The Boy With The Incredible Brain

Daniel Tammet is a twenty-something with extraordinary mental abilities, Daniel is one of the world’s few savants. He can do calculations to 100 decimal places in his head, and learn a language in a week. This documentary follows Daniel as he travels to America to meet the scientists who are convinced he may hold the key to unlocking similar abilities in everyone. He also meets the world’s most famous savant, the man who inspired Dustin Hoffman’s character in the Oscar winning film ‘Rain Man’.




As a baby, Daniel cried constantly and banged his head against the wall. His parents were frantic but all doctors could suggest was that he was understimulated. One afternoon when he was four, an accident changed the way Daniel thought forever. While playing with his brother in the living room he suffered a series of epileptic seizures which transformed his brain chemistry, giving him the gift of synaesthesia.

This condition occurs when the parts of the brain responsible for different areas of perception get mixed up. Brain scans of autistic savants suggest that the right hemisphere might be compensating for damage in the left hemisphere. While many savants struggle with language and comprehension - skills associated primarily with the left hemisphere - they often have amazing skills in mathematics and memory - primarily right hemisphere skills. Daniel began to respond emotionally to numbers, which he started to ‘see’ as complex, beautiful shapes and textures.

The Human Senses

Nearly everyone has experienced a moment when a faint fragrance brings a memory of a long-lost moment in time crashing back to the forefront of their minds.Often we will have forgotten about the event completely, yet it transpires our unfathomable minds have filed it neatly in some unreachable corner of the brain, primed for instant retrieval.




This documentary sets out to discover the biological reasons why humans eat such a range of diverse tasting dishes, from rotten raw ducks eggs to a sweaty blue cheese, and watch while contestants at chilli eating contest push their taste buds to the limit. Compared to many animals, humans have a ‘try anything once’ attitude to food and this has allowed us to populate every corner of the planet, while many other animals depend totally on one food source for their energy, which limits where they can survive.

PART ONE

PART TWO

PART THREE

Watch Programme 3 - Touch and Vision in Educational | View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

Humans are very sensitive to touch and different parts of our body have different sensitivities. In fact, when it comes to our sense of touch, humans are similar to elephants.We have a few areas where we are extremely sensitive, just like the elephant's trunk, and the rest of our body is surprisingly insensitive, like the elephant's thick hide. The different density of touch sensors in the skin, in different parts of the body, explains why some parts of the body seem to have a much lower pain threshold. A microscopic splinter in a finger can be extremely painful, while a
cut on your leg may not hurt as much!

The Boy who Sees Without Eyes

This is the miraculous story of American teenager Ben Underwood, who has been completely blind since the age of three when he lost both eyes to retinal cancer. Yet, Ben zooms around on a skateboard, shoots basketball hoops, and dodges lamp-posts and parked cars unaided. How does Ben do all this without the use of his eyes? Incredibly, Ben has taught himself to see with sound, using an extraordinary technique he has created. Ben makes a sharp click with his tongue from which the echo bounces off the object right back at him, allowing him to know precisely where objects are located.




The technique, called 'echo-location', is not dissimilar to the way a bat or dolphin uses sound to see. Ben was able to distinguish objects with his clicking by noticing that objects 'sounded' different. Driving along in the car for example, Ben noticed that the side streets sounded different to the buildings, something his family, and the scientists at the University of California in Santa Barbara who are conducting tests into Ben's amazing ability, find astonishing. Seeing with sound has transformed Ben's life.

His mum lets him play in the street, just like all the other kids, because his sound pictures seem to make him more aware of danger than his sighted friends. He can even rollerblade quite easily and do chores around the house. Ben refuses to let society label him as disabled, so when he meets another blind man who also uses echo-location with the extra assistance of a white cane to help him get around extra tricky situations, Ben finds it hard to take up the use of a tool he sees as not for him - a young boy who has relied on his own extraordinary ability to allow him to see in his own way for so many years.

Deadly Ascent

In an exploration of extreme medical science, we ascend Alaska's Denali—aka Mt. McKinley—to try to solve the mystery of high-altitude deaths on one of the most dangerous mountains on Earth. This documentary chronicles daring mountain rescues and emergency medical evacuations as it accompanies an expedition team of researchers and experts employing the latest NASA technology to investigate the lethal diseases attacking climbers all over the world.




Each year, more than 1,000 people attempt to reach Denali's summit. Nearly half of those fail and several die trying—sliding off of icy cliffs, crushing bones against rocks, falling into hidden crevasses, or simply getting lost and succumbing to the cold. It's no secret—cold can kill . But why? Even some of the most physically fit and well-equipped climbers still die on Denali, debilitated by a strange and confounding sickness.

Watch Deadly Ascent - PBS Nova in Educational | View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

The producers of this documentary assembled a team of medical researchers, rescuers, world-class mountaineers, military special forces, and an astronaut taking part in a study by Dr. Peter Hackett, who turns the mountain's vertical arctic landscape into a high-altitude lab. Home to the highest medical rescue camp in the U.S., Denali offers a unique opportunity, since it's one of the few places on Earth where doctors can study humans in extreme conditions.

Click here to visit the official website of this documentary.

What's the Problem with Nudity?

What is wrong with nudity? Why are people embarrassed about their bodies? How and why did they get the way they are?




This documentary takes a group of volunteers and subjects them to a series of psychological and physical tests to challenge attitudes to the naked human form. The questions raised strike at the heart of human physical and social evolution.

Human beings are the only creatures that can be 'naked' - but why, how and when did people lose their fur? That question takes Horizon around the world to meet scientists from Africa to Florida, and they are finding answers in unexpected places: the chest hair of Finnish students, the genetic history of lice, and the sweat of an unusual monkey. It turns out that something everyone takes for granted may hold the key to the success of the entire human species.

THIS DOCUMENTARY CONTAINS SOME NUDITY...CONSUME AT OWN RISK!!!

My Strange Brain

This documentary explores unusual neurological conditions. It profiles four people with different disorders that affect their memories and sleeping patterns. One woman was struck down by a virus that has erased all her recollections of the last 20 years, while another woman is unable to record new memories. The film also meets a man who loses his muscle tone every time he experiences heightened emotions.




For Mohammad Doud, each day is a constant battle to stay awake. One second he is talking normally, the next he slumps to the floor as if paralysed. Mohammad has cataplexy, which means that any feeling of heightened emotion leads to a total loss of muscle tone. His condition is so severe it can strike up to 60 times a day. Now, for the first time in more than 20 years, he embarks on the 30-minute train journey into London, battling the effects of his condition all the way.

PART ONE

Watch My Strange Brain [Part 1] in Educational | View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

Claire Rutherford and her husband preside over a family of boisterous teenagers in their large house near Peterborough. So far, so ordinary - but Claire's story is anything but normal. Four years ago, the same common herpes virus that causes cold sores attacked Claire's brain, completely wiping out her memories of the previous 20 years. This film follows Claire as she battles to rebuild her memories.

PART TWO

Watch My Strange Brain [Part 2] in Educational | View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

Nicola Pomphrett was also struck down by viral encephalitis, but in her case it has left her unable to lay down new memories. Nicola lives in a perpetual present time with a working memory of no more than two minutes. Now she undergoes a series of experiments which vividly demonstrate her goldfish-like inability to recall new information. And for Seattle teenager Alanna Wong, "normal" life is measured in periods of seven to ten days at a time. She suffers from the rare sleeping disorder Kleine-Levin Syndrome, which causes her to sleep for up to 20 hours a day. In attempt to confirm her diagnosis once and for all, this film records Alanna as she undergoes an advanced brain scan.

The Universe Within

How do our muscles translate electrical and chemical energy into mechanical force? How does our immune system destroy microscopic invaders? How is the stomach protected from its own lethal hydrochloric acid?




Through the use of fiber optic cables and special cameras, this documentary travels inside the body to answer these questions and to reveal the details of our muscular, immune, digestive, and reproductive systems. Featuring 3-D computer animations and never-before-seen footage of microscopic events, this program follows functions such as the digestive process and the immune system's response to invading bacteria.

Watch The Universe Within - Nova in Educational | View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

In addition, interviews and footage showing four famous athletes in action demonstrate the links between internal functions and external physical performance and health.

What makes Us Human Documentary

What is it that separates us from our animal cousins and makes us essentially human?




In this documentary we see that while our closest animal relatives have been swinging from the trees, humans have built a world that is vastly more complex. What are the defining features that have allowed us to do this? Are we special, and separate from all other animals, or are we just an especially successful mammal?


Part 1 – Big Heads

Part 2 – Copycats

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