BRAINLAND

Fiona Sampson's probing biography of Mary Shelley is the first of a trilogy of biographies of 19th century writers of the romantic period. After sharing her approach to biography, Fiona talks about Mary's famous parents: Mary Wollstonecraft, influential philosopher and educator, who died of puerpural fever shortly after Mary's birth, and William Godwin and radical philosopher. We discuss the intel...

Soviet era film director and theorist Sergei Eisenstein began collaborating with Alexander Luria and Lev Vigotsky, key figures in neuropsychology and developmental psychology, in 1925, the year he released his most famous film, Battleship Potemkin. Julia Vassilieva, after studying psychology in Moscow, got the opportunity to study the papers of Luria and Vigotsky, both of whom had a long term coll...

This is the first of two episodes on the life, work and collaborations of Soviet film director and theorist Sergei Eisenstein. Ian Christie has researched and written about Eisenstein for more than 40 years. In this wide ranging conversation, we talk about the influence of his troubled childhood, the importance of drawing throughout his life, the international fame that resulted from his second fi...

In this episode David Bates discusses his recent book An Artificial History of Natural Intelligence: Thinking with machines from Decartes to the digital age', a masterly survey of the history of intelligence and its aids. The book is the summation of 20 years of scholarship, a kind of time travel of the mind, and the range of topics we cherry-pick include the influence of automata on Descartes's t...

In this podcast novelist and journalist Jon Stock discusses his latest book 'The Sleep Room: A very British Medical scandal', is a factual account of psychiatrist William Sargant (1907-88 ) that focusses particularly on Sargant's controversial 20 year 'sleep room' regimen for mental illness that combined continuous narcosis, high dose mixed antidepressants, major tranquillisers and ECT, sometimes...

In this festive episode Ken reads 'Manhandling the Brain', his essay on the origins of mid-20th century psychosurgery, an attempt to understand how, for over 20 years, so many people thought it such a good idea to damage the brains of the severely mentally ill and the lessons that can be learned. Participants: Ken Barrett, visual artist, writer and retired neuropsychiatrist: http://www.kenbarretts...

In this episode film critic/writer Matt Glasby and artist Barney Bodoano discuss their innovative book on horror movies 'The Book of Horror: The anatomy of fear in film'. After talking about their gateway into their horror obsession Matt takes us through his seven 'scare tactics', techniques used by film makers to evoke shock, dread, revulsion etc. including specifically filmic techniques such as...

Austin Lim's book 'Horror and the Brain' uses work from the horror and science fiction genres as a way into discussing a neuroscience and a range of related stories. We discuss why on earth so many people inflict the feelings provoked by horror fiction on themselves ans talk about a range of brain structures that play a role in fear, emotion and attachment behaviour (with a diversion into love, ox...

In 1924 French poet Andre Breton wrote that ‘Surrealism is based on the belief in the omnipotence of dreams, in the undirected play of thought’. Surrealism grew out of the anarchistic DaDa movement triggered by the carnage of WW and was fueled by Freud's writing on the unconscious. Roland Penrose was a leading surrealist artist and also a key figure in bringing the movement to the UK in the 1930s...

Frank Burke is a leading film scholar with a long interest in Italian director Federico Fellini (1920-1993). Few artists were more obsessed with their dreams than Fellini. In this conversation we talk about his early interest in puppets and circus, and his jobs, before moving into film, as an illustrator and caracaturist. Drawing was always an important part of his preparation for movies but he al...

In this wide ranging conversation Mark Solms talks about his seminal research in the '80s on the effect of brain lesions on patient reports of dreaming. After a brief visit to Charcot and Wilbrand in the late 19th century, we discuss the research of Dement and colleagues in the 1950s, when it was discoverd that every 90 minutes or so during sleep our EEG is more like the awake state, with asociate...

In this podcast we discuss the music called plainchant or plainsong - what it is, how did it arise and what effect does it have? We discuss the modal nature of the music, possible links to earlier Jewish intoning and the importance of resonance in recording. Bernard describes his research project in which subjects record their responses, relating to memory, emotion and transcendence. Three short e...

Joseph Beuys was a radical post-war German artist who worked in unusual media and in the 1970s developed the notion of ‘social sculpture’ based on the concept that everything is art and every aspect of life could be approached creatively. For episode 17 this season Hugh Rickards, a younger neuropsychiatric colleague from the English Midlands, read and discussed his essay 'The lost tribes of neurop...

In this podcast Kimberly Campanello, a poet, novelist and academic, talks frankly about her early onset Parkinson's disease and how this lead her to pursue her Italian roots in Puglia. On a visit there, to her great grandmother's village, she literally discovered Dante's 'Comedia', which she is currently 'reversioning' - a method that involves processing the original Italian, a range of translatio...

The Burden Neurological Institute (and Hospital) opened its' doors in 1939 and closed in 2000. In this wide ranging conversation, Jonathan Bird and Ken Barrett, neuropsychiatric alumni, chew the fat about the history of 'The Burden', the research home of Grey Walter who featured in the last Brainland episode. We discuss the unusual origin, Frederick Golla, the first director, the impact of the war...

Grey Walter was an important figure in mid-20th century neurophysiology and cybernetics and this episode brings together professors of history of science and AI to discuss his life and work. We talk about his early personal and academic life, moving on to his work as a pioneer of the clinical applications of the EEG, particularly at the Burden Neurological Institute in Bristol. After setting the s...

In this conversation philospher Raymond Tallis talks about his new book 'Circling Around Explicitness: The heart of human being'. Ray's book opens with a quote from German philosopher Friedrich Schelling ‘Uniquely within us nature opens her eyes and sees that she exists.’ What follows is an exploration of the meaning of 'thatness', his attempt to, in his words, 'eff the uneffed'. Our circling...

Earlier this season we recorded an episode on poetry and neuroscience in which Eugen Wassiliwitzki pointed out that in German the grammar produces many more internal rhymes and rhythms. This is perhaps even more true of Italian. The leading Italian poet of the last century is probably Nobel Prize winner Eugenio Montale. Jonathan Galassi has been reading, researching and translating Montale for dec...

How can current thinking in psychology and neuroscience, about how we make decisions, inform our understanding of moral questions and make for a better society? That question is central to David Redish's book 'Changing How We Choose'. In this podcast David defines neuroeconomics and explains why applying science and engineering models to moral questions is useful, 'engineering' relating to applyin...

In this specially extended episode of the podcast we speak with Jonathan Dove, one of the most performed contemporary opera/classical composers working today. He talks about his first steps in music, making up tunes on the piano well before taking formal lessons, his organ playing in church, often improvising, and the great contribution of London schools' music provision to his education. Jonathan...

In this podcast we talk about the way Freud has been depicted in the movies, particularly the 1962 John Houston film 'Freud: The Secret Passion'. Ian discusses Houston's complicated relationship with the star, Montgomery Clift, Sartre's early involvement with the script, the film's 'film noir' feel, Jerry Goldsmith's music, with a detour into avant garde composers work on horror films. Ian charact...

Finnish film director Pia Tikka began studying the psychology and later the neuroscience of film making 25 years ago and is currently studying the experience and process of cinematographers and film editors.she talks about how writings of Soviet film maker and theorist Sergei Eisenstein has been particularly influential, particularly following his later interactions with neuropsychologist Luria, G...

In this podcast, Emily talks about how she came to write 'While the music lasts', her very personal account of her response to the death of her father, one of the key inspirations for her career choice. Her book documents how for several months after his death she avoided music as it made her angry and how eventually her musicologist training helped her navigate that period. This included an in de...

Mark Solms is a clinical neuropsychologist, neuroscientist and psychoanalyst. In this wide-ranging conversation Marks talks about his career path and the influence of a brain injury in family member when Mark was a child. Mark talks about Freud's pre-psychoanalytic work as a neuroscientist and neurologist and his own ongoing retranslation of Freud's neuroscientific writing. We discuss Mark's disco...

In this podcast Hugh Rickards reads his unpublished essay, 'The Lost Tribes of Neuropsychiatry', raising a number of interesting issues relating to neuropsychiatric services in the UK, and their lack. We chew over some of the issues raised including causes for the abandonment of poeple with chronic mental disorders arising directly from brain disease or damage, and whether the still small discipli...