The Brain: A Secret History

Michael Mosley studied medicine in London and qualified as a doctor but for the last 25 years he’s been working as a documentary maker and an award winning science journalist.

His programmes have won an RTS, an EMMY and he was named 'medical journalist of the year' by the British Medical Association for a ground breaking programme on Helicobacter pylori.

His most recent work includes two Horizons that looked at the benefits of high intensity exercise and intermittent fasting. Recently Infested! Living with Parasites, explored the world of parasites with Michael turning his body into a living laboratory and deliberately infesting himself with them. He’s also a regular presenter on The One Show.

To begin, Michael traces the sinister ways this science has been used to try to control our minds. He finds that the pursuit of mind control has led to some truly horrific experiments and left many casualties in its wake. Extraordinary archive material captures what happened - scientists systematically change the behaviour of children, law-abiding citizens give fatal electric shocks and a gay man has electrodes implanted in his head in an attempt to turn his sexuality.

Michael takes a hallucinogenic drug as part of a controlled experiment to try to understand how its mind-bending properties can change the brain.

This is a scientific journey which goes to the very heart of what we hold most dear - our free will, and our ability to control our own destiny.

Dr Michael Mosley continues his exploration of the brutal history of experimental psychology. Experiments on the human mind have led to profound insights into how our brain works - but have also involved great cruelty and posed some terrible ethical dilemmas.

In this film, Michael investigates how scientists have struggled to understand that most irrational and deeply complex part of our minds - our emotions.

Michael meets survivors - both participants and scientists - of some of the key historical experiments. Many of these extraordinary research projects were captured on film - an eight-month-old boy is taught to fear random objects, baby monkeys are given mothers made from wire and cloth, and an adult is deliberately violent before a group of toddlers.

Michael takes part in modern-day experiments to play his own small part in the quest to understand emotions.

Dr Michael Mosley concludes his series exploring the brutal history of experimental psychology by looking at how experiments on abnormal brains have revealed the workings of the normal brain.

He meets remarkable individuals like Karen, who suffered from a rare condition - alien hand syndrome - which meant that one of her hands constantly attacked her. And Julia, who seems to have recovered from her stroke - until experiments reveal she is unable to recall the name of any object.

Michael explores the case of an amnesiac known for years only by his initials, HM, who became the most studied individual in the history of psychology and whose extraordinary case opened a window on how our memory works. He visits the multi-million dollar centre which has been set up since HM died to map his unique brain down to the level of an individual neuron.

Whiskers wrote:It was a bit hard to watch in places.  Some of those experiments    One question I need answering.    The pigeon man, Skinner.  It said he was hanged --- sounded like they said in effigy.    What exactly does that mean.   I don't think he was really hanged as such, was he?  Did they hang a picture or a stuffed doll that looked like him or what??  And if that's what happened, who did it?

Burning an Effigy is a symbolic act that means you strongly disagree or despise the viewpoint or deeds of the person whose likeness the Effigy represents.
As an example...say you are mad at someone..you make a puppet out of straw and make a face out of paper mache that sortof looks like that person. Then you hang the puppet in a tree and set it on fire. Dont do it as you'll probably get arrested but you get the idea.
The whole act carries more meaning when a large group of people gather to share the same dislike of the person whose image is being burned.

   [B.F. Skinner] used his infant daughter, Deborah, to prove his theories by putting her for a few hours a day in a laboratory box in which all her needs were controlled and shaped. He kept her caged for two full years, placing within her cramped square space bells and food trays and all manners of mean punishments and bright rewards, and he tracked her progress on a grid. And then, when she was thirty-one and frankly psychotic, she sued him for abuse in a genuine court of law, lost the case, and shot herself in a bowling alley in Billings, Montana. Boom-boom went the gun.

The Reality

Let's turn the microphone over to Deborah Skinner Buzan, who is still alive today, married in London. She wrote an extended letter to the UK paper The Guardian which was published on March 12, 2004:

   "Slater's sensationalist book rehashes some of the old stuff, but offers some rumours that are entirely new to me. For my first two years, she reports, my father kept me in a cramped square cage that was equipped with bells and food trays, and arranged for experiments that delivered rewards and punishments. Then there's the story that after my father "let me out", I became psychotic. Well, I didn't. That I sued him in a court of law is also untrue. And, contrary to hearsay, I didn't shoot myself in a bowling alley in Billings, Montana. I have never even been to Billings, Montana."

Kitkat wrote:Tell you what, Whiskers - if you found it hard to watch Episode 1, it doesn't get any easier; it actually gets a lot, lot worse!  Have you watched the other two yet?

I've just been listening to Episode 2 (Emotions) - not even half way through, and I've had to stop it and put it on hold.  Although read and heard a little about them, this is the first time I've seen the sort of experiments carried out by John Watson and although I understand the aim of the experiments I find it very difficult to actually watch and take in what's going on there (he filmed the actual experiments).  Maybe it's the fact that he used very young and vulnerable 'instruments' (an 8 month old baby, for goodness sake!  and animals) in his experiments, with characters yet to be formed and/or victims who were totally enscapulated under his control, non-deserving of the horrible things that were happening to them and unable to understand or escape. Utterly cruel and heartless acts - all done and protected in the name of science.  I've had to stop for the moment, and right now I'm not sure if I will even be able to go back to continue watching.  Certainly not in the right state of mind at the moment ...  Curiosity might take me back again to continue on at a later time, but right now I really need to take a raincheck.