All In The Mind

Happiness is paradoxical. What we think will give it to us - invariably doesn't. When we think we've got it - we invariably haven't. We're not even good at predicting what will make us happy people. From languishing to flourishing - can even the most troubled mind be primed for happiness? A panel of international trailblazers in the study of emotion, positive psychology and Buddhism get earnest ab...

An exhaustion like none other, disturbed and unrefreshing sleep, aching limbs, cognitive blur - often for many years. The physical impact is immense. Despite this, Chronic fatigue syndrome remains difficult to biologically and medically define, and to treat - even for those most specialized in the condition. World-leading researchers discuss the ongoing challenges and debates, the quest for a diag...

Acclaimed novelist Sue Woolfe, author of Leaning Towards Infinity, found herself mystified by her own mind as she wrestled with narrative of her book, The Secret Cure: a tale of love, science and autism. She set out to answer a question troubling her, 'What are people who sit in rooms making up stories doing with their minds?' She lays her writer's psyche bare to discuss shame, subversion, control...

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 sadness' too? Also, a bereft father writes to his dead son, and asks 'why?'

Knowledge can be dangerous. As neuroscience delves more deeply into our organ of thought and its complex soup of neurotransmitters - could it also be exploited for malign purposes? Is the brain the next target of terrorism? Pharmaceutically enhanced soldiers, chemical torture, incapacitants, neurological weaponry... The possibilities are frightening and progress rapid. Two leading researchers into...

One person's spoken language might sound like gobbledy gook to another - but when it comes to music do we beat to a common evolutionary drum? Could music be the universal language - linking minds across cultures and ancestral time? And, which came first - music or language? Don your headphones and climb aboard for an acoustic adventure. Does music lie at the heart...and brain...of what it means to...

The Brain. It's been called the final frontier of science. Colourful fMRI scans light up our TV screens and newspapers promising to reveal the secrets of the psyche. From the search for the brain's God Spot, to the rapid rise of neuroeconomics, neuromarketing and neuroethics - makes for sexy headlines - but have journalists become blinded by the lights and allure of the brain scan? Are we telling...

Why can two children born into the same household be like two different peas in a pod? Harvard's Jerome Kagan trailblazed the controversial science of temperament to investigate why. In a career that spans more than half a century, now he's going into battle for our minds, with a compelling retrospective, An Argument for Mind. To some an iconoclast - one of the biggest names in psychology of our t...

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. It was the start of an eight-year saga before her death in 1998, confronting a tumour that wouldn't go...

Self harm and self-denigration. Radical mood swings, and diabolical, destructive behaviours. For those labelled as having Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) - life is intolerable. Not the least because it's a diagnosis often stigmatised by the very profession responsible for giving it. This week, confronting stories about a confronting condition. Of the estimated 1-2% of the population said to...

It conjures up images of the Six Million Dollar Man or Star Trek. A bionic eye for the profoundly blind. What are the prospects for a prosthesis or retinal chip to restore vision? Can engineers really replicate the deeply subjective experience that is seeing? And, would near enough be good enough? Could a few spots of light compromise the other well honed senses of touch, sound and smell that colo...

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 hard-wired for vision. And, Zoltan Torey, blinded 56 years ago in an industrial accident, shares hi...

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 in the clinical trial of a drug for panic disorder, in her quest to excavate our panicky past and pres...

Transhumanists are hell-bent on extending their lives beyond the current limits of the flesh, by exploiting cutting-edge genomics, stem-cell research, robotics and nanotechnology. Engineering evolution is their goal. But can they re-engineer our Darwinian mind? Leda Cosmides, renowned pioneer of the controversial field evolutionary psychology, asks, 'Are We Already Transhuman?' Don't miss this Tem...

Pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly (makers of Prozac) have agreed to pay upwards of 1.2 billion US dollars to nearly 30,000 patients who claim their bestseller antipsychotic medication, Zyprexa (Olanzapine) has resulted in diabetes, weight gain and other complications and that these risks were downplayed. Secret documents are leaked, the newspaper headlines start screaming, and citizen journalists s...

They survive civil war, refugee camps, dispossession, enforced resettlement. Yet nothing can quite prepare a refugee for the challenge of adapting to life in a new and foreign home. This week, are the world's refugees at increased risk of drug and alcohol use and abuse? What's the international evidence, and what interventions work? Members of Australia's Sudanese community share their own concern...

Lead in paint. Methylmercury in fish. Arsenic in groundwater. Just some of the toxic insults on our vulnerable brains. But are they the thin end of the industrial chemical wedge? Could the world's children be experiencing a silent pandemic in neurodevelopmental disorders? Harvard's Professor Phillipe Grandjean thinks so, and joins Deborah Cory-Slechta at Rutgers University to unpick the latest com...

Your brain is a resilient organ, but vulnerable to nasty environmental insults too. This week, in the first of two shows navigating our neurotoxic world: it's been dubbed 'Chemofog' and 'Chemobrain' by cancer survivors: short-term memory loss, foggy thoughts, fatigue - lingering sometimes years after chemotherapy. Could chemo be doing more than killing off cancer cells? New research suggests it ma...

Mind. Brain. Are they the same thing, or is the mind something special? The conundrum has perplexed us for centuries. Descartes split the two - into a spiritual, soul-like mind and fleshly, material brain. But in 1956 a group of 'renegade' Oxford graduates Down Under, now international stars in philosophy, launched a challenge. Consciousness and the brain were united, and any talk of mental spooks...

Repeated unwanted advances, being followed, distressing packages and letters in the mail, relentless phone calls and emails - this can all be part of the terrifying experience of being stalked. It's a social problem that's increasing and doesn't just happen to celebrities. What motivates stalkers? The latest research from forensic psychiatry, and one woman's devastating account of the impact a per...

As the world wages war over geographical, religious and historical turf - a growing number of big note scientists want religious faith put under the microscope. Uber-philosopher of mind and popular provocateur, Daniel Dennett, author of Darwin's Dangerous Idea, is one of them. He joins Natasha Mitchell to discuss his latest controversial offering, Breaking the Spell. Be provoked...

Northern Uganda, Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia, Sri Lanka, Columbia. Some of the world's conflicted countries where young children are recruited, or violently abducted, to serve as soldiers. Two psychologists at the coalface, and a teenage abductee, join Natasha Mitchell to discuss the complex psychology of child recruitment, reintegration and repatriation. Little innocents or self-aware a...

The pressure to be thin is more intense than ever, and with around 80% of teenage girls going on diets, some slide down the slippery slope into anorexia nervosa. Our knowledge of this puzzling disorder remains limited, but some inroads of understanding are being made into what occurs in the starving brain. Lynne Malcolm reports on the latest scientific research, and meets a young woman on the path...

Until the 18th century, epilepsy was associated with the supernatural or seen as the work of the Devil, and it continues to be surrounded by social stigma. There's still a hard core of sufferers who aren't helped by medication - despite the plethora of new drugs under development. Meet a brave young girl who turned to brain surgery after years of daily, debilitating seizures, a woman whose life ha...

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