Summary: The human body manufactures its own painkillers to ensure survival when injured. This program shows how opium and its derivatives, heroin and morphine, hijack that natural pain-numbing ability. Illustrating the brain's ability to alter its own chemistry when attacked by drugs, the program depicts the process by which brain receptors become desensitized and thus addicted. Tranquilizers-and the...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: Pain has a clear purpose: warning the body of invasion and other dangers. But the connection between pain and the human mind is more mysterious. This program examines various types of pain and their frequently elusive neurological aspects; it also presents methods, both clinical and alternative, that help long-term sufferers cope with debilitating pain. Distinguishing between acute and chronic...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
View online at AVOD
Summary: Using sophisticated 3-D animation, this program, divided into two parts, takes viewers on a journey deep into the brain to study the effects of the three substances. The first part illustrates the major functions of the brain and shows how its principal cells, the neurons, communicate with each other through electrical and chemical signals. In the second part, animated molecules of nicotine,...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: It can turn a hard-driving, energetic person into a walking zombie-exhausted, confused, and unable to work. This program sheds light on the mysterious illness known as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, which has no known cause or cure. Case studies feature a former congressional worker who eventually found it impossible to perform her duties on Capitol Hill, and a clinical psychologist whose personal...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
View online at AVOD
Summary: Why does tolerance for alcohol differ so widely from person to person? Do genetic factors make alcoholism unavoidable in some people? Should we drink at all? This program searches for answers, following addiction expert Dr. John Marsden as he observes-and participates in-experiments that assess alcohol's neurological and physiological impact. After exploring basic chemical and evolutionary...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
View online at AVOD
Summary: Which is more enjoyable-the satisfaction of desire, or the sensation of longing itself? This program looks at the emotional, neurological, and genetic aspects of seeking and gaining pleasure, analyzing close ties between the search for gratification and the preservation of self and species. Examining a wide range of ways to follow one's bliss-including sex, artistic creation, the consumption of...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
View online at AVOD
Summary: This program explores the brain and nervous system, using the analogy of computers and the Internet. Topics discussed include electrical impulses and how nerve messages travel; parts of the brain and their functions; how the brain and spinal cord are protected; the senses; and diseases, drugs, and their effects on the brain and nervous system.
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: This program follows the physiological development of the human brain from conception through the growth of the neurological system in utero, to the moment of birth, when an amazing variety of brain functions are already apparent. The camera continues to follow a child to the age of eight, as a whole range of motor and cognitive skills appears-some as simple as focusing the eyes, others as...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: IQ used to be the standard by which all were judged. Today, EQ allows for a broader understanding that encompasses attributes such as logical, linguistic, musical, kinetic, and emotional intelligences. This program provides an in-depth analysis of intelligence, including how it is defined and its neural components. Leading experts such as Harvard's Howard Gardner; Daniel Goleman, author of...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: This Science Screen Report describes the anatomy and functions of facial features, and the evolutionary development of the human face. It explains how the mouth and nose work together to identify food, the process of chewing and swallowing, and the varying functions of the taste buds, saliva, teeth, tongue, and jaws. Combining principles in anatomy, anthropology, psychology, and zoology, the...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: This program uncovers what happens in our minds when we learn, remember, and imagine. It reveals how neurons and synapses lay down knowledge in the brain; ways to improve our ability to acquire knowledge, including increased intake of omega-3 fatty acids; how to manipulate memory to recall information more easily; the powerful influence of subliminal messages; and what actually happens during a...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: As far as Dr. Susan Greenfield is concerned, learning, memory, and even the process of individuation should be understood as a restless brain adapting moment by moment to the environment it encounters. This program charts the changes in the human brain as it develops from infancy to adulthood. The brain's extraordinary adaptability, as demonstrated by its ability to reorganize its neural...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: Professor of Philosophy Patricia Smith Churchland is probing a new frontier in the area of brain research, convinced that exploration into the physical function of our "wonder tissue" can help us better understand what our thoughts mean and how we can control them. In her book, Neurophilosophy, she describes how recent discoveries about the brain call into question such basic philosophical...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: Who should have access to our thoughts, and to what degree? This program presents some of the current scientific research on the thought processes of the human brain, with special attention paid to its clinical applications and its ethical implications. German philosophers Thomas Metzinger and John-Dylan Haynes explain neuroethics, or the social, legal, and ethical repercussions of brain...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
View online at AVOD
Summary: Perhaps the most intriguing field of medicine is the one that seeks to understand consciousness itself. This program provides a tour of the most advanced work in brain research and cognitive science, as well as the latest applications of these discoveries in treating patients with brain disorders. Using MRI and EEG to determine areas of brain activity, researchers explore the connection between...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: This program discusses the development, organization, and functions of the nervous system and the input organs that stimulate it. Beginning with an introductory overview of neural anatomy, the video outlines the organization of the central and peripheral nervous systems and the processes of sensation, transduction, and perception. In addition, the senses of vision, hearing, taste, smell, and...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
View online at AVOD
Summary: With cutting-edge experiments and intriguing case studies, this program explores the science of dreams-revealing their impact on our memories, learning processes, and mental health. Contrasting REM-sleep dreams with those occurring in non-REM sleep, the film examines the roles of the amygdala and the parietal lobe and the ways in which depression and stroke affect, or are affected by, dream...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
View online at AVOD
Summary: With a 90 percent match between the mouse and human genomes, mice are helping researchers to better understand the human brain. In this NewsHour program, Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen-founder of the Allen Institute for Brain Science-and the Institute's chief scientific officer talk about the Allen Brain Atlas, an interactive 3-D map of gene expression in the mouse brain. Together with...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
View online at AVOD
Summary: Humans may be the only species to shed tears. Does that make crying a strictly human act? This program explores the deep well of animal instinct that, shaped by eons of evolution, still informs our expression of grief, fear, anger, and even joy. Focusing on the development of distress signals in early hominid infant behavior, the program investigates differences in crying between adults and...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
View online at AVOD
Summary: Are the brain and the mind one and the same? How big a role does environment play in cognitive development? Does consciousness have a physical location? This program explores these and other fundamental questions concerning the evolution and function of the human brain. Computer graphics and commentary from an array of leading international neuroscientists provide insights into the human...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
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: Is the human brain hardwired for religion? This program examines work in the emerging field of neurotheology, focusing on links between religious ecstasy and the brain's temporal lobes. Dr. Michael Persinger, who has spent much of his career pursuing such a connection, uses magnetic field resonance to test his theories on renowned atheist Richard Dawkins. Inversely, Dr. Andrew Newberg performs...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2008
View online at AVOD
Summary: We often think of memory as a record of facts, but it is also a web of sensations and emotions-and a vehicle for traveling, so to speak, through time. This program explores the mechanisms of human recollection, presenting new case studies and medical findings that reveal the complexity of the brain's memory center. Harvard psychiatrist Dr. Randy Buckner explains his research into memory...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2008
View online at AVOD
Summary: This program explains research on the brain's processes: how individual parts of the brain work, how the brain uses pattern recognition rather than logic to interpret reality, which experiments with computer analogs have been successful and which have failed, and why. The program also provides interviews with some of the foremost researchers in the field, including neuroscientist John Hopfield,...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005