All in the Mind (BBC radio)
Encyclopedia
All in the Mind is a half-hour magazine radio program about psychology
and psychiatry
, produced by the BBC
's Science Unit. It is currently presented by Claudia Hammond
. Former presenters have included Dr Raj Persaud
, Dr Kwame McKenzie, and Dr Tanya Byron
, and the first presenter Professor Anthony Clare
. The programme is typically broadcast at 9 p.m. on a Tuesday, with a repeat at 4:30 p.m. the following Wednesday.
and anorexia nervosa
, and the controversial topic of bereavement following suicide
. The programme has now began its most recent series, as of October 2011.
in March 2011. The programme also explored whether a placebo
will work when the person taking it is told that there is nothing in it. A researcher called Ted Kaptchuk was on the programme talking about this, arguing that evidence suggested this was the case, referring to research done into people with irritable bowel syndrome
who were treated with placebos. Kaptchuk mentioned how people were asked, at the end of the study, what they believed was in the pill, and suggested that the participants in the study all seemed quite aware that the pills were merely sugar pills. He argued that the placebo effect was not a cognitive phenomenon, but a process similar to Pavlovian conditioning. His analysis of the placebo was followed by Irene Tracy, of Oxford University, talking about her interpretation of the placebo effect as being connected with beliefs about a drug. Also discussed was correspondence from listeners on the previous week's subject of ostracism.
in teenage relationships, reporting on shocking data on levels of violence in teenage relationships. Later, it referred to the phenomenon of "superior autobiographical memory", referring to researchers at Stanford University
who had researched individuals with exceptional memory. Early on during this section of the programme, the head of the resarch team at Stanford, James McGorr, referred to a woman who said she had been having memory problems. It turned out that she had an exceptionally good memory - when asked for the dates of Easter Sunday over the past 24 years, she got all the dates correct with only one error (which she quickly corrected). She also mentioned what she had been doing on each of these Easter Sundays.
Television presenter Bob Patrella was also on the programme as a person with superior autobiographical memory.
Reference was also made into neuro-psychological research (including Magnetic Resonance Imaging
) into these people with exceptionally good memories. The programme broadcast on June 7 dealt with compassion in therapy, the psychology of conjuring and
whether television may be influencing children to eat junk food
.
, and discussed whether mindfulness
can help coping with stress. Claudia Hammond said on the programme that it is known that mindfulness works as help for stress. One of the guests on, Angela Clow, a psychophysiologist at Westminster University
, said that exercise helps with stress, as well as sleep hygiene and social support
. She also linked stress to circadian rhythms. Michael Marmot claimed that, contrary to popular belief, people in the middle of a status hierarchy may be at greater risk for stress than people at the top of a status hierarchy. This was explained by Angela Clow as being due to people being on lower rungs of hierarchy being more likely to lack a sense of control (see the article on locus of control
). Claudia Hammond asked people on the streets of Oxford
what they did to cope with stress, and answers were given, including doing computer games, reading and exercise.
of any females in the world, and that men from Hong Kong have the second highest, after men from Japan
.
. The programme also mentioned the mental benefits that can be gained from running allotments. The most recent series ended with a programme broadcast on July 12 (with the repeat on July 13). This programme dealt with motivation behind people who commit arson
and how these people can be helped. Arsonists can be motivated by revenge, and the programme suggested that one way to help people who commit arson may have an intense interest in fire. Teresa Gannon was interviewed talking about motivation for arson. It also dealt with child protection issues. The programme broadcast on this date also considered siblings of people with autism
, mentioning how evidence suggests that people who have a sibling with autism are twenty times more likely to develop autism themselves. This was followed by neurological research into the brains of siblings with autism by researchers at the University of Cambridge
. The discussion warned, however, against jumping too hastily to assumptions that this necessarily implies a genetic basic for autism. Dr. Michael Spencer was interviewed by Claudia Hammond on the subject of autism.
The programme on October 25 and 26 2011 looked at whether testing ourselves at bedtime can improve our memory.
A special edition of the programme was broadcast on November 1 2011, looking at the influence of the book called "Nudge" and how it could help to change human behaviour. This discussed the research by a government research team doing research into the effects of "Nudge" on human behaviour. Discussions were made on how people often make decisions without conscious awareness of why they make these decisions. For example, in supermarkets, people are more likely to choose the middle product from a row of products, even though they may not be aware of why they choose the products they do in supermarkets. Claudia Hammond noted how this could be put to good use, for example, by putting the more salubrious foods in the middle of a supermarket shelf. Towards the end
of the programme, it was mentioned how there had been some misgivings about using the Government's "Nudge" approach to change human behaviour.
The edition broadcast on November 15 2011 began with Claudia Hammond mentioning how Radio Four was currently having a special season on the brain. In the first substantial part of the programme, she interviewed Daniel Kahnemann on the subject of the relationship
between economics
and psychology
. Claudia Hammond mentioned how Kahnemann had won the Nobel Prize
for economics, and would hve shared the prize with his colleague Amos Tversky
had Tversky not died in 1986. She mentioned how Kahnemann and Tversky had often had disagreements, but Kahnemann claimed that they had still enjoyed working together. She also mentioned how he was the founding father of behavioural economics, and asked whether he had been disappointed that it took thirty years for this field to gain recognition, but Kahnemann claimed that he was not at all disappointed, arguing that thirty years can be a short time in the history of science.
Later, on the same edition of the programme, the case of two Siamese twins, born in British Columbia
in Canada
, who were joined at the brain
, was discussed. It was pointed out that these two twins were linked by their thalamus
. The mother of the twins argued that despite being joined at the brain, these two twins still had separate personalities. Claudia Hammond mentioned how Radio Four was currently having a special season on the brain. Also mentioned were dementia
and splits to the corpus callosum
.
The programme broadcast on November 22 2011 dealt with the psychology of the riots that had occurred earlier in 2011 in the United Kingdom
, and also with the effects of childhood bullying. Some of the topics discussed in this programme were continuations of the previous week's discussion with Daniel Kahnemann.
Psychology
Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...
and psychiatry
Psychiatry
Psychiatry is the medical specialty devoted to the study and treatment of mental disorders. These mental disorders include various affective, behavioural, cognitive and perceptual abnormalities...
, produced by the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
's Science Unit. It is currently presented by Claudia Hammond
Claudia Hammond
Claudia Hammond is an author, occasional TV presenter, and frequent radio presenter with the BBC World Service and BBC Radio 4.-Education:...
. Former presenters have included Dr Raj Persaud
Raj Persaud
Rajendra Persaud , also known as Raj Persaud , born 13 May 1963, Reading, Berkshire is an English consultant psychiatrist, broadcaster, and author of popular books about psychiatry....
, Dr Kwame McKenzie, and Dr Tanya Byron
Tanya Byron
Tanya Byron is a British psychologist, writer and media personality, best known for her work as a child therapist on television shows Little Angels and The House of Tiny Tearaways...
, and the first presenter Professor Anthony Clare
Anthony Clare
Anthony Ward Clare was an Irish psychiatrist well known in the UK and Ireland as a presenter of radio and TV programmes.-Career:...
. The programme is typically broadcast at 9 p.m. on a Tuesday, with a repeat at 4:30 p.m. the following Wednesday.
Episodes
Examples of topics discussed in the last series (the series being broadcast on Tuesday and Wednesday during May 2011) include whether there is a link between autismAutism
Autism is a disorder of neural development characterized by impaired social interaction and communication, and by restricted and repetitive behavior. These signs all begin before a child is three years old. Autism affects information processing in the brain by altering how nerve cells and their...
and anorexia nervosa
Anorexia nervosa
Anorexia nervosa is an eating disorder characterized by refusal to maintain a healthy body weight and an obsessive fear of gaining weight. Although commonly called "anorexia", that term on its own denotes any symptomatic loss of appetite and is not strictly accurate...
, and the controversial topic of bereavement following suicide
Suicide
Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Suicide is often committed out of despair or attributed to some underlying mental disorder, such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, alcoholism, or drug abuse...
. The programme has now began its most recent series, as of October 2011.
17May 2011
The programme broadcast on May 17 began with a reference to coping with earthquakes, making reference to post traumatic stress disorder and discussing how people cope with earthquakes - a timely article after the earthquake in JapanJapan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
in March 2011. The programme also explored whether a placebo
Placebo
A placebo is a simulated or otherwise medically ineffectual treatment for a disease or other medical condition intended to deceive the recipient...
will work when the person taking it is told that there is nothing in it. A researcher called Ted Kaptchuk was on the programme talking about this, arguing that evidence suggested this was the case, referring to research done into people with irritable bowel syndrome
Irritable bowel syndrome
Irritable bowel syndrome is a diagnosis of exclusion. It is a functional bowel disorder characterized by chronic abdominal pain, discomfort, bloating, and alteration of bowel habits in the absence of any detectable organic cause. In some cases, the symptoms are relieved by bowel movements...
who were treated with placebos. Kaptchuk mentioned how people were asked, at the end of the study, what they believed was in the pill, and suggested that the participants in the study all seemed quite aware that the pills were merely sugar pills. He argued that the placebo effect was not a cognitive phenomenon, but a process similar to Pavlovian conditioning. His analysis of the placebo was followed by Irene Tracy, of Oxford University, talking about her interpretation of the placebo effect as being connected with beliefs about a drug. Also discussed was correspondence from listeners on the previous week's subject of ostracism.
24 May 2011
The programme broadcast on May 24 included reference to whether rubbish in the street can lead to stereotyping.The programme on May 31 began with reference to emotional abuse and sexual abuseSexual abuse
Sexual abuse, also referred to as molestation, is the forcing of undesired sexual behavior by one person upon another. When that force is immediate, of short duration, or infrequent, it is called sexual assault. The offender is referred to as a sexual abuser or molester...
in teenage relationships, reporting on shocking data on levels of violence in teenage relationships. Later, it referred to the phenomenon of "superior autobiographical memory", referring to researchers at Stanford University
Stanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...
who had researched individuals with exceptional memory. Early on during this section of the programme, the head of the resarch team at Stanford, James McGorr, referred to a woman who said she had been having memory problems. It turned out that she had an exceptionally good memory - when asked for the dates of Easter Sunday over the past 24 years, she got all the dates correct with only one error (which she quickly corrected). She also mentioned what she had been doing on each of these Easter Sundays.
Television presenter Bob Patrella was also on the programme as a person with superior autobiographical memory.
Reference was also made into neuro-psychological research (including Magnetic Resonance Imaging
Magnetic resonance imaging
Magnetic resonance imaging , nuclear magnetic resonance imaging , or magnetic resonance tomography is a medical imaging technique used in radiology to visualize detailed internal structures...
) into these people with exceptionally good memories. The programme broadcast on June 7 dealt with compassion in therapy, the psychology of conjuring and
whether television may be influencing children to eat junk food
Junk food
Junk food is an informal term applied to some foods that are perceived to have little or no nutritional value ; to products with nutritional value, but which also have ingredients considered unhealthy when regularly eaten; or to those considered unhealthy to consume at all...
.
14 June 2011
The programme broadcast on June 14, 2011 discussed the "stages of how people respond to news of impending death" put forth by Elizabeth Kubler Ross, and also discussed why experts are often not good at predicting the future.21 June 2011
The programme broadcast on June 21, 2011 dealt with stressStress (biology)
Stress is a term in psychology and biology, borrowed from physics and engineering and first used in the biological context in the 1930s, which has in more recent decades become commonly used in popular parlance...
, and discussed whether mindfulness
Mindfulness (psychology)
Modern clinical psychology and psychiatry since the 1970s have developed a number of therapeutic applications based on the concept of mindfulness in Buddhist meditation.-Definitions:...
can help coping with stress. Claudia Hammond said on the programme that it is known that mindfulness works as help for stress. One of the guests on, Angela Clow, a psychophysiologist at Westminster University
Westminster University
Westminster University may refer to:*University of Westminster, London, England* Westminster University , whose building is listed on the U.S. NRHP...
, said that exercise helps with stress, as well as sleep hygiene and social support
Social support
Social support can be defined and measured in many ways. It can loosely be defined as feeling that one is cared for by and has assistance available from other people and that one is part of a supportive social network...
. She also linked stress to circadian rhythms. Michael Marmot claimed that, contrary to popular belief, people in the middle of a status hierarchy may be at greater risk for stress than people at the top of a status hierarchy. This was explained by Angela Clow as being due to people being on lower rungs of hierarchy being more likely to lack a sense of control (see the article on locus of control
Locus of control
Locus of control is a theory in personality psychology referring to the extent to which individuals believe that they can control events that affect them. Understanding of the concept was developed by Julian B...
). Claudia Hammond asked people on the streets of Oxford
Oxford
The city of Oxford is the county town of Oxfordshire, England. The city, made prominent by its medieval university, has a population of just under 165,000, with 153,900 living within the district boundary. It lies about 50 miles north-west of London. The rivers Cherwell and Thames run through...
what they did to cope with stress, and answers were given, including doing computer games, reading and exercise.
28 June 2011
The programme broadcast on June 28 2011 came from Hong Kong. Topics discussed included mental illness in Hong Kong. It was mentioned on the programme that women from Hong Kong have the highest life expectancyLife expectancy
Life expectancy is the expected number of years of life remaining at a given age. It is denoted by ex, which means the average number of subsequent years of life for someone now aged x, according to a particular mortality experience...
of any females in the world, and that men from Hong Kong have the second highest, after men from Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
.
July 2011
The programme broadcast on July 5 2011 dealt with compulsive gambling. It pointed out that as well as scoring high on measures of impulsivity, compulsive gamblers are often prone to superstitious beliefs, and have a tendency to believe in the gambler's fallacyGambler's fallacy
The Gambler's fallacy, also known as the Monte Carlo fallacy , and also referred to as the fallacy of the maturity of chances, is the belief that if deviations from expected behaviour are observed in repeated independent trials of some random process, future deviations in the opposite direction are...
. The programme also mentioned the mental benefits that can be gained from running allotments. The most recent series ended with a programme broadcast on July 12 (with the repeat on July 13). This programme dealt with motivation behind people who commit arson
Arson
Arson is the crime of intentionally or maliciously setting fire to structures or wildland areas. It may be distinguished from other causes such as spontaneous combustion and natural wildfires...
and how these people can be helped. Arsonists can be motivated by revenge, and the programme suggested that one way to help people who commit arson may have an intense interest in fire. Teresa Gannon was interviewed talking about motivation for arson. It also dealt with child protection issues. The programme broadcast on this date also considered siblings of people with autism
Autism
Autism is a disorder of neural development characterized by impaired social interaction and communication, and by restricted and repetitive behavior. These signs all begin before a child is three years old. Autism affects information processing in the brain by altering how nerve cells and their...
, mentioning how evidence suggests that people who have a sibling with autism are twenty times more likely to develop autism themselves. This was followed by neurological research into the brains of siblings with autism by researchers at the University of Cambridge
University of Cambridge
The University of Cambridge is a public research university located in Cambridge, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest university in both the United Kingdom and the English-speaking world , and the seventh-oldest globally...
. The discussion warned, however, against jumping too hastily to assumptions that this necessarily implies a genetic basic for autism. Dr. Michael Spencer was interviewed by Claudia Hammond on the subject of autism.
October to November 2011
The programme broadcast on October 4, 2011 looked at whether people with severe mental disorders are greater risk of premature deaths than the general population, and also discussed whether certain anti-psychotic medications could lead to weight gains. The programme also discussed whether changing the hand we eat with could be a method for treating eating disorders.The programme on October 25 and 26 2011 looked at whether testing ourselves at bedtime can improve our memory.
A special edition of the programme was broadcast on November 1 2011, looking at the influence of the book called "Nudge" and how it could help to change human behaviour. This discussed the research by a government research team doing research into the effects of "Nudge" on human behaviour. Discussions were made on how people often make decisions without conscious awareness of why they make these decisions. For example, in supermarkets, people are more likely to choose the middle product from a row of products, even though they may not be aware of why they choose the products they do in supermarkets. Claudia Hammond noted how this could be put to good use, for example, by putting the more salubrious foods in the middle of a supermarket shelf. Towards the end
of the programme, it was mentioned how there had been some misgivings about using the Government's "Nudge" approach to change human behaviour.
The edition broadcast on November 15 2011 began with Claudia Hammond mentioning how Radio Four was currently having a special season on the brain. In the first substantial part of the programme, she interviewed Daniel Kahnemann on the subject of the relationship
between economics
Economics
Economics is the social science that analyzes the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. The term economics comes from the Ancient Greek from + , hence "rules of the house"...
and psychology
Psychology
Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...
. Claudia Hammond mentioned how Kahnemann had won the Nobel Prize
Nobel Prize
The Nobel Prizes are annual international awards bestowed by Scandinavian committees in recognition of cultural and scientific advances. The will of the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, established the prizes in 1895...
for economics, and would hve shared the prize with his colleague Amos Tversky
Amos Tversky
Amos Nathan Tversky, was a cognitive and mathematical psychologist, a pioneer of cognitive science, a longtime collaborator of Daniel Kahneman, and a key figure in the discovery of systematic human cognitive bias and handling of risk. Much of his early work concerned the foundations of measurement...
had Tversky not died in 1986. She mentioned how Kahnemann and Tversky had often had disagreements, but Kahnemann claimed that they had still enjoyed working together. She also mentioned how he was the founding father of behavioural economics, and asked whether he had been disappointed that it took thirty years for this field to gain recognition, but Kahnemann claimed that he was not at all disappointed, arguing that thirty years can be a short time in the history of science.
Later, on the same edition of the programme, the case of two Siamese twins, born in British Columbia
British Columbia
British Columbia is the westernmost of Canada's provinces and is known for its natural beauty, as reflected in its Latin motto, Splendor sine occasu . Its name was chosen by Queen Victoria in 1858...
in Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
, who were joined at the brain
Brain
The brain is the center of the nervous system in all vertebrate and most invertebrate animals—only a few primitive invertebrates such as sponges, jellyfish, sea squirts and starfishes do not have one. It is located in the head, usually close to primary sensory apparatus such as vision, hearing,...
, was discussed. It was pointed out that these two twins were linked by their thalamus
Thalamus
The thalamus is a midline paired symmetrical structure within the brains of vertebrates, including humans. It is situated between the cerebral cortex and midbrain, both in terms of location and neurological connections...
. The mother of the twins argued that despite being joined at the brain, these two twins still had separate personalities. Claudia Hammond mentioned how Radio Four was currently having a special season on the brain. Also mentioned were dementia
Dementia
Dementia is a serious loss of cognitive ability in a previously unimpaired person, beyond what might be expected from normal aging...
and splits to the corpus callosum
Corpus callosum
The corpus callosum , also known as the colossal commissure, is a wide, flat bundle of neural fibers beneath the cortex in the eutherian brain at the longitudinal fissure. It connects the left and right cerebral hemispheres and facilitates interhemispheric communication...
.
The programme broadcast on November 22 2011 dealt with the psychology of the riots that had occurred earlier in 2011 in the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
, and also with the effects of childhood bullying. Some of the topics discussed in this programme were continuations of the previous week's discussion with Daniel Kahnemann.