Past Programs
Brain and Nervous System - 2004
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Rebels and the Cause - The Adolescent Brain
13/11/2004
This week on All in the Mind - the development of the adolescent brain. No matter which way you look at it - adolescence is an inherently turbulent time of life. Teenagers know it, parents certainly know it and now science is beginning to understand why. Imaging technology is revealing that certain parts of the brain don't fully mature until well in to our twenties. And yet risk taking, impulsivity and poor judgement - the traits so synonymous with adolescence, could be important for healthy long-term development.
Mind and Matter - Together at Last?
30/10/2004
Over the past 20 years we've seen an explosion of sophisticated brain scanning technologies which give us new insight into the physiology and chemistry of our brain - but surely there's more to our minds than this kilo of spongy matter. Followers of the Freudian discipline of psychotherapy would certainly agree. In the past hard edge neuroscientists and the so called 'talking therapists' have rarely seen eye to eye - but all this could be changing according to eminent neuroscientist and psychoanalyst Dr Mark Solms. Using a fascinating case study of a patient with Korsakoff's syndrome, he shows how scientific rigour applied to a fuller appreciation of the human mind can give new insights.
A Man, his Mind, and an MRI.
23/10/2004
Open your mind for a journey into one man's brain and find out some of the mysteries of your own. Author Steven Johnson puts himself into the 'high tech psychiatrist's chair'. By hooking himself up to some of the latest brain technologies he explores some of the secrets of his own mind. Why does he have a lifelong compulsion to tell jokes, why is he not convinced by the cheesy smile of the airline steward but melts with the open-hearted grin of a young child? Can brain science explain that indescribable shiver of pleasure triggered by an exquisite piece of music, and why does Pink Floyd do it for chickens?
Part 2 of 2 - The Nature of Consciousness debate
04/09/2004
Zombies, coma, conscious robots - be prepared to travel to places you may have been too scared to go before. From the Australian Science Festival, UK psychologist and writer Susan Blackmore, astrophysicist Paul Davies, and philosopher David Chalmers join Natasha Mitchell to debate one of the greatest mysteries of science - the nature of human consciousness. Will science ever be able to explain that uncanny feeling from the inside of being an "I" or a "Me"? Do cats and dogs have the same feeling too? And what about robots - are they about to?
Part 1 of 2 - The Nature of Consciousness debate
28/08/2004
Don your helmets psychonauts! Over the next two weeks, the 'Nature of Consciousness' debate from the Australian Science Festival. Join UK psychologist and writer Susan Blackmore, astrophysicist Paul Davies, and philosopher David Chalmers. Are you conscious now? How do you know? Could it all be a grand illusion? We know it more intimately than any other experience. Yet it remains one of the greatest mysteries of science. From animal minds to artificial intelligence, altered states to the depths of coma - the conundrum of consciousness has everyone stumped.
Brains in Vats, Bottles and Banks: The Strange Life of the Disembodied Brain.
07/08/2004
This week, a strange and philosophical trip into science fiction and medical ethics. What is the life of a brain without a body? Popular culture has long toyed with the spectacle of the brain in a vat, and the question of whether our cerebral self could exist outside of our bodies. From body-snatching to the rise of the modern brain bank, and Britain's macabre organ retention scandal - join Natasha Mitchell and historian and philosopher of science, Dr Cathy Gere, for an out of body experience.
Brain Injury in Children: A Neglected Epidemic?
17/07/2004
This week, what happens when little heads hit hard surfaces? When Byron was four years old he walked into the path of a car and was left severely brain damaged. 21 years later he's just graduated with a maths degree&8212;against all odds. But new evidence is starting to challenge long-held beliefs about the incredible plasticity of young brains, and their needs years after childhood injury. Is brain injury a neglected epidemic among children and adolescents?
Left Brain Right Brain: Fact or Fiction?
26/06/2004
Are you a Right or Left brain person? Intuitive, artistic, lateral and visual?Or logical, verbal, detailed and analytical? Can the distinction be made? This week, All in the Mind unravels the popular rhetoric about the two hemispheres of our brain to separate fact from fiction. From mathematical giftedness to split brain patients - what's left and what's right? The Experts Forum on the Brain held on Friday 25 June in The Lab - ABC Science Online is now archived here, which is where you can find out how to stay in touch about future live expert forums.
Thomas Willis: The Soul Made Flesh
08/05/2004
The physician Thomas Willis was the guy who placed the soul back into the body. In the 17th century, his extraordinary efforts to document the brain's anatomy and function came at a time when the heart was considered the seat of all sensory experience, the soul was an immaterial and immortal beast, and the brain was little more than an unimpressive "bowl of curds". But despite setting the agenda for 21st century neuroscience, the world's first neurologist remains unknown to most of us today. Award-winning science journalist Carl Zimmer joins Natasha Mitchell this week to put Willis firmly back on his heady pedestal.
Meditation and the Mind - Science Meets Buddhism
17/04/2004
Last year the Dalai Lama joined 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? Mattheiu Ricard, a Buddhist monk at Shechen Monastery in Kathmandu and French interpreter for the Dalai Lama, and neuroscientist Richard Davidson both think so. And, in the repeat of a popular program, they both join Natasha Mitchell to discuss destructive emotions, the science of subjective experience and the latest on the neuroscience of meditation.
Wandering Wombs and Animal Spirits: Ancient Greeks on the Psyche
13/03/2004
From wandering wombs to animal spirits, All in the Mind unearths some secrets of the psyche in Ancient Greece. The physicians Hippocrates and Galen lived nearly 5 centuries apart, but helped transform the way we think about the body and brain. No longer were physical and nervous diseases the work of the supernatural. Dr Julius Rocca explores the extraordinary anatomical explorations of the brain by Galen. But medical historian Helen King, author of Hippocrates Women: Reading the Female Body in Ancient Greece, presses for deep caution in the rereading of the Hippocratic texts. In recent centuries, she argues, they've been misused to justify unfounded medical diagnoses, like hysteria in women. [Part of Greek Imprints: Radio National's Olympic Odyssey all March! More on the Odyssey...]
Natural Born Cyborgs: Minds, Technologies, and the Future of Human Intelligence
25/01/2004
Summer Series - originally broadcast 18 May 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?
18/01/2004
Summer Series - originally broadcast 11 May 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.
