All in the Mind

Many people listen to music for hours every day, and often near bedtime in the hope of a good night’s sleep. But if you can’t get the tune out of your head could this be counter-productive? In new research, neuropsychologist Michael Scullin of Baylor University has looked at the rarely studied effect of these so called earworms, offering new insights into the way music is processed in our brain during sleep and effect music has on both sleep quality and quantity.

There’s growing evidence that signals sent from our internal organs to the brain play a major role in regulating emotions and fending off anxiety and depression. Claudia meets Dr Jane Aspell of Anglia Ruskin University who’s found that the strength of the connection between our brain and internal organs is linked to how we feel about our appearance – and could in future act as a biomarker to help identify, or even predict, negative body image and its related conditions.

And Claudia visits a new exhibition examining the work of the hugely popular Edwardian illustrator Louis Wain. His playful, sometimes even psychedelic pictures helped to transform the public's perception of cats As a patient at the Bethlem Psychiatric Hospital he continued to produce many drawings of gleeful and often outlandish creatures, and his body of work demonstrated the therapeutic and restorative effect that closeness with animals can have on a person’s mental health.

Claudia’s studio guest is Professor Catherine Loveday of the University of Westminster

Producer: Adrian Washbourne

Depersonalisation disorder involves feeling completely disconnected from yourself or from reality. It’s among the most common yet under-recognised psychiatric conditions and as such is hard to diagnose. Joe Perkins whose new book Life on Autopilot charts his 14 year experience with the disorder, discusses his long journey on the road to formal diagnosis, the need for innovative treatments, and why this disorder is so little understood or discussed.

City-wide air pollution has adverse effects on our heart and lungs, but there is now increasing evidence that air pollution isn’t great for our brain either. Recent research shows that adults exposed to high levels of traffic-related air pollution are more likely to experience anxiety and mild depression. But could it also contribute to the course and severity after the onset of more serious mental illness? Claudia Hammond meets Ioannis Bakolis of Kings College London who in the first study of its kind, has examined the extent to which air pollution exposure leads to a more severe course of illness in people experiencing first episodes of psychotic disorders.

And Claudia’s studio guest Professor Daryl O’ Connor discusses a new study into an effective way to counter the way disinformation spreads unchecked, and how inserting a counter-message, just once, into a close replica of a deceptive rival’s message can undercut its persuasive effects.

Producer Adrian Washbourne

Produced in association with the Open University

Is it possible to take the guesswork out of the prescription of medication for psychosis? Medication is available for the distressing experiences of hallucinations or delusions, but anti-psychotics only work for about three quarters of people and psychiatrists currently have no good way of working out who those people are. New research at Kings College London is trialling a type of scan that's been around for some time - a PET scan - but using it in a new way to detect whether a person's brain has an overactive dopamine system which might be able to predict which drugs will work. Claudia Hammond talks to Oliver Howes, Professor of Molecular Psychiatry, King's College London and Sameer Jauhar, Senior Research Fellow, King's College London who've been conducting this game changing research.

We hear from the latest finalist in the All in the Mind Awards - someone who knows just what it's like to struggle for many years with mental health issues and to deal with some of worst things that can happen in life. Douglas, who's had to deal with a combination of physical and mental pain, nominated his GP Jens Foell for an award in the Professional category.

What type of personality dictates whether we're prepared to stand up to someone dropping litter, chatting during a movie or more serious transgressions such as verbal abuse? It takes a certain type of person to say something, rather than to sit there and fume. So who is the most likely to stand up to anti-social behaviour? Markus Brauer, who's Professor of Social Psychology at the University of Wisconsin Madison, has been investigating just that. How did he go about it?

Emerging from lockdown might not be as easy on our mental health as it sounds. After weeks spent adjusting to lockdown and working out how to cope, how easy is it to re-adjust to old routines? And is it even possible to predict how we’ll feel about things in a few weeks’ time? Daisy Fancourt, Associate Professor of Behavioural Science and Health at University College London discusses the latest results from the Covid-19 Social study, exploring how people’s feelings have changed during the course of the pandemic. Claudia Hammond is also joined by Paul Dolan, Professor of Behavioural Science at the London School of Economics, and James Downs, a campaigner on mental health and eating disorders.

Claudia Hammond’s guest is psychologist Prof Daryl O’Connor from University of Leeds with news of new research on the striking impact a supportive family environment can have on your susceptibility to the common cold in later life.

We are hearing a lot about the possibility of job losses in the future as a result of the pandemic. But there are some people starting new jobs under lockdown – with the prospect of not meeting their colleagues in person. So how will people manage? We hear from two experts who are just embarking – or about to embark, on new jobs: Andrew Clements a senior lecturer in Organisational Psychology at the University of Bedfordshire and Gail Kinman, Visiting Professor of Occupational Health Psychology at Birkbeck University.

Producer Adrian Washbourne

Produced in association with the Open University

This week: the exclusive results of new research on the emotional, physical and sexual violence happening in teenage relationships.

Two years ago Christine Barter, the NSPCC Senior Research Fellow at the University of Bristol, published a research on how teenage boyfriends and girlfriends treat one other. Nearly three quarters of girls and half of boys reported some form of emotional bullying by their partners, while one in three girls reported some form of sexual violence. This week she discusses exclusively on All in the Mind her new research which focuses on young people not in full-time education who weren't covered by the original study. Also in the programme, two young women who've been helped by the youth charity, Fairbridge to help overcome abuse by their ex-boyfriends discuss their experiences.

Most of us forget much of what happens to us in everyday life - which is why lists, photographs, memos and reminders are an important part of life. A newly-discovered group of people have an extraordinary capacity to remember nearly everything that's ever happened to them, however trivial. Scientists at the Center for the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory at the University of California, Irvine have dubbed this skill "superior autobiographical memory". They are studying ten exceptional individuals who can recall nearly every experience, however minor, to work how come they don't - or can't - forget. Dr James McGaugh is leading the team and explains why he thinks this could change the whole way we think about memory.