Summary: Comatose after a car accident, Paul Nadler defied medical prognoses that he would never walk or talk again. This award-winning program illustrates his recovery from severe brain trauma and his return to a highly physical and creative lifestyle. Using the innovative visual approach Nadler developed as a television director, the film allows the artist to explain his frustrations and goals in his...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2008
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Summary: From the noise of our urban landscape to the musical cocoons created by high-tech devices, sound may be our most lively and versatile interface with the world. This program takes viewers on a sonic odyssey that assesses the frequently overlooked impact of what we hear. Defining the concept of sound, the documentary takes a mind-blowing CGI tour through the human ear and its vibration-decoding...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2008
View online at AVOD
Summary: Whether it is due to a specific time of life or a particular style of living, hormones are believed to alter moods and erode bodily health. In this program, endocrinologist Lorraine Fitzpatrick, of the Mayo Clinic; a woman who has kept a video diary charting her monthly bouts with PMS; and a cast of teens and seniors investigate how hormones affect different stages of life, such as puberty and...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: The human nerve center never rests-even during sleep, it works diligently to process and build on the information gathered by our senses. Of course, healthy sleep is only one of many vital ingredients the brain needs to develop and thrive, as this film illustrates in detail. Other factors discussed in the program include ongoing contact with negative (deterring) and positive...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2003
View online at AVOD
Summary: As neural research and digital technology converge, many scientists envision a so-called singularity event in which humans and computers become inseparable. This program explores that possibility, focusing on the work of key players in brain research and artificial intelligence. Drs. Jose Delgado, Miguel Nicolelis, and Philip Kennedy-all pioneers in brain/computer interfacing-explain their...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
View online at AVOD
Summary: A landmark study of the facial expressions of native Papua New Guineans suggests that all human beings share six basic emotions. But what happens in the brain to trigger those emotions, and how do emotional responses differ according to age and experience? In this program, Dr. Susan Greenfield considers past attempts to explain emotions in terms of brain areas-and then asserts that the answers...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: This program looks at nerve signals and how they are transmitted. It looks at the part played by nerve messages in reflex activities and at both the chemical and electrical activities of networks of nerve cells in contact.
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: Neuropathologist Dr. Marco Rossi examines different human brain specimens and presents evidence of trauma or disease. Brains examined include those of a 59-year-old woman with dementia; an 82-year-old man who suffered a road accident; a young man with a shunting tube for hydrocephalus; an elderly man with Parkinson's disease; an elderly female stroke victim; and a middle-aged woman with...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: Ticking away inside the human body are the timepieces that govern our daily and seasonal lives. This program shows how these biological clocks dictate physiological behavior—determining when our brains are most alert, when our stomachs are ready to break down food, and when our bodies want to sleep. Viewers learn why most babies are born in the early morning, why most teenagers want to sleep...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
View online at AVOD
Summary: This program examines the role that our senses play in providing us with information about the world around us. Our brain depends upon the information from all our senses being integrated so that the brain is provided with consistent data that it can use to direct our actions. The program demonstrates how the senses of sight and balance operate as well as how they interact with each other. The...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: This program argues that the human visual system is skillful at some things, but that we miss an amazing amount of what is going on right in front of our eyes. Whether spotting attractive people in a crowd, gauging depth and distance, or even predicting where things end up, the eyes are at their most perceptive. But clever experiments conducted at a nightclub by scientists from Sussex...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: In this program, Dr. Susan Greenfield expresses her belief that all aspects of human experience will eventually be explained in terms of the physical processes of the brain. Cases drawn from the history of brain research-from the earliest and crudest studies of the effects of brain injury to the latest data derived from brain surgery on patients who are awake and alert-offer insights both...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: This program focuses on the components of our sense of balance. Stunt coordinator Marc Cass demonstrates how the balance organs inform us of how we are moving. At the Circus School, in San Francisco, a troupe of acrobats illustrates how eyes control balance by calculating what our bodies are doing in relation to the outside world. Dr. Ros Davies, from the National Hospital for Neurology and...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: Men don't listen. Women can't read maps. Men snore more. Women are less likely to have affairs. Should those statements be dismissed as stereotypes, or can we point to tangible discrepancies-behaviorally and neurologically speaking-along gender lines? This ABC News program explores sex differences and the brain circuitry behind them. Presenting an interview with Dr. Louann Brizendine, author of...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
View online at AVOD
Summary: This program is devoted to the senses that bring information of more distant events. The camera shows a reckless driver careening down a road-and then takes the viewer inside his eye, where the image of the potential crash site is pictured. The camera enters the ear, showing how the linked bones vibrate in response to a sound, and by using a computer graphic sequence, shows how the eye focuses...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: The human brain is made up of the same biological building blocks as the rest of the body, and yet somehow it manages to generate consciousness. In this program, Dr. Susan Greenfield seeks to understand the human body's most remarkable phenomenon-and explains why the existence of each mind's private world of experiences and feelings is actually more incredible than the fact that life on Earth...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: How does the brain create that internal space called consciousness? In this stimulating program, top names in cognitive science such as Daniel Dennett, Rodney Brooks, Endel Tulving, and John Searle delve into the mechanics of perception and cognition and speculate on the meaning of consciousness. Using advanced technology, they and other experts seek to understand the brain, leading to...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: In many ways our brains may be like those of animals, but in our capacity to think, to remember, and to create we are much different. This program looks at some of the reasons for these differences, exploring the neural structure of the human brain, our physiological brain capacity, and the use of memory and symbols.
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: This program focuses on how a brain grows from a fertilized egg and how our brains change, even after birth, right up to old age. The establishment of connections between brain cells occurs not only in the womb, but also after birth. These connections can be modified, or even abolished, in accordance with certain changes in the environment. Hence, the development of the brain is a little like...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
View online at AVOD
Summary: This program investigates how psychological principles determine a smell's level of repellence. After testing natural smells found to be offensive to most people, scientists at Monell Chemical Services Center and the University of California propose that our reactions are heavily shaped by personal experience. Demonstrations of how olfactory lobes work are featured. Host Nigel Marven observes...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: This program examines the significance and the beauty of tactile sensation. The sensory impact of touch and feel on quality of life is studied through mother/baby bonding; touch therapy for preemies and victims of physical abuse; Tadoma, a touch-based form of communication for people who are Deaf and blind; and an experimental touch-based interface designed to help people without sight to...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: Where does our sense of time passing come from? Besides breathing and heartbeat, does the human body have another source of internal rhythm? As this program illustrates, scientists have discovered a stopwatch within the brain that regulates body chemistry and gives us our awareness of time. Host Michio Kaku interviews the geologist who first theorized the existence of the internal clock while...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
View online at AVOD
Summary: This program shows how the brain coordinates functions to make a simple but lifesaving decision-how the cortex assesses incoming information, sends outgoing messages to the muscles, and stores "maps" of the world and the body; how circuits of nerve cells operate in the brain; and how individual nerve cells function.
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: The brain-the "Enchanted Loom," as Sir Charles Sherrington, one of the founders of modern brain research, called it-is the most intricate, almost unfathomably complex product of evolution. It is a tapestry woven of a hundred billion threads-the fibers of all its nerve cells. Computers have large memories and prodigious abilities to calculate, but are slow at interpreting visual images that the...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007