Past Programs
Brain and Nervous System - 2003
2009 | 2008 | 2007 | 2006 | 2005 | 2004 | 2003 | 2002
Plastic Brains and the Neuroscience of Psychotherapy
28/12/2003
Summer Series - originally broadcast 22 June 2003
We're born, we age and then it's downhill for our brains, surely?
Neuroscientists used to believe that we're born with all the neurons we're ever
going to have - and after a lifetime of stress, drugs, disease and sleep
deprivation - the prognosis for our brains wasn't very good. But the latest
evidence is that our brains are extremely plastic organs, and even continue to
sprout neurons well into old age. It's news that has psychotherapists pricking
up their ears - could psyche and brain biology finally come together on the
therapists couch? This week, two head specialists - a psychotherapist and a neuroscientist - join Natasha Mitchell to debunk a few mental myths.
Meditation and the Mind: Science Meets Buddhism
14/09/2003
This week the Dalai Lama joins behavioural scientists and other Buddhist intellectuals at MIT in Massachusetts - in what has become a regular meeting of minds. Can modern science make use of Buddhism's 2500 year investigation of the mind? Matthieu Ricard, a buddhist monk at Shechen Monastery in Kathmandu and French interpreter for the Dalai Lama, and neuroscientist Richard Davidson both think so. And they both join Natasha Mitchell to discuss destructive emotions, the science of subjective experience, and the latest on the neuroscience of meditation.
Alien Minds?: Getting Inside Babies' Heads
03/08/2003
As you peer into your baby's crib, can you be sure of what's going on inside their heads? Is theirs an alien mind, vastly different to our own? People long believed that babies were incapable of higher thought. Psychologist William James described babies as "living in a blooming buzzing confusion"; philosopher John Locke argued they were born as a blank slate; whilst Freud believed that children's most basic perceptions of the world were deeply distorted fantasies. But today's developmental psychologists argue that we shouldn't underestimate the brain capacity of babies. Join two of the world's leaders in the field, as they contemplate the brilliance of little minds.
Plastic Brains and the Neuroscience of Psychotherapy
22/06/2003
We're born, we age and then it's downhill for our brains, surely?
Neuroscientists used to believe that we're born with all the neurons we're ever
going to have - and after a lifetime of stress, drugs, disease and sleep
deprivation - the prognosis for our brains wasn't very good. But the latest
evidence is that our brains are extremely plastic organs, and even continue to
sprout neurons well into old age. It's news that has psychotherapists pricking
up their ears - could psyche and brain biology finally come together on the
therapists couch? This week, two head specialists - a psychotherapist and a neuroscientist - join Natasha Mitchell to debunk a few mental myths.
Natural Born Cyborgs: Minds, Technologies, and the Future of Human Intelligence
18/05/2003
The cyborg, that posthuman hybrid of flesh and machine, has long been fodder for futuristic Hollywood flicks like Terminator. Cyborgs make most of us nervous about what sort of future we're facing. But acclaimed philosopher and cognitive scientist Andy Clark reckons all of us are already Natural Born Cyborgs, with minds made to merge with the material world - your watch, paper, computer. Our mind, he argues, extends well beyond our brain, beyond our ancient skinbag and into the world at large. The cyborgian future is here...and it always been.
Is the Visual World a Grand Illusion?
11/05/2003
Suspend reality and join the world's philosophers in their contemplation of a very tricky problem indeed. Open your eyes and it feels as if our experience of vision and consciousness are continuous, complex, rich and colourful - thanks to some hard work put in by the brain. Actually, perhaps not. There are all sorts of gaps in our conscious experience which has prompted some to argue that we don't actually see the world as it really is. Yes, seriously, could it all be a grand illusion? The conundrum of human consciousness strikes again on All in the Mind.
An Aneurysm in the Family?
04/05/2003
The ticking time bomb that is an aneurysm. They can burst with very little warning and having one can be like living on a precipice. Surgery has its risks and life after a ruptured aneurysm brings all sorts of challenges. Only 1 in 10,000 of us are likely to experience one of these little beasts, usually in our brain. But in some extraordinary cases they run in the family across generations - mum, daughter, aunt, son - and an international study is trying to find out why this is. Sue Clark reports.
Animal Spirits: The Mind in History
27/04/2003
Once 'animal spirits' were fluid beasts, distilled from blood, that roamed our nervous system and rummaged the pores of our brain. The patterns of their flow carried the contents of our thoughts and were the going explanation for vision, memory, imagination, belief, passion and desire. When animal spirits misbehaved or became polluted they could make us ill, in both body and soul. For most of this millennium Westerners firmly believed in these lively and impish carriers of our identity and they only disappeared after the nervous system was found to be electrical in nature. This week, philosopher John Sutton sets a few animal spirits free to explore the mind in history.
Bionic Brains and Memory: World's First Brain Prosthesis?
13/04/2003
Is your memory failing? Considered popping in a memory chip? This week,
philosophical fantasies meet the world of the modern 'neural engineer'. All In
the Mind ponders a curious future where brains are wired to computers, and
silicon neurons replace your own. Scientists have just developed an early
silicon model for an artificial hippocampus, a part of the brain so crucial to
our sense of self. Its helps us make memories, and is often damaged in those
with Alzheimers or after a stroke. But will these silicon recollections be your
own?
Summer Series 6: Brain Death
02/02/2003
The organ transplant industry has given life to thousands of people. But it has also given us a new type of human: the beating heart cadaver, whose cerebral functions have shut down, but whose blood is still circulating in order to keep vital organs fresh. Until the early 1970s, such a person would have been considered alive. But since the concept of brain death was introduced, we now have to grapple with a new set of ethical questions and a new understanding of what it means to be human.
