All language subtitles for The.Brain.A.Secret.History.S01E02

Why do we do the things we do?

What really makes us tick?

How do our minds work?

For centuries,
these questions were largely left

to philosophers and theologians.

Around 100 years ago, a new science

began to shine a bright light
on the inner workings of the mind.

It was called
experimental psychology.

But doing scientific experiments

posed some terrible
ethical and moral dilemmas.

Do you think the research
was justified? Would you have stopped
him if you could?

In this series, I will explore how
psychologists have probed inside

our minds,
by way of experiments, which
sometimes were frankly barbaric.

The experiment requires
that we continue...
But he might be dead in there.

Ever since I was a medical student,
I have been fascinated by psychology,

by its brutal history and by how far
some researchers have been prepared

to go in the search for answers.

This time, I'm exploring
how scientists have struggled

to understand
that seemingly irrational

and yet deeply complex part
of our minds, our emotions.

Oh, dear.

I'm playing my own
small part in this quest.

You're going to be experiencing
some...

moderate pain.

How are you going
to create the pain?

Emotions are a huge part
of our lives,

but where do they come from?

Can they be controlled?

What are they there for?

The answers they
came up with were rich, complex

and also profoundly uncomfortable.

They have made me re-evaluate the
role of emotions in my own life.

It's a load-bearing belt,
it's got to be done up securely,
because your life may depend on it.

Safety helmet.

'A problem faced by anyone
who wants to study emotions
is how to reproduce them.

'Some emotions are harder
to generate that others.

'The one we're hoping
to generate today is fear.'

A pair of gloves -
if you do get stuck, it'll stop you
ripping your fingernails off.

Do you ever get people who
freak out when they're down there?

Frequently. Right.

'I have never done this,
because I have always been aware that

'when I go into small, dark spaces
and I even think about doing so,

'I become really,
really uncomfortable.

'I think I probably have
a mild degree of claustrophobia,'

but I've never challenged it,
and that's kind of why I want
to do it now,

I want to see what
it's going to actually be like.

There's your cave.

God, wow! That's small, isn't it?

I was imagining something large.

Ha...! OK.

First of all, there's just...
Ooh, that's nasty.

'Now, one of the questions
that scientists have grappled with

'down the years is the relationship
between reason and emotion.

'I see myself as a rational creature

'and yet I can be
overwhelmed by my feelings,

'as I think I'm about to find out.'

There's a part of which is absolutely
convinced I'm a rational creature -

whatever emotion
is engendered by the cave,

I can control it.

But I don't know until I do it.

Ooh, cor blimey,
it's a long way down. Going down.

Aha! Yep, I'm fine.

Lay right down. Yep.

And get your legs in first,
insert your legs.

Oh, jeez.

Twist your hips.
Oh, God, this is horrible.

Yeah, just relax. I realise...

that actually it's not

the dark and the small -
it's the fear of getting stuck.

HE SIGHS

Right... Do people panic
at this point?

Well, the secret is, your mind and
your body both have to be relaxed.

Ah, Jesus.

Ah, I can feel panic.

Calm down, objectify it -

out of a score of ten, how bad is it?

Probably about nine at the moment.

And could I...? No.
It's really, really horrible.

Ssh, ssh, ssh. Just stop, relax.

You come to what they
call the grip self moment. Right.

When you've got to grip self, but
you absolutely have to take control.

All right?

Just don't think about it,
just keep breathing. Jesus Christ!

My arm has got stuck,

I have my left arm underneath me.
Just adjust yourself a
little bit - don't panic.

Do I put my hands
in front of me or what?

Yeah, whatever's most comfortable.
Take your time. But I'm not going
to get stuck? No.

Oh, jeez, that was horrible. Oh, God.

Ah, it's unbelievable, man.

My arm was trapped underneath me.
I really thought...

..I was going to be stuck.

Now, that was just...

absolutely bloody awful. Oh, God!

'It is clearly possible
to produce a powerful emotion,

'but to really understand them
is a very different challenge.'

HE SIGHS DEEPLY

In the early days,
psychology largely relied

on speculative, unproven theories.

Then, at the start of the
20th century, psychologists

finally began to apply the scientific
method to their discipline.

One of the first to do so
was young, ambitious JB Watson.

The place, John Hopkins University,
Baltimore.

The question he was asking
was deceptively simple -

where do emotions come from?

Are we born with them?
Do we learn them?

He already had a pet theory.

Now, Watson believed that we're
all born with three basic emotions -

love, fear and rage -
and that by mixing those together,

you get all the emotional range
that we enjoy as adults.

But where he broke
with other people was,

he believed that every experience
you had, all the emotions

you felt later in life, were the
product of some childhood experience,

that what you experienced
as a child would determine
who you fell in love with,

what you hated
and what you got angry with.

Watson's own childhood was not happy.

His father was drunk
and often absent.

Perhaps because of this,
Watson was immensely driven

and, in 1920, began planning
something that would make him famous.

Now, Watson was about to do
what will turn out to be

one of the most controversial
and also important experiments

of the early 20th century.

He must have been...

nervous, and so must the people
taking part in this experiment.

Watson wanted to study fear,

and to do that, he was going to have

to find someone
and utterly terrify them.

These are his props -

a clown mask...

..some newspaper and matches,

a steel bar and a hammer.

So, who was he going to terrify?

Watson chose, as his subject,
a nine-month-old infant

he called Albert.

Albert's mother was a wet nurse
at the local hospital, who probably

needed the dollar a day usually
paid to experimental subjects.

A corridor conveniently
linked Albert's hospital home

to Watson's lab.

Now, Watson must have hoped
this was going to be something
memorable,

because he filmed it,
which was something extremely unusual
for the time.

Watson wanted to prove
that though babies are born

with an instinctive capacity
for fear,

initially, there is not much
they're actually frightened of.

They learn what to fear.

Watson started by testing

Albert's reaction to a series
of potentially dangerous things.

This is a burning pile of paper.

Will Little Albert
be frightened of it?

And the answer is no -

Little Albert was trying to reach
out and grab the flames.

He's obviously not frightened.
He doesn't know that fire burns,

he hasn't had that experience.

Then animals
were pushed in front of him.

Albert was curious, but showed no
signs of actually being frightened.

But Watson knew

he COULD terrify Albert
with loud, unexpected noises.

So far what he'd done was pretty
innocuous. The next bit wasn't.

Imagine this doll is Little Albert,

and this bit of cotton wool
is a mouse. Well, the mouse comes

to play with Little Albert,
and they have some fun together.

And then, on one occasion, the
experimenter comes up behind
Little Albert

and, completely unexpectedly,

terrifies the kid
by banging a loud noise.

They do this again and again.

What they wanted to see was, had
they induced fear in Little Albert,

towards the rat that he
had previously really liked?

Watson was deliberately trying
to condition Albert to associate

all these objects with fear.

The test would be...would Albert
be scared of them without needing
to startle him with the bang?

So Watson and his colleagues
pushed the objects in front
of Albert once more.

Ooh.

Albert is obviously
very uncomfortable.

He's trying to run away,
and they're almost torturing him.

You can see it, he's crying.

He's screaming...

he doesn't want anything to do
with it. He's trying to run away,

and they're just bringing it back
to him - it really is quite
disturbing.

Watson noted that when the rat alone
was presented,

Little Albert puckered his face
and withdrew his body
sharply to the left.

Oh, and this is nasty -
they've got the mask out now.

Oh, this is horrid.
The experimenter's got the mask on

and he's deliberately setting out
to try and terrify the child.

Watson had proved that you can
learn fear of almost anything.

Extreme fear.

You can make a person phobic.

So I've read about the case
of Little Albert before,

but I've never seen the footage,
and it's really quite upsetting,

particularly when you think of him
as an innocent young child of eight
months,

having these horrible
things done to you by adults.

There's a sort of coldness
about this experiment,

which is really, really
uncomfortable.

Watson's work was a landmark.

By frightening Little Albert, he had
shown that, whilst our capacity

for emotions is innate,
how they develop depends
on what we experience.

The experiment ended after
five months,

when his mother got a new job
and moved away.

She took with her
a child filled with fears.

For nearly a century,
one of psychology's most iconic
figures vanished.

Recently, however,
a relentless researcher

did manage to track him down.

But there was to be no happy ending.

Little Albert died
from an infectious disease

when he was a child.

'Even the name Watson gave him
isn't really his.

'His mother called him Douglas.'

He is this sort of big event
in the history of psychology

and yet he's also utterly
anonymous...

..which is quite sort of sad
in its own way.

And also because his mother...

took his secrets with her to the
grave, we have no idea what happened

to Little Albert after he left.

We have no idea whether the
fear that was conditioned into him

by Watson persisted.

All we know

is he lies here, he died aged six,
probably of encephalitis,

and that...

his mother loved him.

Fast-forward to the 21st century,
and it's clear that the influence

of the Little Albert experiment
has been profound.

Watson had shown
that we learn fear by association.

It wasn't long before
others began using the same technique

to reverse the effect,

to use the power of association
to unlearn fear.

His legacy is behavioural therapy,

one of the most effective treatments
today for helping people with
phobias.

Ten years ago,
I made a TV series about phobias.

I particularly remember Daniel.

He was so frightened of dogs,
he could barely walk down the road.

Oh, my God! Mum! Mum!

It's all right, it's OK.

It's OK, it's OK.

But, look, he's coming up that
way - please can we cross over?

It's all right, it's all right.

OK?
Just keep walking - it's all right.

No, I don't... OK?

'Daniel had a few sessions
with a behavioural psychologist,

'which seemed to help.

'But has it lasted?'

'Daniel is now 20, and I've come
to meet him with my own dog, Guy.'

Hello, there! Hiya.

Hi, there. Michael.

Hiya. Daniel.
Hello, very nice to see you.
Hi, nice to meet you.

You've changed a lot since
I last saw you! Are you OK with Guy?

Ah, yeah, fine.
Yeah, it's no problem.

Very good, very good, I'm impressed.

Do you mind, I'm just going
to bring Guy next to you?

I just want to see,
are you happy patting Guy?

I don't mind.

There you go. See that's not...
that's fine NOW. Yep.

But years ago,
that would never have happened. Yep.

It's a lot, it's a lot easier
to rationalise and weigh up now.

Before it would have
just been anything
to get away from the situation.

'Behavioural therapy does not claim
to cure but to make fear manageable.

'I wanted to see if Daniel
would be able to handle

'a bigger challenge than Guy.'

So what do you think
about the one over there?
It's fine when it's over there.

Would you be happy
going over there and having a chat,

or me bringing her back over here?

I'd rather you didn't, to be honest,
but I could probably walk past.

Shall we go and see how close we can
get before you feel uncomfortable?

Yeah, I think I can walk past, yeah.
Let's go and see. Come on, Guy!

'Behavioural therapy involves
gradually increasing the exposure

'to whatever it is you fear.'

So, out of ten at the moment?

I'm anxious.

Six or seven.

So it's going up? It is, yeah.

OK, tell me kind of
when you want to stop, then.

'If Daniel runs away now,
his fear of dogs will be reinforced.'

See, this is OK. I mean,
I wouldn't want to get much closer,
to be honest. OK.

'But staying while his brain
shrieks, "Run!" is hard to do.'

You all right?

I am, but...

Is your pulse running...?
Yeah, probably a bit faster.

Mind if I just
have a go at your pulse?

About 125, 130. Which is...?

Which is about, I'd imagine,
twice what it normally is. Really?

Yes. So I think
you're feeling a trifle anxious.

'If Daniel can tough it out,
his anxiety will fade,

'and he will start to break the
association between dogs and fear.'

You're now running at about 90.

Which is a little bit above. It's
a little bit, but it's come down...

In the last minute or so, it's come
down from about 120 to 90. Yep.

'I don't think Daniel will
ever love dogs, but nor will he allow

'a fear of them to rule his life.'

Well done.
Really, really impressive.

By the 1950s, psychologists felt
they had a grasp of how fears develop

and how they can be controlled.

But what about
a more positive emotion?

What about love?

I don't actually bring out these
photographs very often,

and they are incredibly evocative.

This is
me and Claire on our honeymoon,

sort of looking at each other.

And it brings
a very sort of warm glow.

And then these are pictures of...

me and the kids growing up.

That must be Jack,
probably about two years old,

very sweet.

So what is love and what is it for?

In the 1950s,
the answers were unclear.

There were just a series
of assumptions going back
half a century.

They knew babies are born
with basic instincts,

and the most basic is to eat.

The dominant idea was that
affection and love develop

towards whoever is feeding us.

Love is just there to reinforce
this bond with the feeder.

But no-one had put this idea
to the test.

People didn't understand
how you could study it, let alone...

be willing to study it.

It was something which was
seen as almost unstudyable,

certainly in the laboratory,

and that anyone who attempted
to do so was probably a fool.

One man who thought that,
as far as love was concerned,

psychology had been a complete
failure, was Harry Harlow.

In 1958, Harlow set about
challenging this by doing a strange

and compelling experiment.

What Harlow wanted to do
was explore love.

Now, how do you actually
do something like that?

Well, he had an idea -

it's rather extraordinary
and certainly bizarre.

What Harlow needed for his
experiments were baby monkeys

and very basic building materials.

What Harlow wanted to investigate
was the nature

of love between a mother and a child.

What is it a child really wants?

This was going
to help him answer that.

'There were lots of theories
about love and the relationship

'between a mother and child
but virtually no experimental data.'

Ah!

HE LAUGHS
Right.

So what Harlow was attempting to do

was build...

something which was a sort
of surrogate mummy monkey.

'The baby monkeys were to be
separated from their mothers

'and then offered DIY alternatives,
built out of bits of scrap.'

Now, the interesting thing is
that Harlow was doing this fascia,

not really for the benefit

of the baby monkeys,

but because he wanted parents
to identify with this...

funny little creature
he was creating.

Harlow wanted this to be about
people, not just monkeys.

And finally what I need is...

yes, one of these -
basically, a source of food.

A mother,

pared down to her absolutely
bare essentials - basically one...

breast, if you like, one nipple
to feed, one face to smile

and a frame to sort
of cuddle onto.

Right, so that was monkey number one.

Now he needed to build
monkey number two.

'The purpose of the experiment
was to offer baby monkeys

'two types of surrogate mother
and see which they preferred.

'One would offer food,
the other something less obvious.'

At this point, these two monkeys
look really quite similar,

but I'm just going
to add Harlow's final touch.

'To the second surrogate mother,
Harlow added just one thing -

'a soft cover.'

And the question was, if he took
a baby monkey and he introduced

the baby monkey to these two parents,
who would it prefer to go to?

Conventional theory said that
you get love, or love is generated,

by fulfilling something
of your basic wants.

So, in theory, and that's certainly
what everyone believed at the time,

the baby monkeys would become
attached and bonded to this monkey,

because this monkey is providing
milk, it is satisfying a need,

satisfying hunger.

So what happened?

Harry Harlow is no longer alive,

but I'm going to meet someone
who worked very closely with him.

Hello? Hi, come on in, come on in!

Hello, thank you.

Wooh! Well, hello.

What happened? Hi.

Ah, as I heard somebody once say,

I put my foot down,
and it broke itself.

'Len Rosenbaum
is an eminent psychologist.'

We're going, I think,
into this front room.

Fabulous.

Did people really think it was enough
just to feed and to clothe?

I think, at that time, people
thought those primary drives,

the survival needs,

were enough to carry infants -
monkeys or others -

from immaturity to maturity.

No-one, at that point, thought
that something like what Harlow

called the affectional drives, these
bonding tendencies, were in a sense

as primary as the need for food,
the need for water and so on.

Thus the experiment.

OK.

'The baby monkeys
were offered their choice.

'Harlow recorded
exactly what happened.'

Watch!

He's going to the wire mother.

The baby readily fed from the wire
object, but rather rapidly left the
wire mother

and then spent its time clinging,
15, 16, 18 hours a day...

Each of these had a clock
attached, so you could time

how much time was the baby spending
clinging to one or the other.

The attachment was developed
towards the cloth surrogate,

regardless of the source
of the food.

So it was not food in the end -
it was touch which was important to
the baby monkey?

That was what these experiments
purported to show, yes.

'Having shown that the babies
preferred the cloth mother,

'they wanted to investigate
what this really meant.

'What was the baby feeling
for the cloth mother?'

The whole idea was
to ask the question...

well, fine, the kid prefers the
cloth, even though the wire feeds.

But what...
how far does that preference go?

What's its ultimate meaning?

'They used fear to test the strength
of the baby's bond.

'Faced with a scary object,
which mother would they run to?'

And now Dr Harlow is,
ah, moving to the front

of the cage
one of these very scary objects.

He raises the door, scares it...
The monkey goes, "Ah!"
..and the baby rushes away.

Immediate, isn't it?
Where does it rush?

Not to the feeder
but to the cloth surrogate.

So Mummy really is providing
everything they need - protection...?

Exactly. The thing is to be in her
presence. So this is love?

This is what Harlow would call love
in a way? This is what Harlow
would call love.

And I'm inclined to agree.

'Next, Len and Harlow tested

'the strength
of a baby's love for its mother.

'Just how unpleasant would the cloth
mother have to be

'before the
baby monkey ceased to want it?'

What I did was to try and provide
a mother, a cloth mother,

that the infant would become
attached to

but which would provide a kind
of rejection,

which meant that
what I did was used compressed air

to blow a blast of air at the kid,
at some periodic interval.

The baby then steps off,
gets away, and then what happens?

That's the question. Does the kid
say, "Well, I don't want any more
of this.

"I don't... This is not for me"?

No, just the opposite.
The theory is this...what if,

every time you're emotionally upset,
you do the thing that you always do

when you're emotionally upset,
you rush to your mother?

But now when you're on your mother,
I make you even more emotionally
upset, what do you do?

Well, you want to be
on your mother even more!

There's a linkage between
the infant's emotional state

and its desire to be on the mother,
even if the mother is the source

of that emotional distress.

I mean, it kind of makes sense,

but when I was working with
delinquent children, it always...

I was young, I was sort of 20,
but I was surprised

by the extent to which these
children, who frankly

had abusive mothers... It didn't
matter HOW badly their mothers had

behaved to them - they would get
really, really angry if you ever,

EVER accused their mothers of
being in any way inadequate.

Absolutely the case.

And it was exactly those kinds of
observations, at the human level,

that was a natural bridge for
us to study.

These experiments threw a
powerful light on a baby's need

for its parents' touch.

But Harlow was about to go further.

He now asked...what would happen
if we had no love, no contact -

nobody at all?

Would this lead
to depression and despair?

And if so,
would this help our understanding

of this terrible affliction?

Harlow himself
had suffered from depression.

He put baby monkeys in total
isolation, for up to a year.

Some were not only isolated,
but confined in a restricted space

known as the Well of Despair.

All the monkeys came out

severely disturbed - those placed in
the well were particularly damaged.

'Len did not work with Harlow
on these experiments.'

Do you think the research was
justified?

Would you have stopped him
if you'd had the choice then?

The isolation experiments,
I probably would not have.

The Well of Despair studies,
I probably would have.

But, what was the goal?

If we could create
a meaningful, valid

monkey model of depression,

would that be worthwhile?

Without question in my mind,

I would say it would be
ABSOLUTELY worthwhile.

Whatever you had to do to
the monkeys to achieve that?
Well...that's your phrase,

I don't know... I can't answer
the "whatever I had to do".

But, would I have said, if I were
on a grant committee, reviewing

research that said, "Our goal is to
create a monkey model of depression

"that would allow us to understand
ultimately brain mechanisms" -

I would say - having worked in a
psychiatry department for 47 years -

you're damn right I would
have been supportive of it.

To be able to solve that
problem - to be able to knock

a piece of that problem out of the
way - is OVERWHELMINGLY worth it.

'Harlow's work
is deeply controversial.

'But what he gave the world

'is something that I think
is of profound importance.

'He proved just how much
we all need affection

'and close physical contact.'

OK...

"When we were walking
home from school,

"Betty told me she had this idea..."

"Tells."
"Tells", yeah. Thank you...

'After Harlow,
hospital-born babies were no longer

'separated from their mothers,
but placed physically close to them.

'What had seemed natural
to so many mothers

'was now confirmed by science.

'This particular experiment utterly
altered the way that people dealt

'with the subject of love, and
the way they brought up children.

'From then on you begin to see that'

the important thing is that children
should feel touched, cuddled, held.

And for that, I am profoundly,
profoundly grateful to Harlow.

Watson had shown
that emotions are learnt,

and Harlow, that we
are intensely social creatures.

So it was natural to put
these two ideas together, and ask,

how much of what we do and feel
is learnt from other people?

In 1961, American psychologist
Albert Bandura set out to see

how far just watching other people
influences our behaviour.

Bandura chose to study aggression.

At the time, the widespread view

was that watching violence
reduces aggression - it purges us.

But was this true?

To find out, Bandura
experimented on small children

aged three to five.

So what Bandura did, is he put an
adult in a room with a child

and a bunch of toys, including

something he called the "Bobo doll",
which is a giant inflatable doll.

Then, what happened after about a
minute is the adult unexpectedly

started beating up the doll in
really quite a vicious manner -

shouting, screaming, kicking,

hitting with a hammer - and went on
like this for about ten minutes.

What would the child do,
if after watching the adult

they were left in a room
on their own, with the same toys?

Ooh! She really is going for it.

She's doing exactly the same as
she saw the adult do, she's lifted

the doll up and now she's really
hammering it.

She's got a little hammer out, and
she's having a go at its toes now.

Which shows innovation
if nothing else...

'Every child
who'd watched the adult being violent

'copied much of what they'd seen.

'The closest imitation

'was when a child observed
an adult of the same sex.'

Now he's got the gun out,
and he's using

a combination of the gun and the
hammer to just whack the doll.

He's got a very aggressive
expression on his face.

'Importantly, another group who had
watched an adult play gently

'played calmly,
showing no signs of aggression.

'Basically, what the children saw,
the children did.

'This was an
utterly unexpected finding.'

Before Bandura did this experiment,
psychologists thought that

seeing somebody else acting out

a violent scene would be cathartic,
it would sort of purge you.

But what this clearly demonstrated,

and really shocked people
at the time,

is that actually what happens when

you see something doing violent
actions - you tend to imitate them.

Bandura's findings were given
added impact by his timing.

His experiment took place just as
television was moving into the home.

Two years later,

Bandura re-ran his experiment
with one important difference.

This time, he wanted
to compare how children react

to watching an aggressive adult
not in real life - but on film.

Children watched two versions.

One was a straightforward recording

of the adult
beating up the Bobo doll.

The second, a fantasy version,

with the attacking adult
dressed as a cat.

In almost every case,
Bandura got the same results -

children imitated what they'd seen.

The results were dynamite.

This was one of the first experiments

to look at the impact
of television violence.

The complicated relationship between

TV and behaviour
is still being debated.

But it was Bandura
who opened the floodgates,

and launched
an entirely new area of research.

Right. OK - oven on...

'Bandura had shown
that we CAN be strongly influenced

'by other people's behaviour.

'This is the basis of so-called
social learning theory.'

We don't have a bowl.

OK, so we measure out about...
How much? Four ounces, I think.

Which one's ounces?
The quarter one?

'But it's also clear that
how we learn changes as we mature.

'As we grow up, something else
happens to temper our behaviour.

'We develop a capacity
to reflect on what we see.

'We identify with other people.

'We develop empathy.'

Mmm... Tastes good.
It's good, isn't it?

'So how exactly do we DO this?'

Well, for decades nobody really knew,
and then researchers developed

new ways of looking
inside the brain for answers.

I'm on my way to Holland,
to experience experimentation

21st-century style.

We've left the world of abuse
and exploitation behind -

though what I'm about to do
WILL involve pain.

Christian Keysers
is researching empathy,

by trying to watch it at work
in our brains.

So we think the big question is a
bit, how we understand other people.

And I think you've
all experienced that sometimes you'd

see your partner, for instance,
accidentally hurting herself.

And when you see that, the funny
thing is you don't just realise

that the other person IS in pain,

but you almost have to hold your own
finger, because you kind of embody

to a certain extent
the pain of the other.

And so what our lab is all about

is trying to understand,
at the level of the brain,

what happens while we get
these very strong insights

into what somebody else is feeling.

Christian is investigating the extent
to which our own feelings of pain

are important in understanding
the pain of others.

So basically there's going to be
two phases to the experiment...

There's a first phase in which
you're going to be watching movies,

and then there's going to be a part

where you're going to be actually
experiencing some moderate pain...

How are you going
to create the pain?

Well, I think you're going
to find out a little bit later on

in the experiment.

'Christian is going to collect
two sets of data.

'First, he records what
happens in MY brain

'when I see someone else in pain.'

OK, ready to go?

Yep. OK, here we go...

OK, Michael? How was that? Fine...

'Then, he measures what happens
in my brain, when I am repeatedly

'and enthusiastically whacked
by one of his colleagues.'

Three, two, one... Go.

Three, two, one... Stop.

'The two brain scans
can then be compared.

'What they're finding suggests that
empathy is actually measurable.

'Many of the same brain areas light
up, whether we are experiencing pain

'or watching someone else in pain.'

What's really special
about this area we're in,

is that by seeing that the same
brain area is active in two cases

you don't just see WHERE in
the brain it's being done,

but you see that it's done by this
recall of your own experience.

When tested this way,
people show very different responses.

I'm a bit nervous.

Will the machine reveal
that I am warm and empathic -

or perhaps a secret psychopath?

"I often have
tender, concerned feelings

"for people less fortunate
than me"...

Yeah, I... Mmm, yeah.

'This questionnaire will help them
compare how empathetic I think I am

'with how empathetic
the MACHINE thinks I am.'

"When I see someone get hurt,
I tend to remain calm"...

No, that probably doesn't
describe me very well.

'First, Christian shows me what
happened when I was slapped.'

This created very reasonable
results. So you...

you did activate your S1,

your S2, your insula and your ACC,
just like your average Joe. OK...

'So far, I was normal.
I'd activated areas involved in

'sensation and emotion,
like most people do.'

Now, this is the part where you
probably want to distract your wife.

While we were showing you the movies
the first thing we saw was this.

None of the red areas get
reactivated while you observed it.

And now you can call her again,
because what we then did was

we lowered the threshold a bit,
kind of looking for weaker activity,

and when we did that, we actually
saw that you do have activity

that is typical - but there was
lower than what we find on average.

So I'm not a psychopath,

but I'm not, erm...wholly in
touch with the feelings of others?

Exactly. You're not the most
soft-hearted person, maybe. OK.

Where you reacted yesterday...

'What made it more embarrassing,
was the brain images

'did not match the answers
I had given on the questionnaire.'

OK - maybe I lack insight, then.

That could actually be,
because one of the funny things is

when we scanned a psychopath,

the brain images really suggested
that they weren't all that empathic,

but the questionnaires made it look
like they were model citizens!

Oh, God, so I AM a psychopath?!
There you go.

Well, maybe that's pushing
it a little bit, but...

I think what tends to happen is
we tend to, erm,

exaggerate our best characters,
don't we? We have vain brains.

Yes. Yes, quite.

So what the brain scans
are doing, in a funny way,

is they are answering one of
the more fundamental questions -

which is who are we,
as opposed to who we THINK we are.

Yes!

Our understanding of empathy
is developing,

because today's technology
allows us to see inside the brain.

It's revealing that empathy
seems to be deeply embedded

in the networks of our minds.

While I'm witnessing you
go through some experiences,

my brain does exactly that -

it doesn't just make me SEE
what is going on in you,

it makes me share
all the different senses.

I will feel the pain you go through,

I will empathise with the actions
you do to get away from it.

It really reminds us of the fact

that we are kind of incredibly
social by nature -

that kind of everybody around us

is not just around us,
but kind of IN us.

Cutting-edge technology,
and sometimes brutal experiments,

have each opened a window
onto human emotions.

But there is another way
we have come to learn about

the role of emotions in our lives,
and that's an accidental by-product

of terrible personal misfortune.

In the 1990s, a neuroscientist called
Antonio Damasio started researching

patients who had damaged a part of
the brain key for normal emotions.

He was struck by the differences in
the way they were making decisions.

His research would reveal the

surprisingly pervasive role emotions
have in every corner of our lives.

Dave is a patient, like those in
Damasio's original study.

Until eight years ago,
life was good.

We, um, had a really
good relationship I think.

Very affectionate, yeah.
Very loving.

He could put himself in
my shoes and think about,

what could he do to make me feel

more at ease? And so he would
do those kinds of nice things.

In 2002, Dave was diagnosed

with a brain tumour,
and had surgery to remove it.

What neither he nor
his wife realised,

was that the operation would involve

removing a part of his brain
crucial for processing emotion.

When he woke up, he just was...

really um...cold.

He told me he didn't want me
to touch him, or talk to him...

The doctor came, the surgeon,
and I said, you know,

"That's not Dave. What happened?"

Dave's IQ was unaffected,
and he has returned to his job

as an animal psychologist.

But he is very conscious
of being changed.

'A lot has gone, from that aspect.
Emotionally flat.'

It's...
that's the toughest thing, is uh...

you don't realise
how important emotions are

until you don't feel 'em,
and you can only remember 'em.

Hi... Hi.

Dave had not fallen out of love
with Lisa...

but he was no longer capable
of feeling it.

They divorced -
but she remains devoted to him,

and takes him
to all his medical appointments.

Do you want any more
coffee before we go?

No, I've just filled up.

Well, shall we...?

All right.

Dave's case is so rare,

he is being studied by a doctor
who trained under Antonio Damasio.

At Wisconsin University,
Dr Koenig is continuing

the investigations started by his
teacher, into the impact of emotions

on our capacity to reason.

So is it fair to say that

you're maybe not operating with the
same intuition in terms of emotion,

but you're relying more on the
sort of cognitive or rule-based

strategy to try to...you know, put
together what this person might be

thinking, and, you know, "What is MY
responsibility in this situation?"

Right. It's...

I have to...
think about what it would feel like

rather than feel it.

Mm-hm...

I was...thinking the other day...

And I don't want this to sound
strange, but I imagined,

"Well, maybe serial killers
don't have emotions"...

Not that I would ever be a
serial killer, but I think

I have that sense of...

..it doesn't bother me.
Mm-hm. You know what I mean?

But the thing that prevents me
from BEING a serial killer

is that I...
can remember that I'm not.

Hello...

'What Dave is experiencing
is intensely personal,

'but it is also
scientifically revealing.

'I wanted to meet Dave's doctor,
to find out what had happened

'to his brain
to produce these profound changes.'

So what are we looking at?

So here we're looking at
Dave's brain

in a number of different views.

As we move forward in his brain

you can see, here are his eyes...

Ooh, dear...

Yeah, so...so right above
his eyes you can see...

That's tragic. ..very obviously
a loss of tissue there on the right.

Can he still...
READ emotions - say, in Lisa...

If he saw someone crying,
I mean, he would know that,

you know,
tears mean this person is sad.

Now, if that would MEAN anything
to him, if that would impact him

emotionally,
is a different question.

So he can probably recognise
these social and emotional cues

that are emitted by other people,
but...

you know,
can he use those to influence

HIS decision-making,
is a different process.

Patients like Dave are
making it increasingly clear

that our power to reason
is NOT independent of our emotions.

They are supporting the evidence
first gathered by Antonio Damasio.

Through most of the 20th
century there was this

really predominant view that our
decision-making is dominated by some

cold, logical processing,
some reasoning.

So I think Antonio Damasio's work

was seminal from the standpoint
of highlighting the importance of

emotion for decision-making.
And patients like Dave were really

the key piece of evidence like that.

Damasio undermined the widely held
belief that most of our decisions are

logical ones,
by devising an ingenious test.

He took his inspiration
from gambling.

He devised a gambling test, that
would try to mimic the uncertain mix

of risk and benefits
that we juggle with in everyday life.

Damasio was convinced that, even when
we THINK we are making a decision

based on reasoning, we are actually
following an emotional hunch.

'Damasio tested this by a
carefully designed gambling task.'

OK, so I've got 2,000...

and I will pick this one here.

Reward, penalty... Good, I'm 2,100.

Let's keep going on that one.

'I'm playing a computer
version of the game.

'The player is offered
four rows of cards.

'They sample each one,
and find out that two of them

'will give them small
but consistent rewards.'

I like this one...

'The other two give them big rewards,
but also big losses.'

Aaagh...!

Damn!

'Normal people respond
before they are even aware of this.

'They just instinctively feel wary
of the risky cards.'

Oh... That's a bad one.
That is a bad one.

'They are not necessarily
conscious of this.

'They have an emotional cue -

'what we often call a gut instinct.'

"You earned a total of 2,900." Whoa!

"You may now leave. Please alert
the experimenter that you are done.

"Press the X to exit."

So, yes... OK, that was fun!

'What struck me, was I had no idea
I was getting an emotional cue.'

That feels like a sort of
simple, logical decision,

it doesn't feel like
an emotional decision.

Right - well, in the end,
after enough experience,

you do sort of process it
at this sort of

explicit level, where you say
"This is just a logical choice."

But as you're going through
the test, what we've found is that

neurologically healthy individuals

will start to move towards the safer
decks before they can explicitly

articulate that these decks
are safer than the other ones.

So they seem to be operating
more on an emotional hunch.

So actually, what I think of as
a logical decision is actually

a rationalisation after the event -
my gut has already decided which is

the safe bet, and then my...
intelligence catches up with it!

Yeah, that's one way to put it,
that your emotional system

is really the instrument of
learning here, which precedes

your sort of conscious awareness.

DAVE: 50 bucks...

Dave has never done
the gambling test before.

With his damaged emotions,
how will he do?

Right, I lose money there.

Penalties...

You owe us some money, Dave! I do.
You owe us some money.

1,500... 1,450.
Get your chequebook out.

I'd rather owe it to you.
DR KOENIG LAUGHS

Yeah, I didn't learn
anything on that, did I?

You win some, you lose some. That's
what gambling's all about. Yep.

So as you were doing it,
did you have any feeling that

"This is sort of a risky decision",
or "This is a safe play", or...?

Um...no.

We go through life thinking
decisions we make - big or small -

are the result of our uniquely
human ability to think rationally.

But as Dave and other

unfortunate individuals show us,
reason without emotion is nothing.

On a more personal level,

Dave also shows us how vital
emotion is to feeling alive,

and how crucial empathy is
to even knowing who you are.

I'm going through life missing
some of these important pieces that

we don't have to think about,
that just happen.

The longer I go
basing what I should feel on memory,

I'm kind of nervous that eventually
the memory will fade,

and then trying to remember what the
actual emotion felt like will be...

..more mysterious.

At least now I have the memory -

so I can at least go through life
with that understanding.

If I didn't have that memory...

..I guess it would be
a lonely, lonely existence.

BAT CHIRRUPS

CHILD SHRIEKS AND GIGGLES

Whoa...!

You want to try that, Clare?

'Nearly a century since Watson
set out to terrify Little Albert,

'and in the process
triggered an extraordinary

'and sometimes disturbing quest to
try and understand human emotions...

'..we now realise that, far from
being something you have to curb,

'suppress, restrain,'

emotions are actually central
to becoming a rational, complex,

fully functioning human being.

Snap!

'But the price
of applying the scientific method

'to the study of the mind
has been high -

'terribly high in some cases.

'And this leaves me with
conflicting feelings.'

Some of the experiments, particularly
the later work with monkeys carried

out by Harlow, and the experiments
done on Little Albert, you just

couldn't justify, you couldn't
get away with, in the modern age.

I certainly would obviously

never allow any of MY children to be
terrified as part of an experiment.

But do I think it was
worthwhile in the end?

Yes, I do. I'm glad it was done.

I do believe
that the knowledge that was gained

was worth the price that was paid.

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