All in the Mind

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Factual: Health & Wellbeing

The show with the latest evidence on psychology, mental health and neuroscience.

The show on how we think, feel and behave. Claudia Hammond delves into the evidence on mental health, psychology and neuroscience.

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All in the Mind: Earworms in sleep, body sensations and image, Louis Wain exhibition

Earworms in sleep, body sensations and image, Louis Wain exhibition

BBC Radio 4 - All in the Mind, Earworms in sleep, body sensations and image, Louis Wain exhibition

Earworms in sleep, bodily sensations and body image, Louis Wain exhibition.

Claudia Hammond examines the effect of musical earworms on a good night's sleep, and how awareness of our internal bodily sensations influences feelings about body image.

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

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All in the Mind

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