According to popular wisdom, psychopaths are ...crazed and bloodthirsty serial killers. The reality is not ...all so simple. While many psychopaths do commit violent crimes, not all psychopaths are criminals and not all criminals are psychopathic. Psychopaths are found in many walks of life and are often successful in competitive professions. However they are also ruthless, manipulative and destructive. Equinox reports on techniques developed by psychologists to work out whether a person is psychopathic and...

You might think that your memory is there to help you remember facts, such as birthdays or shopping lists. If so, you would be very wrong. The ability to travel back in time in your mind is, perhaps, your most remarkable ability, and develops over your lifespan. In this documentary, Horizon takes viewers on an extraordinary journey into the human memory. From the woman who is having her most traumatic memories wiped by a pill, to the man with no memory, this film reveals how these remarkable human stories are...

Rudi Affolter and Gwen Tighe have both experienced strong religious visions. He is an atheist; she a Christian. He thought he had died; she thought she had given birth to Jesus. Both have temporal lobe epilepsy. Like other forms of epilepsy, the condition causes fitting but it is also associated with religious hallucinations. Research into why people like Rudi and Gwen saw what they did has opened up a whole field of brain science: neurotheology. The connection between the temporal lobes of the brain and...

Professor Susan Greenfield tackles the big idea of human consciousness and asks the important question - why am I me? In this documentary, Greenfield takes a look at how the human brain generates consciousness and just what consciousness is. Putting a scientific finger on what human consciousness is not at all an easy task as Greenfield points out in her own words... "I think the problem has been why mainstream science is very wary of the study of consciousness is that it is utterly subjective. It is the...

In this three-part documentary, Robert Winston explores all aspects of the human mind - from how we learn, to how we're able to recognise faces and what makes one person 'click' with another. Episode 3: Why is a party one of the most demanding and complex situations the human mind ever has to deal with? This programme investigates the extraordinary way that our minds work to allow us to communicate with other people. Professor Winston discovers how we recognise people, read their faces and bodies to...

In this three-part documentary, Robert Winston explores all aspects of the human mind - from how we learn, to how we're able to recognise faces and what makes one person 'click' with another. Episode 2: Personality explores what it is that makes us who we are and uncovers the universal battle we face to master our emotions and control our behaviour. Professor Robert Winston explores how our minds shape our personalities throughout our lives, and reveals how personality traits like extroversion and...

In this three-part documentary, Robert Winston explores all aspects of the human mind - from how we learn, to how we're able to recognise faces and what makes one person 'click' with another. Episode 1: The first programme in the series uncovers what happens in our minds when we learn, remember and have original ideas. It explores what we can do to improve our ability to learn and manipulate knowledge, and shows how eating fish oils may help boost our brain power. Professor Robert Winston looks at how...

Is there really such a thing as the mad genius? Can an illness be both a blessing and a curse? At seven years old, Nick van Bloss started shaking his head, grinding his teeth and making wild whooping noises. Nick had Tourette’s syndrome. No medical intervention helped him. But one activity stopped it all… The moment Nick placed his hands on the piano keys his symptoms vanished. By the age of 20, he was an award winning international pianist. He felt sure that his illness had made him the success he was. But...

This film follows the extraordinary story of stuttering children struggling to break out of their isolation and learn to speak. Stuttering, also known as stammering in the United Kingdom, is a speech disorder in which the flow of speech is disrupted by involuntary repetitions and prolongations of sounds, syllables, words or phrases; and involuntary silent pauses or blocks in which the stutterer is unable to produce sounds. The term stuttering is most commonly associated with involuntary sound repetition, but it...