All in the Mind
All In The Mind is Radio National's weekly foray into the mental universe, the mind, brain and behaviour - everything from addiction to artificial intelligence.
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2008-03-29 Your irrational mind
Like it or not, you?re not the beast of reason you think you are. Dan Ariely, a behavioural economist at MIT, argues that we?re surprisingly and predictably irrational. Sex, freebies, expectations, placebos, price -- they all cloud our better judgment in rather sobering ways. Dan?s unique research w ...
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2008-03-22 Your inner ape
Apes are our closest relatives -- nearly 99% of our genes are identical -- but how do our inner lives compare? Culture, empathy, language, learning -- do chimps have the smarts to pull these off? Channel your `inner ape? with the world?s top primatologists as they unearth surprising results.
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2008-03-15 The psyche on Death Row
Four Australians remain on Death Row in prisons offshore. Guilty or innocent -- what does facing your demise by another?s hand do to the psyche? This week, extraordinary first hand accounts from men who spent decades incarcerated on Death Row. And, psychologists investigating the state of the confin ...
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2008-03-08 Part 2 of 2 - The Nature of Consciousness debate
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 greates ...
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2008-03-01 Part 1 of 2 - The Nature of Consciousness debate
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 gra ...
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2008-02-23 Women offenders: Confronting the confronting
Cases of filicide and infanticide confront us to our core -- but what leads women to kill their own children? And, from cognitive therapy to chemical castration -- most treatments for sexual offenders target men. Do women offenders require a different approach? Three female forensic specialists joi ...
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2008-02-16 Greening the Psyche
Intuitively we sense that nature relaxes us - even small pockets of green in the concrete urban jungle seem to make a difference. But finding good scientific evidence for how and why has been more difficult - until now. Crime rates, academic performance, aggression and even ADHD. Could a bit of gre ...
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2008-02-09 Proust was a neuroscientist
Of course Proust wasn?t a neuroscientist. Or was he? Science writer Jonah Lehrer argues 19th century artists from Paul Cezanne to Virginia Woolf, Gertrude Stein to Walt Whitman anticipated some of the great discoveries about the mind and brain in their ground-breaking art and prose -- realisations t ...
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2008-02-02 The psychological power of forgiveness in South Africa
Psychologist Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela was on South Africa?s historic Truth and Reconciliation Commission, chairing many of its tortuous public hearings about atrocities committed in the apartheid era. In an unprecedented dialogue she met with one of apartheid's most abhorrent killers, in jail, to exp ...
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2008-01-26 The Neurobiology of Suicide
Psychiatrist and neuroscientist, John Mann, has a grisly job. He wants to understand why some deeply depressed souls take their own lives, yet others resist. His team's post-mortem studies suggest a distinct neurobiology of suicide. And, for those left behind, might there be a definite 'biology of s ...
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2008-01-19 Behind the scenes: animal experimentation ethics committees
A rare glimpse from the inside. An Australian neuroscientist and an animal welfarist share their experiences of working together on animal experimental and ethics committees. Personal philosophies are challenged, compromises are made, and change happens through dialogue. Good animal welfare equals g ...
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2008-01-12 Julie?s Story: Diary of a brain tumour
Like many young Australians in their early 20s, writer Julie Deakin headed to Europe for her first `Big Adventure?. But holidaying in Hungary with her sister she found herself diagnosed with an aggressive brain tumour and scheduled for immediate surgery, in a land whose language she didn?t speak. ...
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2008-01-05 The Blind Brain
A completely blind artist paints perfect replicas of the world he?s never seen. An Indian child born with cataracts miraculously gains full visual capacity at age 12. People born blind experience their `seeing? mind in different ways, and are helping scientists challenge the dogma of a brain rigidly ...
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2007-12-29 PANIC! A cultural history
From the collective paranoia of Cold War hysteria to the medicated, disordered mind - sociologist and performance artist Jackie Orr has penned a passionate and political history of panic. She delved into the rich archives of the war-time psyche, confronted her own panic attacks, and even enrolled i ...
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2007-12-22 Deep listening: working with Indigenous mental distress
'How do I get them to talk?' Hinted-at events, listening to the silence, roundabout stories. Mental health and other professionals inexperienced at working with Indigenous clients struggle with the limits of their cultural awareness, with language barriers and with the historical legacies of mistru ...
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2007-12-15 Human Rights and psychiatry (Part 2 of 2): Who speaks for the chained and incarcerated?
Chained in a concrete cell, involuntarily medicated, and isolated. Leading psychiatrist Vikram Patel has amassed a series of shocking photos from asylum settings around the globe -- some taken by `inmates?. He?s challenging his own profession to take action. And, the new Convention on the Rights of ...
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2007-12-08 Human Rights and psychiatry (Part 1 of 2): Should doctors be involved in interrogation o...
They know the machinations of the mind better than many. So do mental health professionals have a legitimate role in the interrogation of prisoners of war or detainees, in the interests of national security? The American Psychiatric Association and Australia?s equivalent have said `no way?. The peak ...
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2007-12-01 Brain surgery on the wireless! One year on [Part 2 of 2]
Last year All in the Mind first took you on an audiophonic adventure into the operating theatre and into the brain of Kia, as the tendrils of an arteriovenous malformation (AVM) were extracted from her frontal lobes. Eleven months after the surgery, meet Kia again for an update on life post-op. Surv ...
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2007-12-01 Brain surgery on the wireless! - One year on [Part 2 of 2]
Last year All in the Mind first took you on an audiophonic adventure into the operating theatre and into the brain of Kia, as the tendrils of an arteriovenous malformation (AVM) were extracted from her frontal lobes. 11 months after the surgery, meet Kia again for an update on life post-op. Survivin ...
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2007-11-24 Brain surgery on the Wireless! (Part 1 of 2)
Don your gown and mask, and prepare yourself. Natasha Mitchell takes you into the operating theatre of leading neurosurgeon Professor Jeffrey Rosenfeld at the Alfred Hospital, and inside the head of Kia, his patient, as she has an arteriovenous malformation extracted from her frontal lobes. A repeat ...
All in the Mind
