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Emotions, Mind Control and Broken Brains

Interested in how the our brains work and what happens when they break?  Check out these short BBC productions.

Into the Mind - Emotions (49:10)

Where do emotions come from, and why do we experience them? Is there a connection between reason and emotion? In this program, host Michael Mosley uses vintage footage and his own willingness to be a test subject to review classic and sometimes disturbing experiments on the nature of fear, love, and empathy. 

Into the Mind - Mind Control (49:22)

Host Michael Mosley provides an illustrated history of some of the most notorious psychology experiments ever conducted in science’s attempt to explore behavior, brainwashing, and free will. The survey includes Ivan Pavlov, his famous dogs, and his less-famous test trials on children; the CIA’s MK-ULTRA project, in which LSD was given to unsuspecting test subjects; and Robert Heath’s experimental psychosurgery on African-American subjects. Mosley also talks with B. F. Skinner’s daughter; a man who participated in Stanley Milgram’s obedience experiments; and a survivor of William Sargant’s electroshock therapy. Under the guidance of controversial psychiatrist David Nutt, Mosley even ingests psilocybin to explore its potential in treating mental illness.

Into the Mind - Broken Brains (51:52)

Head injury, epilepsy, experimental surgery gone wrong—in this program, host Michael Mosley provides evidence that these medical misfortunes have helped break new ground in understanding how healthy brains work. Examples include HM, the victim of a botched lobotomy that left him unable to form new memories, but whose subsequent participation in studies significantly advanced knowledge of human memory; Paul Broca’s identification of a speech production area in the frontal lobes, illustrated by a visit to the Musée Dupuytren, where the brains of his patients are still preserved; and the case of a split-brain operation that cured epilepsy, but with an unforeseen result: the patient’s left hand seemed to have a mind of its own.

Want more streaming media options?  Take a look at COM library's streaming media library guide.