BRAINLAND

In this podcast Hayley talks us through the early history of puppets in opera, including the eighteenth century fashion for opera composed specifically for puppets. She goes on to describe the conclusions reached in her doctoral research, applying musicological thinking to marionette operas in our era, conclusions she considers applicable more widely to cinema and animation. These include her theo...

In this podcast, after outlining some of the positive and negative of religious behaviour, Patrick discusses the key areas currently being studied in order to better understand the cognitive neuroscience of religion. These include REM sleep, the effects of psychedelic substances and the default mode network. ‘Decentering’, a key aspect of his team’s approach to the subject is explained along with...

'A Matter of Life and Death' (AMOLAD) is a 1946 film by Michael Powell and Emerich Pressberger. Peter Carter, a bomber pilot is returning from the last raid of the war. His plane and parachute are shot up so he decides to 'jump rather than fry' and has a last conversation over the radio with June, an American radio operator before jumping, as he expects, to his death. He doesn't die but washes up...

Susan Tomes is an internationally acclaimed and award-winning pianist specialising in chamber music as well as solo repertoire. Here she talks to Stephen Brown about her musical origins in Edinburgh, what it was like being the first woman to read music at King’s College Cambridge, how she built her performing career starting from a single room in Crystal Palace, and the transformative influence of...

In this podcast academic and clinical music therapists, musicians and friends Helen Odell-Miller and Penny Rogers discuss their life work – music therapy. They define and outline the varieties of music therapy, discuss their journey from training as musicians to studying music therapy and cognitive psychology (Penny) and psychodynamic psychotherapy (Helen). Penny talks about her clinical work in v...

This is another in the Vital Spark series exploring facets of creativity with a range of artists and academics. In this conversation Italian director, actor and teacher Chiara D'Anna speaks about her work and creative process, beginning with images, physical and emotional atmosphere before involving words. We discuss her acting in film, particularly with Peter Strickland (Duke of Burgundy and Berb...

The Vital Spark’ is an occasional series delving into aspects of creativity. For this podcast Stephen Brown travelled to the far west of Cornwall for a conversation with novelist, screen writer and fellow cellist Patrick Gale. Patrick talks about his unusual childhood, his journey from musician and singer to becoming a successful writer, the life events that help enliven his novels and the researc...

In this special extended edition of the podcast, we take a deep dive into the life and work of Hans Berger, the German psychiatrist who discovered the EEG a century ago this year, the inspiration for a major character in the opera Brainland . Cornelius Borck is a leading German historian of medicine and science and an expert on Berger and his work. In a wide ranging conversation he describes the s...

Why do we respond to puppets? That's what this episode explores, with the help of Pia and Ana, academics who approach the question from different perspectives. We discover what is meant by the 'uncanny valley' and how it links puppetry to robots (and zombies!) and discuss if 'conceptual blending' might be useful. Does the old notion of 'suspending disbelief' hold water? Ana talks about her project...

In this conversation poet and visual artist Andrea Mbarushimana and neurologist/poet Heather Angus-Leppan talk about their project exploring the value of chatbots to help people cope with and better understand their epilepsy. The project began by collecting over 1700 questions about the condition posted by people living with epilepsy. Heather describes how Andrea was integral to the project, facil...

Peter Vuust is that rare combintion - a professional musician and composer, and a professor of neuroscience investigating how our brain responds to music. This wide ranging conversation includes why we humans are so attracted and responsive to music, the link between groove and predictive cognition, the Mozart effect, the tingle/chill factor in music, and how to get more out of atonal music. As if...

Those animated objects, puppets, can work powerfully on our emotions and generate empathy, seemingly tapping into some very basic part of our psyche and, perhaps, neurology. Which is the main reason why we are devoting two podcasts to this subject. In this podcast Claudia Orenstein, a leading authority on puppets and physical theatre worldwide discusses the various ways objects are deployed in per...

Since completing her degree in interactive art 30 years ago Luciana Haill has worked at the cutting edge of the field. She recounts how childhood meningitis got her interested in the brain and Grey Walter's 'The Living Brain' the EEG - she sold her car in order to buy a portable EEG recorder, her tool for exploring the boundary of consciousness. More recently, her obsession with lost historic...

In this podcast Professor Andrew Jackson talks about how he came to be, literally, at the cutting edge between the human central nervous system and new neuro-technologies. After explaining ‘neural interface’, he discusses how the field is starting to change the management of paralysis and epilepsy. There is also an interesting discussion about the effects of exhsiting current tech, including possi...

In this podcast neurologist and academic Anjan Chatterjee opens up the world of neuroaesthetics, from basic definitions and a taxonomy of aesthetics, including individual responses to the built environment, to neurological correlates of our responses to beauty. The influence of expectation and beliefs regarding value of objects/works of art are also touched upon, and the way neuroimaging resu...

In this podcast we give the brain a rest and take an excursion into the music world. Trevor Ford, Professor at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, talks to Stephen Brown about his journey from the East End of London to a career as a professional flautist, organist and choir master (an organiser of the annual 'Messiah from Scratch' at the Albert Hall) alongside, accountancy, business managemen...

'The Vital Spark' is an occasional series exploring different facets of creativity. Hugh Rickards, in conversation with Stephen Brown and Ken Barrett, talks about Tourette's syndrome, including a suggested association with increased levels of creativity. After outlining why he was first attracted to Neuropsychiatry (Oliver Sacks' fault) and to do research on this condition, Hugh goes over what we...

In this podcast Ken Barrett is in conversation with Professor David Redish. David explains what is meant by ‘computational psychiatry’ and the concept of ‘computational breakdown', with a great falling bridge analogy, before going on to outline how this approach is being applied to addiction and depression. Our discussion ranges over aspects of memory, eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing...

In this podcast Ken Barrett is in conversation with Marcello Ienca, professor of the ethics of articicial intelligence. We discuss the ethical challenges of new neurotechnologices, including brain-computer interfaces and other wearable and implanted devices. Are our brains about to be at risk of being ‘hacked’ or ‘jacked’ and what steps should be taken to safeguard us? Marcello outlines and unpack...

In this podcast Professor Jonathan D Moreno, author of the book Mind Wars, is in conversation with Ken Barrett. Their chat ranges from human experimentation, in the US in World War 2, to fears of mind control in the intelligence community in the 1950s and related experiments with LSD and mescaline, DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) and various specific projects up to the present da...

In this podcast Professor Phil Husbands is in conversation with Andy Platman and Ken Barrett. The chat ranges over a number of topics presented in Phil’s excellent book Robots: What everyone needs to know, including his views on the current media hysterics regarding the immediate dangers of AI, the surprisingly long history of robotics, ethical challenges of AI and autonomous robots now and in the...

In this podcast contemporary artist Susan Aldworth is in conversation with Ken Barrett. Susan has worked on collaboratively with neuroscientists and clinicians for over twenty years following a health scare. We speak about her projects based on brain imaging, epilepsy and sleep, her interest in embroidery as a story telling medium, combined with old garments, and her novel appraoch to print-m...

In this podcast Professor Philippa Levine, formerly Walter Prescott Webb Professor in History and Ideas at the University of Texas at Austin, is in conversation with Andy Platman and Ken Barrett. We discuss the British origins of eugenic ideas and the worldwide movement that followed. Nazi eugenics, from sterilisation to euthanasia are explored, but also how these ideas took off and were applied,...

In this episode Raymond Tallis, philosopher, poet and one time professor of geriatric medicine is in conversation with Stephen Brown. Their chat moves from the metaphysics of quantum mechanics to the definition of art and the language of music. Goethe's view of poetry and Scruton's thoughts on music get a mention before moving to the art of medicine, the difference between philosophical enquiry an...

In this podcast writer Alex Frith and illustrator Daniel Locke provide fascinating insights into the creation of their book Two Heads , produced in collaboration with Uta and Chris Frith. This is a deep dive into their creative process and a wider discussion about telling science stories using the comic format. The conversation ranged from Tintin to Dave Gibbons via Peanuts, Micky Mouse and Spider...