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: Rowing the Atlantic in the name of science, psychologists tackling poverty, and the scent of fear makes us more observant.

Rowing the Atlantic in the name of science, psychologists tackling poverty, and the scent of fear makes us more observant.

BBC Radio 4 - All in the Mind, Rowing the Atlantic in the name of science, psychologists tackling poverty, and the scent of fear makes us more observant.

Rowing an ocean for science, psychologists tackling poverty, and how fear helps us see.

The highs and lows of rowing the Atlantic, psychologists tackling poverty, and how the scent of fear helps us be more observant. Claudia Hammond discusses with Peter Olusoga.

Have you ever considered rowing across the Atlantic? How about making it even more challenging by doing it whilst wearing an ECG monitor and filling in psychological questionnaires? Claudia Hammond speaks to the first Austrian woman to row the Atlantic, Ciara Burns, who collected data throughout her 42 day crossing. And to the professor who studied the data, Eugenijus Kaniusas from the Vienna University of Technology, about the three big dips in mood along the way. Ciara talks about the emotional highs and lows of rowing to America, about the night skies, meeting whales, and how it feels when the Atlantic comes crashing down on you. 

Sports psychologist Peter Olusoga from Sheffield Hallam University, discusses mental preparation for an adventure like Ciara's and how being in the middle of the Atlantic, with the astronauts on the international space station as your nearest other humans, can provide a lasting perspective change. 

Peter also describes a new piece of research showing that smelling other people's sweat, collected whilst they watched scary films, can help us to be more observant and overcome a well-established psychological effect known as inattentional blindness. 

And Claudia talks to Tiago Pereira, a Portuguese psychologist who is calling for psychologists to put a full stop to poverty. He says that psychologists are uniquely placed to communicate the causes and consequences of poverty, and to use that information to demand governmental policy changes. 

 
Presenter: Claudia Hammond   

Producer: Lorna Stewart   

Studio Manager:  Donald MacDonald 

Production Co-ordination: Siobhan Maguire   

Editor: Holly Squire

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All in the Mind

Rowing the Atlantic in the name of science, psychologists tackling poverty, and the scent of fear makes us more observant.

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