All In The Mind

Knowledge can be dangerous. As neuroscience delves more deeply into our organ of thought and its complex soup of neurotransmitters - could it also be exploited for malign purposes? Is the brain the next target of terrorism? Pharmaceutically enhanced soldiers, chemical torture, incapacitants, neurological weaponry... The possibilities are frightening and progress rapid. Two leading researchers into biological weapons present their concerns, and argue scientists need to take action now. But are we at risk of paranoia?

One person's spoken language might sound like gobbledy gook to another - but when it comes to music do we beat to a common evolutionary drum? Could music be the universal language - linking minds across cultures and ancestral time? And, which came first - music or language? Don your headphones and climb aboard for an acoustic adventure. Does music lie at the heart...and brain...of what it means to be human?

The Brain. It's been called the final frontier of science. Colourful fMRI scans light up our TV screens and newspapers promising to reveal the secrets of the psyche. From the search for the brain's God Spot, to the rapid rise of neuroeconomics, neuromarketing and neuroethics - makes for sexy headlines - but have journalists become blinded by the lights and allure of the brain scan? Are we telling too simplistic a story about the human self? Join Natasha Mitchell at the World Conference of Science Journalists with award-winning science journalists Deborah Blum (USA) and Jonica Newby, and Professor Fred Mendelsohn, Director of the Howard Florey Institute.

Why can two children born into the same household be like two different peas in a pod? Harvard's Jerome Kagan trailblazed the controversial science of temperament to investigate why. In a career that spans more than half a century, now he's going into battle for our minds, with a compelling retrospective, An Argument for Mind. To some an iconoclast - one of the biggest names in psychology of our time joins Natasha Mitchell, in this re-airing of a popular interview.

Like many young Australians in their early 20s, writer Julie Deakin headed to Europe for her first 'Big Adventure'. But holidaying in Hungary with her sister she found herself diagnosed with an aggressive brain tumour and scheduled for immediate surgery, in a land whose language she didn't speak. It was the start of an eight-year saga before her death in 1998, confronting a tumour that wouldn't go away, and the finality of a passionate young life. This week, Julie's story.

Self harm and self-denigration. Radical mood swings, and diabolical, destructive behaviours. For those labelled as having Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) - life is intolerable. Not the least because it's a diagnosis often stigmatised by the very profession responsible for giving it. This week, confronting stories about a confronting condition. Of the estimated 1-2% of the population said to have the disorder, most are women. But are these difficult women, or women with dreadfully difficult histories?

It conjures up images of the Six Million Dollar Man or Star Trek. A bionic eye for the profoundly blind. What are the prospects for a prosthesis or retinal chip to restore vision? Can engineers really replicate the deeply subjective experience that is seeing? And, would near enough be good enough? Could a few spots of light compromise the other well honed senses of touch, sound and smell that colonise the visual centres of blind brains? Graeme Innis, Australia's Federal Human Rights and Disability Discrimination Commissioner, himself born blind, reckon he'd give one a try.

A completely blind artist paints perfect replicas of the world he's never seen. An Indian child born with cataracts miraculously gains full visual capacity at age 12. People born blind experience their 'seeing' mind in different ways, and are helping scientists challenge the dogma of a brain rigidly hard-wired for vision. And, Zoltan Torey, blinded 56 years ago in an industrial accident, shares his own wildly vivid experience of an 'inner eye'.

From the collective paranoia of Cold War hysteria to the medicated, disordered mind - sociologist and performance artist Jackie Orr has penned a passionate and political history of panic. She delved into the rich archives of the war-time psyche, confronted her own panic attacks, and even enrolled in the clinical trial of a drug for panic disorder, in her quest to excavate our panicky past and present.

Transhumanists are hell-bent on extending their lives beyond the current limits of the flesh, by exploiting cutting-edge genomics, stem-cell research, robotics and nanotechnology. Engineering evolution is their goal. But can they re-engineer our Darwinian mind? Leda Cosmides, renowned pioneer of the controversial field evolutionary psychology, asks, 'Are We Already Transhuman?' Don't miss this Templeton Research Lecture recorded for All in the Mind at Arizona State University.