BBC Documentary The Brain with David Eagleman (c)
с ютюба в HD шесть отличных фильмов про то как работает мозг - великолепно сделано!
BBC documentary
Episode 1: What is Reality BBC Documentary 2016
Series in which Dr David Eagleman takes viewers on an extraordinary journey that explores how the brain, locked in silence and darkness without direct access to the world, conjures up the rich and beautiful world we all take for granted.
This episode begins with the astonishing fact that this technicolour multi-sensory experience we are having is a convincing illusion conjured up for us by our brains.
In the outside world there is no colour, no sound, no smell. These are all constructions of the brain. Instead, there is electromagnetic radiation, air compression waves and aromatic molecules, all of which are interpreted by the brain as colour, sound and smell.
We meet a man who is blind despite the fact that he has eyes that can see. His story reveals that it's the brain that sees, not the eyes. A woman with schizophrenia, whose psychotic episodes were her reality, emphasises the fact that whatever our brains tell us is out there, we believe it.
Visual illusions are reminders that what's important to the brain is not being faithful to 'reality', but enabling us to perceive just enough so that we can navigate successfully through it. The brain leaves a lot out of its beautiful rendition of the physical world, a fact that Dr Eagleman reveals using experiments and street demonstrations.
Each one of our brains is different, and so is the reality it produces. What is reality? It's whatever your brain tells you it is.
Ep 2: What Makes Me
This episode explores the question of how the brain gives rise to our thoughts, emotions, memories and personality. We see how the process of becoming 'you' starts at birth. The brain of a newborn baby is not yet fully developed, instead it grows and shapes itself around life experience.
Wiring up begins immediately, and rapidly, as the child's brain starts to adapt to whatever situation - culture, habitat, language - it's born into. This allows humans to flourish in any stimulating environment, but as the story of three Romanian orphans reveals, a lack of social contact and stimulation can result in permanent brain damage as the brain fails to make vital connections in those critical early years.
Tracing the development of the brain - the 'making of you' - through a lifetime, Dr Eagleman tests the social stress levels of teenagers as their brains go through profound changes, meets London cabbies whose intense training to memorize street maps physically alters the shape of their hippocampus, and joins a group of elderly nuns who are defying the symptoms of Alzheimer's by keeping their brains active and building up 'cognitive reserve'.
As we make new memories, learn new skills and have life experiences, the brain is constantly and dynamically rewiring itself. It never stops. Nor do we - the human brain is always changing, and therefore so are we. From cradle to grave, we are works in progress.
Ep 3: Who is in Control
This episode explores the great deception that greets us each morning when we wake up - it feels as though we are in conscious control of our lives, but in fact almost every action we take, every decision we make, every belief that we hold is driven by parts of the brain that we have no access to
Episode 4: How Do I Decide
Series in which Dr David Eagleman takes viewers on an extraordinary journey that explores how the brain, locked in silence and darkness without direct access to the world, conjures up the rich and beautiful world we all take for granted.
The human brain is the most complex object we've discovered in the universe, and every day much of its neural circuitry is taken up with the tens of thousands of decisions we need to make. This episode takes a journey through the unseen world of decisions, and how they get made. We start with a simple one - choosing a flavour of frozen yoghurt - and learn that every decision we make is born of a 'winner takes all' competition between rival neural networks.
We meet a woman who is unable to make decisions because of damage to her orbito-frontal cortex - an area that is key to integrating the signals streaming in from the body - and discover that feedback from the body is vital to the decision-making process. Dr Eagleman reveals that something as simple as when you ate your last meal can even influence life-changing decisions, as a study on judges showed they were less likely to give parole when they were hungry.
So many of our 'conscious' life-defining decisions are actually steered by unconscious influences, whether it's deciding whom we find attractive or how to vote in the next election. Professor Read Montague reveals that he can be 95 per cent certain about which political party we will vote for based on our brain's response to disgusting imagery. The more disgusted a brain response is, the more likely that person is to vote conservative.
Finally, Dr Eagleman takes a look at how we can take better control of the decisions we make, and uses an exciting new technique called fMRI neurofeedback to retrain the brains of drug addicts who want to make better decisions, to say 'no'.
Episode 5. Why Do I Need You BBC Documentary 2016
This episode explores how the human brain relies on other brains to thrive and survive. Dr Eagleman demonstrates how, from as young as ten months old, babies can discern who is trustworthy and who isn't.
Our fundamentally social brain draws us together into groups. An experiment with a simple game of catch reveals that the pain we feel when we are excluded from the group is the same kind of pain as when we hurt ourselves. The powerful testimony of Sarah Shourd, who was imprisoned in Iran for over a year and was kept in solitary confinement - and others like her - demonstrates the absolute need the human brain has for others. She describes the slow disappearance of her 'self'.
In groups, humans have accomplished great things - but there's a darker side. For every 'in group' there is always an 'out group'. Dr Eagleman reveals the results of an experiment he carried out in his lab showing that people who witness a hand getting stabbed with a needle feel less empathy at a deep neural level if that hand is labelled with a religion to which they do not belong.
He journeys to modern-day Bosnia to hear from an eyewitness about what happened in 1995 when genocide returned to Europe. What could have allowed for such horrific group-on-group violence? Dr Eagleman believes that neuroscience offers important answers. Dr Lasana Harris at Leiden University has discovered that there are certain circumstances under which the human brain stops perceiving others as human and it becomes easier to suspend the moral and social rules we normally live by.
Finally, Dr Eaglemen explores what can be done to prevent these neural effects, and reveals that our fundamentally social nature holds the key.
Episode 6. Who Will We Be? BBC Documentary 2016
In this episode Dr Eagleman journeys into the future, and asks what's next for the human brain and for our species. Mother nature has evolved a brain that is able to rewire itself according to its environment. We meet Cameron Mott, who had half her brain removed at the age of four, but was able to develop normally as her brain rewired itself to take over the functions of the missing half. This extraordinary plasticity of the brain opens up all sorts of possibilities for enhancing our reality with new technology.
Dr Eagleman shows us ways in which we'll be able to plug new sensory inputs into our brains and demonstrates his lab's new invention - a vibratory vest which turns sound into patterns of vibration that the brain can learn to interpret. Technology can also allow the brain to control new outputs such as artificial limbs. We meet a disabled patient who can't move her body from the neck down. Electrodes eavesdropping on her motor cortex pick up on electrical signals there and transmit them to an arm across the room.
We may have evolved two arms and two legs, but there is nothing to stop us from extending - and enhancing - our physical selves in the future. These kinds of technological advances are poised to change us - as individuals and as a society - but the biggest game changer as a species would be if we found a way to upload our brains into digital space. Dr Eagleman explores what it would take to do so. We would need powerful computers, and a complete map of the brain's connections, as well as the activity that runs on top.
Dr Eagleman visits the Blue Brain Projects in Lausanne, where scientists are attempting to model a simulation of a working human brain. The chance of success is still many years away, but the possibility leads us to the biggest question in neuroscience - could a simulation of a human brain ever be conscious? Could 'you' exist digitally? And if so, how do we know we are not already living in a simulation?
BBC documentary
Episode 1: What is Reality BBC Documentary 2016
Series in which Dr David Eagleman takes viewers on an extraordinary journey that explores how the brain, locked in silence and darkness without direct access to the world, conjures up the rich and beautiful world we all take for granted.
This episode begins with the astonishing fact that this technicolour multi-sensory experience we are having is a convincing illusion conjured up for us by our brains.
In the outside world there is no colour, no sound, no smell. These are all constructions of the brain. Instead, there is electromagnetic radiation, air compression waves and aromatic molecules, all of which are interpreted by the brain as colour, sound and smell.
We meet a man who is blind despite the fact that he has eyes that can see. His story reveals that it's the brain that sees, not the eyes. A woman with schizophrenia, whose psychotic episodes were her reality, emphasises the fact that whatever our brains tell us is out there, we believe it.
Visual illusions are reminders that what's important to the brain is not being faithful to 'reality', but enabling us to perceive just enough so that we can navigate successfully through it. The brain leaves a lot out of its beautiful rendition of the physical world, a fact that Dr Eagleman reveals using experiments and street demonstrations.
Each one of our brains is different, and so is the reality it produces. What is reality? It's whatever your brain tells you it is.
Ep 2: What Makes Me
This episode explores the question of how the brain gives rise to our thoughts, emotions, memories and personality. We see how the process of becoming 'you' starts at birth. The brain of a newborn baby is not yet fully developed, instead it grows and shapes itself around life experience.
Wiring up begins immediately, and rapidly, as the child's brain starts to adapt to whatever situation - culture, habitat, language - it's born into. This allows humans to flourish in any stimulating environment, but as the story of three Romanian orphans reveals, a lack of social contact and stimulation can result in permanent brain damage as the brain fails to make vital connections in those critical early years.
Tracing the development of the brain - the 'making of you' - through a lifetime, Dr Eagleman tests the social stress levels of teenagers as their brains go through profound changes, meets London cabbies whose intense training to memorize street maps physically alters the shape of their hippocampus, and joins a group of elderly nuns who are defying the symptoms of Alzheimer's by keeping their brains active and building up 'cognitive reserve'.
As we make new memories, learn new skills and have life experiences, the brain is constantly and dynamically rewiring itself. It never stops. Nor do we - the human brain is always changing, and therefore so are we. From cradle to grave, we are works in progress.
Ep 3: Who is in Control
This episode explores the great deception that greets us each morning when we wake up - it feels as though we are in conscious control of our lives, but in fact almost every action we take, every decision we make, every belief that we hold is driven by parts of the brain that we have no access to
Episode 4: How Do I Decide
Series in which Dr David Eagleman takes viewers on an extraordinary journey that explores how the brain, locked in silence and darkness without direct access to the world, conjures up the rich and beautiful world we all take for granted.
The human brain is the most complex object we've discovered in the universe, and every day much of its neural circuitry is taken up with the tens of thousands of decisions we need to make. This episode takes a journey through the unseen world of decisions, and how they get made. We start with a simple one - choosing a flavour of frozen yoghurt - and learn that every decision we make is born of a 'winner takes all' competition between rival neural networks.
We meet a woman who is unable to make decisions because of damage to her orbito-frontal cortex - an area that is key to integrating the signals streaming in from the body - and discover that feedback from the body is vital to the decision-making process. Dr Eagleman reveals that something as simple as when you ate your last meal can even influence life-changing decisions, as a study on judges showed they were less likely to give parole when they were hungry.
So many of our 'conscious' life-defining decisions are actually steered by unconscious influences, whether it's deciding whom we find attractive or how to vote in the next election. Professor Read Montague reveals that he can be 95 per cent certain about which political party we will vote for based on our brain's response to disgusting imagery. The more disgusted a brain response is, the more likely that person is to vote conservative.
Finally, Dr Eagleman takes a look at how we can take better control of the decisions we make, and uses an exciting new technique called fMRI neurofeedback to retrain the brains of drug addicts who want to make better decisions, to say 'no'.
Episode 5. Why Do I Need You BBC Documentary 2016
This episode explores how the human brain relies on other brains to thrive and survive. Dr Eagleman demonstrates how, from as young as ten months old, babies can discern who is trustworthy and who isn't.
Our fundamentally social brain draws us together into groups. An experiment with a simple game of catch reveals that the pain we feel when we are excluded from the group is the same kind of pain as when we hurt ourselves. The powerful testimony of Sarah Shourd, who was imprisoned in Iran for over a year and was kept in solitary confinement - and others like her - demonstrates the absolute need the human brain has for others. She describes the slow disappearance of her 'self'.
In groups, humans have accomplished great things - but there's a darker side. For every 'in group' there is always an 'out group'. Dr Eagleman reveals the results of an experiment he carried out in his lab showing that people who witness a hand getting stabbed with a needle feel less empathy at a deep neural level if that hand is labelled with a religion to which they do not belong.
He journeys to modern-day Bosnia to hear from an eyewitness about what happened in 1995 when genocide returned to Europe. What could have allowed for such horrific group-on-group violence? Dr Eagleman believes that neuroscience offers important answers. Dr Lasana Harris at Leiden University has discovered that there are certain circumstances under which the human brain stops perceiving others as human and it becomes easier to suspend the moral and social rules we normally live by.
Finally, Dr Eaglemen explores what can be done to prevent these neural effects, and reveals that our fundamentally social nature holds the key.
Episode 6. Who Will We Be? BBC Documentary 2016
In this episode Dr Eagleman journeys into the future, and asks what's next for the human brain and for our species. Mother nature has evolved a brain that is able to rewire itself according to its environment. We meet Cameron Mott, who had half her brain removed at the age of four, but was able to develop normally as her brain rewired itself to take over the functions of the missing half. This extraordinary plasticity of the brain opens up all sorts of possibilities for enhancing our reality with new technology.
Dr Eagleman shows us ways in which we'll be able to plug new sensory inputs into our brains and demonstrates his lab's new invention - a vibratory vest which turns sound into patterns of vibration that the brain can learn to interpret. Technology can also allow the brain to control new outputs such as artificial limbs. We meet a disabled patient who can't move her body from the neck down. Electrodes eavesdropping on her motor cortex pick up on electrical signals there and transmit them to an arm across the room.
We may have evolved two arms and two legs, but there is nothing to stop us from extending - and enhancing - our physical selves in the future. These kinds of technological advances are poised to change us - as individuals and as a society - but the biggest game changer as a species would be if we found a way to upload our brains into digital space. Dr Eagleman explores what it would take to do so. We would need powerful computers, and a complete map of the brain's connections, as well as the activity that runs on top.
Dr Eagleman visits the Blue Brain Projects in Lausanne, where scientists are attempting to model a simulation of a working human brain. The chance of success is still many years away, but the possibility leads us to the biggest question in neuroscience - could a simulation of a human brain ever be conscious? Could 'you' exist digitally? And if so, how do we know we are not already living in a simulation?