Free Documentaries Online

• Brain Story

  

  This is a six part series covering virtually every area of contemporary neuropsychology, including the major researchers, discoveries, techniques and even many of the patients who have been the subjects of classic case studies that have helped us understand the curious effects of brain injury.

  The documentary is presented by neuroscientist Prof Susan Greenfield.

  
  

3 Responses to “Brain Story”

1. Tipsy says:

   November 23, 2009 at 2:41 pm

   Wow. A marathon of a documentary, but great stuff packed into every section.
   I don't particularly agree with how they presented consciousness in the first half of the last segment, but their definition seemed to change to something I felt was more 'correct'(if you can say something like that about consciousness at all) as it neared the end.
   Good stuff! I love brains!

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2. Ruby says:

   October 10, 2010 at 8:24 pm

   Same here. I particularly didn’t like when they suggested that it could be that our subconscious makes decisions or choices for us before we are consciously aware and that somehow we justify it to be conscious decisions or choices. Implying in some way that we don’t have free will. Even if our thoughts and actions did originate from the subconscious, does it really takeaway our sense of freewill?

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   • Zana says:

     December 1, 2010 at 7:56 pm

     I think that some pieces of repeated information can penetrate deeply into our subconsciousness and become our personal facts.

     Just like you develop habits through repetition of the same action or movement – after some time our movements are automatic. They occur almost naturally without you having to give a significant conscious effort to execute them. Try learning to do something certain way, become very good at it and do it that way for an extensive period of time. Then, try to teach yourself to do the same thing differently know. At the beginning, you will catch yourself many times doing it or starting to do it like learned to do it previously until you develop a new habit. The same with the thoughts – there are many deeply ingrained thoughts in our mind – i.e. notions, prejudice, biases that we don’t even notice having until someone challenges them. After brain stores some info into its subconscious part, it becomes a part of our identity. So, we develop habitual thoughts and feelings which we don’t question. In that sense, our choices are not always fully conscious, since we never really start processing our choices from the beginning, they are always influenced by the granted background data in our subconsciousness. They are just an extension of our sets of beliefs. While this feature of our brain serves a great purpose and helps us organize and make sense of the world around us, it has some limitations, too. That is why it is very hard to recognize our prejudices and question them every day, but it is something we all need to do every day to liberate ourselves and others from them.

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