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Documentary, The Brain- A Secret History - episode 1 -Mind Control
The Brain: A Secret History
The Brain: A Secret History is a three-part series presented by Michael Mosley that explores the history of experimental psychology and the attempts to understand and manipulate the human brain. The series covers various topics, including the study of abnormal brains to reveal the workings of the normal brain.
In part 3, titled "Broken brains," the series focuses on experiments on abnormal brains, such as the case of Angela, a 45-year-old suffering from severe epileptic seizures, who undergoes surgery to remove the damaged part of her temporal lobe.
The series also discusses Paul Broca's discovery of a damaged language centre in a patient's brain in the mid-19th century, which is considered the start of modern neuroscience.
The series also includes discussions on the work of Henry Molaison, who suffered brain damage leading to severe epilepsy, and the surgical removal of his hippocampus.
The Brain: A Secret History was released on January 6, 2011, and has an IMDb rating of 7.2.
The series has been described as informative but biased, with some controversial portrayals of historical figures and events.
The series includes episodes on mind control, where Mosley explores the history of attempts to control the human mind, including the use of hallucinogenic drugs and the work of B.F. Skinner and William Sargant.
The series also touches on the controversial Project MKULTRA, which involved experiments on the human brain
The Brain: A Secret History
The Brain: A Secret History is a three-part series presented by Michael Mosley that explores the history of experimental psychology and the attempts to understand and manipulate the human brain. The series covers various topics, including the study of abnormal brains to reveal the workings of the normal brain.
In part 3, titled "Broken brains," the series focuses on experiments on abnormal brains, such as the case of Angela, a 45-year-old suffering from severe epileptic seizures, who undergoes surgery to remove the damaged part of her temporal lobe.
The series also discusses Paul Broca's discovery of a damaged language centre in a patient's brain in the mid-19th century, which is considered the start of modern neuroscience.
The series also includes discussions on the work of Henry Molaison, who suffered brain damage leading to severe epilepsy, and the surgical removal of his hippocampus.
The Brain: A Secret History was released on January 6, 2011, and has an IMDb rating of 7.2.
The series has been described as informative but biased, with some controversial portrayals of historical figures and events.
The series includes episodes on mind control, where Mosley explores the history of attempts to control the human mind, including the use of hallucinogenic drugs and the work of B.F. Skinner and William Sargant.
The series also touches on the controversial Project MKULTRA, which involved experiments on the human brain
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LearningTranscript
00:01Why do we do the things we do?
00:05What really makes us tick?
00:09How do our minds work?
00:12For centuries, these questions were largely left to philosophers and theologians.
00:20Then, about a hundred years ago, a new science began to shine a bright light on the inner workings of the mind.
00:27It was called experimental psychology.
00:32In this series, I'm tracing the history of how this new science revealed things about ourselves that were surprising and often profoundly shocking.
00:42The experiment requires that we continue.
00:44But he might be dead in there.
00:47In this film, I'm investigating the inventive, sometimes barbaric ways psychology has been used to control and manipulate people.
00:55How does it feel? Good or bad?
00:57Good.
00:58Good.
01:00It's a science which strikes at the heart of what we hold most dear.
01:04Our free will.
01:05I don't think people like to have their behavior tinkered with. I don't think they like to be told what to do.
01:09The pursuit of mind control led to some truly horrific experiments and left many casualties in its wake.
01:18I only remember that I forget everything.
01:22Everything.
01:23But investigating the forces that shape our minds and our behavior has also led to profound insights into how the brain works.
01:32Ever since I was a medical student, I have been fascinated by psychology, by what it has revealed about ourselves, and by how far some researchers have been prepared to go.
01:46I'm on my way to Cardiff and I am feeling apprehensive. I'm about to take a class A hallucinogenic drug.
02:10In the past, this drug and others like it were used in experiments which were designed with a very sinister purpose, to achieve total mind control.
02:22The drug I'm going to be given is psilocybin, the active ingredient of magic mushrooms.
02:33Normally, taking psilocybin would be illegal.
02:37My dear.
02:38Hello, nice to you.
02:39Find it all right?
02:40Yes, very much.
02:41But in this case, Professor David Nutt and his team from Imperial College are doing a scientific study, the first of its kind in the UK.
02:49So am I going to enjoy this?
02:52I think so. Most people do. Most people get something positive from it.
02:55We've had no bad reactions, so certainly don't worry about what you're going to feel.
02:59OK.
03:00I think you may enjoy it.
03:01It's just a bit odd, the idea of having your consciousness played with.
03:04You do it all the time, don't you?
03:05OK.
03:06Every time you go out and get drunk, you're changing your consciousness.
03:09OK.
03:10The team are expecting psilocybin to have a significant impact on me, so I'm put through physical and psychological tests.
03:20Would you describe yourself as a spiritual person?
03:23A bit.
03:24And would you describe yourself as a mystical person?
03:27No.
03:28OK.
03:29So I'm going to prepare the drug now.
03:31Look at that.
03:32That tiny amount in there, can you see it?
03:34Just.
03:35Yeah.
03:36That's 3.5 milligrams, so you get 2 milligrams.
03:38So that's going to be it?
03:39That's it.
03:40That's all it is.
03:41But it does quite a lot.
03:43Surprisingly enough, David Nutt believes that by changing the brain, psilocybin's mind-bending properties may help psychiatric disorders, like depression.
03:54Before they tested on patients, the team wanted to find out exactly how it acts on normal brains, like mine.
04:01It can be quite dramatic.
04:03The last volunteer we had had really quite a dramatic response, and he said it was probably the strangest experience of his life.
04:09OK.
04:10He said that his whole sense of self dissolved, and he only existed as a concept.
04:17OK.
04:18I'm not sure I wish to only exist as a concept, but...
04:21No, I mean...
04:22We shall see.
04:23I am starting to wonder what sort of trip I'm going to have.
04:28I'm placed in a brain scanner so the team can map in detail how my brain reacts to psilocybin.
04:36Then the drug is injected.
04:39The result?
04:40Well, it would turn out to be one of the strangest and most unusual experiences of my life.
04:46Today, drugs are at the cutting edge of mind control.
04:52But down the years, scientists have experimented with more unusual ways to manipulate our brains.
05:02There is a long and murky history behind scientific attempts to control emotions, behaviour and decision-making.
05:11I think some of the most interesting stuff can be traced to an accidental discovery by a Russian more than a hundred years ago.
05:24In the 1890s, biologist Ivan Pavlov was studying dogs, many of which had been snatched off the streets of St. Petersburg.
05:34His early experiments seemed to have nothing to do with mind control.
05:39He was studying reflexes in animals.
05:42Pavlov was interested in saliva and, in particular, how much saliva is produced when you eat different sorts of foods.
05:49Now, he studied it in dogs.
05:52He operated on his dogs so he could accurately measure the saliva they produced when they saw food.
05:59To Pavlov's immense surprise, he discovered that the dogs would salivate not just when they got the food, but when they simply saw the men in white coats who brought them the food.
06:12This was utterly unexpected. Pavlov realized that his dogs had made an association between the lab coat and the arrival of food.
06:22It was this association, rather than the food itself, that produced the saliva reflex.
06:29Pavlov wanted to train other responses, and as he did so, his experiments became increasingly brutal.
06:37In this experiment, the beat of the metronome is combined with an electric shock.
06:44Ooh, there you go. Oh, poor dog.
06:47The electric shock is given a number of times, until the beat of the metronome alone is enough to cause the dog to jump.
06:59The Pavlovian response is one of the most famous discoveries in the history of psychology.
07:05What is less well known is that Pavlov didn't confine himself to dogs.
07:10Disturbingly, he was also involved in experiments on children.
07:15Like the dogs, some of the children appear to have been operated on.
07:24It's really very horrible.
07:27Because they're feeding him just like the dog, and they're collecting the saliva over here.
07:32He does not look happy.
07:34In this experiment, a child is fed cookies through a tube.
07:39The experimenter activates a device to squeeze the child's wrist, and at the same moment releases a cookie.
07:46Like the dogs, the child soon develops a conditioned reflex.
07:53Without thinking about it, he opens his mouth whenever the device is squeezed.
07:58He's sort of chomping away as though he's anticipating a cookie.
08:01Looks like something out of a science fiction film.
08:03It would be hard to imagine this actually happened.
08:05These experiments are very distressing.
08:09But through them, Pavlov was able to show that human reflexes can be conditioned just as easily as dogs.
08:18According to Pavlov, our reflexes start being conditioned from the moment we are born.
08:23As we progress through life, more and more of these conditioned reflexes are implanted in our brains,
08:29building up complex behaviours.
08:32And once you understand the basis of how those behaviours are laid down,
08:37well, perhaps you can begin to also control them.
08:48Pavlov's discoveries are fundamental to mind control.
08:51But they are limited.
08:52They only condition behaviours that already exist.
08:55By the time Pavlov died in the mid-1930s, new techniques had been developed in America
09:04that promised far more sophisticated mind manipulation.
09:12These methods also held the enticing possibility of being used on a grand scale.
09:20The man behind these developments was so controversial that he was hung in effigy.
09:24The vice-president described him as most dangerous, and the FBI kept a detailed file on him.
09:31I'm here to meet Deborah Boozen, daughter of B.F. Skinner,
09:35one of the most famous and infamous scientists in the history of psychology.
09:39Hello.
09:40Hello.
09:41Hello.
09:42Hello.
09:43Michael Moseley.
09:44Nice to meet you again.
09:46He's receiving an honorary degree at Harvard here.
09:48He was terribly proud of that.
09:50He really...
09:51Uh-huh.
09:52And here he is with a rat.
09:53Uh-huh.
09:55This, again, is the machine behind with a gazillion wires and things.
09:58It would be all done very differently today.
10:01That's my father putting the pigeon into what became known as the Skinner Box.
10:06The key to Skinner's research was the so-called Skinner Box.
10:10He used it to create new behaviour.
10:13In this Skinner Box, a pigeon is given a reward every time it pecks the word peck,
10:21or turns full circle when it sees the word turn appear.
10:25The pigeon has learnt that when it performs these actions, it gets food.
10:33So, it continues to do them.
10:37As it does so, this new behaviour is reinforced.
10:44This pigeon experiment, and many like it, demonstrated graphically
10:48that carefully timed rewards can reinforce, change, or even create new behaviours.
10:54Deborah is using her father's technique to train her cats to play the piano.
11:01It went down, didn't it? It dipped.
11:04Lola's not exactly a virtuoso,
11:06but she has learnt that a little tinkle earns a piece of chicken.
11:12I like the fact she changes notes, though.
11:21Ooh, that was good.
11:22Teaching animals cute tricks is hardly controversial,
11:27but Skinner had defined a precise and powerful way of modifying behaviour,
11:31and said it should be used on humans.
11:34He wanted to apply his scientific methods of psychological manipulation to whole populations.
11:41He was really essentially telling people how to behave, how to act,
11:45maybe how to create a world in which people would act differently from the way they already acted.
11:54And I don't think people like to have their behaviour tinkered with.
11:56I don't think they like to be told what to do.
12:01Skinner believed that many of the problems of modern society could be improved
12:05if a ruling elite were to use his methods to control behaviour.
12:11Using them would reduce violence and improve productivity.
12:16Skinner's psychologically controlled society brushed aside an individual's role in determining and shaping their own destiny.
12:25He saw belief in free will as unscientific nonsense.
12:30These views polarised opinion.
12:34On the 3rd of May 1972, the same day that 6,000 students cheered him on in Michigan,
12:42he was hung in effigy at Indiana University.
12:46He very much wanted to get across his message.
12:49I don't know if he expected such reception, which was not all good, of course.
12:53But certainly it made people sit up and think.
13:00Skinner's utopia never materialised.
13:03But his methods of behaviour control are now widely used in everyday life.
13:09They have been particularly influential in the world of child development,
13:13where the use of well-targeted rewards to encourage good behaviour
13:17has become an established parenting technique.
13:19And for some children, Skinner's methods have proved life-changing.
13:26I've tried applying some of Skinner's techniques to my own kids in a slightly sort of haphazard fashion.
13:33What I've never done is I've never seen it applied systematically and in an organised way.
13:39And I'm hoping to see that in here.
13:41In the Jigsaw School for Autistic Children in Surrey, the teachers use a system based on Skinner's principles called Applied Behaviour Analysis.
13:54I'm going to go and watch Rohit working. Take a seat.
14:02Rohit started with us last September, so he's almost done a full academic year with us.
14:08He's actually behaving beautifully this morning, but within his repertoire he can assault staff.
14:14He likes to pull hair.
14:16Eight-year-old Rohit is working through a series of learning tasks.
14:21Each task is broken down into small parts.
14:24He gets a token for completing each part of the task.
14:27Point to Q.
14:29That's Q.
14:31Good boy, give me a high five.
14:32Well done, you can take off a token. That was lovely work.
14:35Every single correct response here is being reinforced by the teacher.
14:38Our main focus is if we're constantly praising and reinforcing appropriate behaviour, we will see an increase in that appropriate behaviour.
14:47It is a mushroom.
14:48It is a mushroom.
14:50Good boy, you're trying really hard. Good job, mister.
14:53The key is to consistently reward the behaviours and responses they want to encourage.
14:59Rohit is working towards the bigger prize of time in the soft play area.
15:03So they get a combination of reinforcers, if you like, so it's a mixture of praise, pat on the back and a sort of a point which they know leads to a prize.
15:15Yes.
15:17Rohit eventually gets his prize, playtime in the soft room.
15:22But more importantly, he'd sat for over an hour learning picture-word associations, something that would have been impossible just a year ago.
15:30Are you a fan of Skinner then?
15:33I am a fan of Skinner, yes.
15:37It is really heartwarming watching the way that Skinner's ideas of positive reinforcement are being put into practice in such a sort of practical way.
15:47And I also think that without Skinner, these kids' lives would be an awful lot bleaker.
15:53Skinner believed passionately that behaviour modification could and should be used to make the world a better place.
16:08False testimony, really, which I fabricate to keep them happy.
16:12But in the 1950s, when he was developing his ideas, research into mind control had already taken a more sinister turn, fuelled by the ruthless needs of war.
16:26By then, America was fighting the communists in Korea.
16:29As the conflict raged, a sinister new weapon emerged.
16:35I did sign a confession relating to German warfare.
16:40How can I tell them these things?
16:42It first came to light when the North Koreans paraded their American prisoners of war.
16:46How can I go back and face my family? In a civilised world, how can I tell them these things?
16:57That I, I'm a criminal in the eyes of humanity. They are my flesh and blood.
17:02These images really disturbed people.
17:05American soldiers denouncing American aggression.
17:09How had the North Koreans done it?
17:11How had they, in such a short period of time, managed to convert them to the communist cause?
17:18I would like to say...
17:19How can I go back and face my family?
17:21They are my flesh and blood.
17:22Awesome and absurd.
17:24I did sign a confession.
17:27I can only tell you some...
17:29This was a terrifying new weapon that threatened the freedom of the West.
17:34And they gave this weapon a name.
17:36Brainwashing.
17:37People who used to be in asylum...
17:41A huge effort was made to try and uncover the secrets of the communist brainwashers.
17:47In Britain, an ambitious psychiatrist soon became convinced he knew how it was done.
17:54Judging people.
17:56His name was William Sargent and his radical approach to psychiatry inspired both loyalty and loathing.
18:03He once said, of himself, some people say, I'm a wonderful doctor.
18:10Others, that I am the work of the devil.
18:13Sargent had a theory on brainwashing.
18:16And it was based on the work of none other than Ivan Pavlov.
18:20Sargent had read about one of Pavlov's lesser known experiments, in which he tried to remove his dog's conditioning.
18:26Typically, Pavlov had not gone for half measures.
18:31He had induced nervous breakdowns in his dogs.
18:35And found that this rapidly and dramatically removed the conditioned behaviour he had so painstakingly created.
18:42Pavlov concluded that during the breakdown, established connections in the dog's brains were lost.
18:47When the brain rewired itself, it made new connections, leading to dramatic changes in behaviour.
18:58Sargent thought that Pavlov's work was central to understanding brainwashing.
19:04How somebody could change their core beliefs in a very short period of time.
19:07Just as with the dogs, Sargent believed that when a human brain is broken down, connections are lost, which then need to be rebuilt.
19:19He decided to use this insight as the basis of a radical treatment for mentally ill patients.
19:26His aim was simple, to break down and then reprogram their troubled minds.
19:35Mary Thornton was 21 when she was admitted under Sargent's care.
19:42My memories are like snapshots.
19:46One is of the electrodes being attached to the side of my head.
19:53Being given a general anaesthetic.
19:57Seeing an image of myself in the mirror one day.
20:01Seeing a strange face, looking back at myself.
20:06And being really, really frightened that I would never get out.
20:11Forty years on, Mary has returned to the Royal Waterloo Hospital in London.
20:24Once part of St Thomas's.
20:28This...
20:30One of these rooms is the room I recovered in.
20:33And it was on the left hand side.
20:36And it could have been that room.
20:38It could have been a room exactly like that.
20:42Mary's parents had admitted her to the hospital following a series of rows over a new boyfriend.
20:48I understood that I was there to be treated for an acute anxiety state.
20:55And I was told that I would be given sleep treatment to help my head to have a nice long rest.
21:05Mary and other patients became unwitting guinea pigs, testing Sargent's more radical ideas.
21:13Every available method is used here all at the same time.
21:18Sargent believed it was essential to use a wide range of approaches if he was to break down established patterns of thinking.
21:25He began with the process of modified narcosis.
21:31Patients were put into a medicated sleep for up to three months.
21:36The patients are woken three times a day for feeding and to check on whether they're getting better.
21:41They were then given copious amounts of drugs combined with bouts of electric shock therapy or ECT.
21:52110 volts for three seconds through the frontal lobes of the brain.
21:58Sargent was convinced he had to use all the tools available to him if he was to wipe the slate clean.
22:04He had also suffered from depression and knew it could be life threatening.
22:09So the risks were worth it.
22:12In all my 30 years I've tried never to use any method that I wouldn't use on myself.
22:18All that matters is don't do unto others what you wouldn't have done to yourself.
22:22For many patients like Mary this barrage of treatments had a dramatic effect on their minds.
22:32I only remember that I forget everything.
22:39That's what ECT made you do.
22:43In this building I saw her maybe four times.
22:47I visited maybe four times.
22:50And she progressively got less aware of who I was.
22:56On one occasion she didn't know me from Adam.
23:02After three months at the Royal Waterloo Mary was discharged.
23:07Sargent's belief that her brain, shaken and shocked, would reassemble itself free from the shackles of her past was wrong.
23:14When I left I had great big black holes in my memory.
23:21And I was sent to convalesce to my brother in Yorkshire.
23:25A week or so into my stay I suddenly remember that I had a boyfriend.
23:30And I found his telephone number.
23:32And I phoned him up.
23:36And he came to meet me in London.
23:40Lucky for me.
23:41Lucky for me.
23:42And we've been together ever since.
23:47We had around two grams of baguette.
23:50That's 2,000 milligrams.
23:52Yes.
23:53Sargent had shown that with drugs and ECT he could disrupt and destroy memories.
24:00Yet with patients like Mary he failed to break patterns of behaviour and alter personal beliefs.
24:05The human mind had proved remarkably resilient to change.
24:10And without these new treatments we did have psychotherapy and psychoanalysis.
24:14Sargent's theories on brainwashing were flawed and rejected by many British psychiatrists.
24:19How can I go back and face my face?
24:24But across the Atlantic in the United States the frantic search to learn the secrets of communist mind control continued unabated.
24:32They are my flesh and blood.
24:33In response to the threat of brainwashing the CIA had set up their own secret operation code name MK Ultra.
24:44MK Ultra employed many of the leading scientists of the day and from 1953 they embarked on a series of increasingly bizarre experiments designed to replicate the communist brainwashing techniques.
24:57They subjected people to sensory deprivation, total isolation, electric shocks.
25:04One research area that seemed promising was drugs.
25:08And one class of drug stood out from all the rest.
25:14They seemed to change the world.
25:19They distorted vision and they walked sound.
25:22They created vivid hallucinations.
25:31Hallucinogenic drugs like LSD and psilocybin had only recently been discovered and were the subject of intense research.
25:42They held out the enticing possibility of controlling another person's mind.
25:48Perhaps they could also change your core beliefs.
25:53The top secret operatives from MK Ultra experimented on themselves, their colleagues and on unsuspecting members of the public.
26:02And the American military also attempted to harness their mind bending powers.
26:06How do you feel?
26:10I can run.
26:11I run a hundred miles right now.
26:13Is that right?
26:14That's right.
26:15Pretty pepped up, huh?
26:17But while the drugs were certainly mind altering, they were useless as a form of brainwashing.
26:22The effects were too temporary, too unpredictable, to reliably alter an individual.
26:29The huge effort to produce a foolproof method of brainwashing had failed.
26:35And following the end of the Korean War, it emerged that communist techniques were also flawed.
26:40Many of the soldiers who had denounced America while in captivity rediscovered their patriotism when they got home.
26:48Brainwashing turned out to be an illusory weapon of war.
26:52For many years, there was diminished scientific interest in the mind altering properties of hallucinogenic drugs.
27:02Now, half a century on, things are changing.
27:06As part of an experiment, I have been injected with psilocybin, the active component of magic mushrooms.
27:13Professor Nutt and his team look on as the drug races through my system.
27:17They want to understand exactly how the drug works on my brain.
27:2310 on that scale is extremely intense.
27:27Look at how anxious he feels now.
27:30Not much.
27:32He'll be hallucinating, certainly.
27:34I might be seeing colours and swirling patterns.
27:37Probably some bodily feelings as well.
27:39His body might feel slightly different.
27:41Maybe a kind of floating sensation.
27:43Maybe a little bit.
27:45Inside the machine, I was convinced I could levitate.
27:49Make the walls of the scanner dissolve.
27:52And fly up to the stars at supersonic speed.
27:56It was all rather beautiful.
27:59It's in the timeline.
28:01I've been slowed down.
28:04OK, Michael, we're all finished. I'll come and get you out.
28:09Although the effects of psilocybin had largely worn off, I had an uncontrollable urge to talk.
28:15And talk.
28:17That was very strange, I have to say, because it was sort of...
28:19I thought, whoa, and then, woo!
28:21It was really sort of a whoosh take-off moment.
28:23And talk.
28:25And then it sort of went, whoa!
28:27And talk.
28:28It took me back to when I was about eight years old, and I used to rub my eyeballs in an attempt to have religious experiences.
28:34You felt it when it came.
28:36It was just like being in sort of, you know, the Star Trek thing when you go into hyperspace.
28:40And then, woo!
28:42As soon as you start thinking even the slightest bad thoughts, and you think, this is really, really, I don't want to go there.
28:48And actually dragging yourself back from it is very difficult.
28:50And, yes, I'm still feeling very, very strange, but you want to go out and you want to go and share it with them.
28:56Yes.
28:57And say, hello!
28:59And talk about it and things like that.
29:01My results will be merged with scans from other volunteers to identify the precise areas inside the brain where the drug is active.
29:09And you see there are essentially sort of three big blue blobs.
29:14What blue means is that the activity of the brain, the blood from the brain is shut down.
29:18It's switched off.
29:19Now, we thought, when we went into this study, we thought that this drug would activate certainly different parts of the brain to those,
29:27but we don't find any activation anywhere. All we find are reductions in blood flow.
29:32David Nutt believes that the areas of the brain that are being switched off are critical to the experience I've just had.
29:40The blobs in the middle are the part of the brain that tell us who and what we are.
29:44When these were dampened down, I was released from everyday constraints.
29:49You're able to break free from the normal constraints of what you are, which is, you know, I'm a father, I've got to go home in an hour and a half, I've got to make this program.
29:57The fact it dampens activity in these areas may provide clues as to how psilocybin could be used to treat depression.
30:04And one of the things we think is that if in conditions, say, like depression or maybe obsessive-compulsive disorder, where people get locked into a mindset which is maladaptive,
30:18these regions may be overactive.
30:20So it may be that dampening those down will help people move into another mindset which might be better and healthier.
30:30Right. So if you wanted to shift somebody who is profoundly depressed out of that mindset, something like this might conceivably...
30:36Well, it's conceivable, absolutely. We need to do the experiments.
30:38But that's part of the rationale, that it helps take you from this rigid, sort of motoric process of thinking into something that may actually be more positive.
30:51The idea that you could use a psychedelic drug like psilocybin to treat depression is certainly surprising.
30:58If it works, then one advantage is it works fast.
31:02Well, you change immediately. Whether it will produce immediate changes into a depressed person, we don't know. But if it did, it would be wonderful, wouldn't it?
31:09Particularly if you could hold on to those and maintain them.
31:15It may turn out that hallucinogenic drugs do have a part to play in mind control.
31:21But as a therapeutic tool to help patients think more positively, it's a far cry from the ambitions of would-be brainwashers.
31:32How is it possible, I ask myself...
31:35In the 1960s, a new discovery would uncover a far more pervasive and effective way of controlling people.
31:42Without any limitations of conscience.
31:44It was far more subtle and almost impossible to escape.
31:48But he might be dead in there.
31:52The new approach emphasized the importance of social pressure, of the social context you find yourself in.
31:57To find out more, psychologists devised elaborate human experiments, sometimes with shocking results.
32:12The son of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe, Stanley Milgram wanted to understand why so many people took part in the perpetration of terrible war crimes.
32:21Milgram was curious to find out what drove German soldiers to participate in the Holocaust.
32:31How is it possible, I ask myself, that ordinary people, who are courteous and decent in everyday life, can act callously, inhumanely, without any limitations of conscience?
32:45Milgram described the moment he conceived his experiment as incandescent.
32:51It was beautifully, almost fiendishly designed, to reveal uncomfortable flaws about human nature.
32:57It made a huge impact worldwide.
32:59I remember as a teenager, reading about it and then later watching footage, and it had an enormous impact on me.
33:08It influenced my later decision to train as a doctor, with the intention of becoming a psychiatrist.
33:14It's nearly 50 years since the original experiment, and today I'm fortunate enough to be meeting one of the few remaining survivors.
33:21Good morning.
33:24Good morning.
33:25Good morning.
33:26Hello, Michael Mosley.
33:27Hi, Michael. Bill Menald. Nice to meet you.
33:28Hello, thank you very much.
33:29Come on in.
33:30In 1962, Bill Menald had recently left the army, and was working in New Haven.
33:36I happened to see an ad in the New Haven Register, and it said, memory and learning experiment.
33:43And they were going to pay you four dollars, and I thought, why wouldn't I do this?
33:48I've got some footage here from Yale University.
33:51Bill's participation in the experiment wasn't filmed, but other volunteers were.
33:57This guy here was the...
33:58He was the pupil.
34:00The pupil, and this is basically...
34:02The experimenter.
34:04Experimentor.
34:08The experiment involved a teacher and a learner, who were given a simple set of memory tasks.
34:13If the learner got the answers wrong, the teacher had to give him electric shocks.
34:21It steadily increased.
34:23Were you surprised when they started talking about electric shocks?
34:26I wasn't aghast or anything, but I was, oh, electric shock.
34:30What a novel way to do it.
34:32You know, who knows what they'll think of next.
34:34What Bill and the other volunteers weren't told was that the electric shocks were fake, and that both the experimenter and the learner were in fact actors.
34:46The real purpose of the experiment was to see how many electric shocks the volunteers, like Bill, would administer.
34:53Blistering, but it's very convincing, isn't it?
34:58Oh, it is.
35:00Academy Award nomination.
35:02Yeah.
35:03Bill and the other volunteers were asked to increase the voltage every time the learner got an answer wrong.
35:10Well, now I get a shock of 75 volts.
35:14180 volts.
35:18Just how far can you go on this thing?
35:20Despite the apparent pain they were inflicting, most continued to increase the shocks.
35:30Incorrect.
35:33150 volts.
35:35If you're sitting in that chair with this stuff going on, you know, and the pressure that you're under, it's very hard to think clearly.
35:46How about the 180 volts?
35:49Please continue, teacher.
35:52Neil, you're going to get a shock. 180 volts.
35:59I mean, who's going to take the responsibility if anything happens to that gentleman?
36:02I'm responsible for anything that happens here. Continue, please.
36:05Milgram asked colleagues beforehand how many people they thought would administer the lethal 450 volt shock.
36:13Most said about 1%.
36:15And those would probably be psychopaths.
36:18195 volts.
36:19Dance.
36:20Let me out of here.
36:22So then they really cranked it up.
36:24It was.
36:26I mean, you talk about traumatic experiences.
36:29I've never had anything before or since that was like that.
36:34Start with blue, please, at the top of the page. Continue, please, teacher.
36:37Did you at any point think that perhaps you had killed him?
36:41Wait.
36:42Yeah.
36:44When he stopped responding.
36:46The experiment requires that we continue. Go on, please.
36:48Don't the man's health mean anything?
36:50Whether the learner likes it or not, we must.
36:52But he might be dead in there.
36:53I shut off my moral compass.
37:04Continue, please.
37:06435 volts.
37:09But once you make the decision,
37:12you've made your decision.
37:17And so let's get the show on the road and get it over with.
37:20The answer is hoist.
37:23450 volts.
37:26Max words.
37:28Bill, like two-thirds of the volunteers,
37:32gave the lethal electric shock.
37:38I thought Bill was very honest,
37:40particularly when he started talking about that moment
37:43when he abandoned his moral compass
37:45and he handed over responsibility for his actions
37:48to the experimenter.
37:49And I guess that's really what Milgram demonstrated.
37:52We like to believe that we are autonomous creatures,
37:55that we follow some sort of moral principles.
37:57But what Milgram showed is that in the right circumstances
38:01you can persuade someone to do almost anything.
38:06According to Milgram, Bill Menald and the other participants
38:09who administered lethal shocks were not psychopaths.
38:12They had simply demonstrated a striking willingness to obey authority.
38:17Wrong.
38:19It was this willingness to obey authority that shaped and controlled their behaviour.
38:24Milgram said it didn't matter if you were German or American.
38:31The power of authority remained the same.
38:33Milgram's experiments catapulted him to worldwide fame.
38:44And he used his numerous television appearances to spread his ideas to a wider audience.
38:50Now, one of the illusions about human behaviour is that it stems entirely from personality or character.
38:57But social psychology shows us that often behaviour is dominated by the social roles we are asked to play.
39:02Revealing the pervasive and sometimes malign influence of authority chimed well with the anti-authority sentiments of the late 1960s.
39:13But Milgram's own motivation was not mistrust of authority.
39:19He wanted to understand why authority has such a hold over us.
39:24To do this, he took to the streets.
39:27Milgram started by pointing out how, unquestioningly, we obey authority figures in a whole range of different situations.
39:40In this setting, I allow things to be done to me that I wouldn't allow in any other context.
39:46The dentist is about to put his fist and an electric drill into my mouth.
39:51In this setting, I willingly expose my throat to a man with a razor blade.
40:02What he did next would throw new light on why we are so obedient.
40:08Milgram wanted to see how people would behave in a situation where there was no obvious authority.
40:14How would you react if a perfect stranger came up to you on the train and said,
40:18I'd like your seat, please?
40:21Well, this is exactly what Milgram and his students did on the New York subway.
40:27Now, if you ask a New Yorker, would he give up his seat to a man who gives no reason for asking?
40:33He would say, never.
40:34But what would he do if he photographed what happened?
40:37Excuse me, ma'am. May I have your seat, please?
40:39All right.
40:41Excuse me, sir. May I have your seat, please?
40:44May I have your seat, please?
40:45Well, I guess so.
40:47All right.
40:50But would it work today?
40:53I decided to repeat his experiment in a London shopping centre.
40:57Excuse me, could I have that seat, please?
41:00Huh?
41:01Could I have that seat, please?
41:02Yeah.
41:03Yeah, could I sit there?
41:04Yeah, why?
41:05I'd like to sit down.
41:08Get me reason.
41:09Excuse me.
41:10Excuse me.
41:11Could I have that seat, please?
41:12Yeah.
41:13Sure.
41:14Thank you very much.
41:16Ooh.
41:19Excuse me.
41:20Could I have your seat, please?
41:22Yeah, sure.
41:23Thank you very much.
41:28I was surprised by how many people complied with my totally unreasonable request.
41:34About half.
41:35Excuse me.
41:36Could I have that seat, please?
41:37Yeah.
41:38Okay, thank you.
41:40Excuse me.
41:41Hello.
41:42Hello.
41:43Could I sit there, please?
41:44How do you want to sit, Luke?
41:45Because I want to sit down.
41:46Pardon?
41:47I want to sit down.
41:48I want to sit down.
41:49Can I sit on you?
41:50Can I sit there?
41:52Is that a yes or a no?
41:54No.
41:55No.
41:56No.
42:00But what really surprised me was just how difficult I personally found the whole experience.
42:05My real feeling at this moment is just profound relief that it's done.
42:12Because I felt really uncomfortable throughout the whole thing.
42:16And this is also what Milgram felt.
42:19I stood in front of a passenger and was about to say, excuse me, sir, may I have your seat?
42:23But I found something very interesting.
42:25It was an enormous inhibition.
42:26The words wouldn't come out.
42:27I simply couldn't utter them.
42:29It was this terrible constraint against saying this simple phrase.
42:34Milgram concluded that feeling socially awkward and embarrassed plays an important role in governing our behaviour.
42:41We don't like breaking the social rules, whether it's asking for someone's seat for no good reason,
42:47or disobeying the instruction of somebody whose authority we have accepted.
42:51In ordinary, everyday situations, there's an implicit set of rules as to who is in charge.
42:56And if we violate these rules, it leads to the disruption of behaviour, to embarrassment,
43:01awkwardness, to a kind of social chaos.
43:03And so ordinarily, we accept the submissive role that the occasion requires.
43:11According to Milgram, compliance in society and obedience to authority is necessary.
43:17Because our social organisation depends on it.
43:20If we are to have a society, then we must have members of society willing to obey.
43:25Its laws.
43:27It's not simply a question of whether or not we want to be controlled.
43:31According to Milgram, our social organisation demands it.
43:34As a means of control, there's no doubt that social pressure is ever-present and highly effective.
43:49But social pressure, like drugs or behaviour modification, or even Pavlovian training, was not able to deliver total mind control.
44:01There was, however, still one group of scientists who believed they could control behaviour and emotions with pinpoint accuracy.
44:11To do so, they would have to develop techniques to go directly into the brain.
44:20The origins of this approach lie in a series of bizarre experiments conducted by an ambitious doctor in the American Deep South.
44:37Psychiatrist Robert Heath was a maverick and a pioneer.
44:42From the early 1950s onwards in New Orleans, he used electrodes to stimulate and also to map out his patients' brains.
44:52John Goethe and James Eaton worked with Heath on many of his more ambitious experiments.
45:04He wanted to be a discoverer. He wanted to find a new path.
45:10But there was no question that there was a light side and a dark side.
45:16I really loved the guy, but, you know, if you love someone and you're very close to them, you see all sorts of warts.
45:23And he had plenty of warts.
45:25Heath was not afraid of controversy.
45:29He passionately believed you had to experiment on humans to make truly significant medical breakthroughs.
45:36He conducted his most controversial research in the state of Louisiana.
45:43At the time, the consent process was not as rigorous as it is now.
45:48His goal was ambitious, to see if he could alter behaviour by sticking electrodes into people's brains.
46:00Heath was inspired by experiments that had been done on rats.
46:05Electrodes were implanted directly into areas of the rat's brain, believed to be responsible for pleasure.
46:13When the rat pressed the lever, it stimulated these areas.
46:17The scientists found that this process could dramatically change the rat's normal behaviour.
46:26This rat is prepared to run across an electrified floor to reach the lever, press it and get a pleasure kick.
46:38Heath decided to take the extreme step of trying this on humans.
46:44The depth electrode procedure involved placing these very thin wires through the skull and into precisely located areas thought to be important in the skull.
47:13It's important in the regulation of emotion.
47:16This idea that the emotions are deep in the temporal lobes rather than being on the surface was an idea shared by many.
47:22But he's the one who actually put a needle, put an electrode in there and turned on the juice.
47:30Can you keep pushing it yourself?
47:32Yes, sir.
47:33All right, push this button.
47:35They had these little boxes and they had the electrodes in their head whenever they felt they needed a little goose or something.
47:45Again, I'm simplifying it, but they could press it.
47:49All right, push this button.
47:50You know how to work this.
47:52Heath's early patients were schizophrenics, severe epileptics and depressives.
47:57Like the rats, these human patients were able to stimulate their own brains and use this pleasurable sensation to alleviate their symptoms.
48:15I think it's somewhat of a sexy button.
48:25Encouraged by his results, Heath began to explore ways of using deep brain stimulation to create new behaviors.
48:34His most infamous experiment was on a 24-year-old man with a long history of depression who had never had sex with a woman.
48:44He approached Heath and asked him to change him, to change his behavior, because he was gay and he wanted to become straight.
48:53At the time, being gay was regarded as a psychiatric illness, so Heath agreed.
48:59He wasn't the first to do this, other people had tried, but nobody had done so using electrical stimulation.
49:06Heath implanted a series of electrodes into the pleasure regions of the man's brain.
49:11Then he was shown some soft porn.
49:16The idea was to link in the young man's mind the pleasure he was getting from the electrical stimulation with the heterosexual behavior he was watching on the screen.
49:29At the end of the three-week period, the man reported that he had growing sexual interest in women.
49:36So Heath decided to go to the next stage.
49:39Now this really is bizarre.
49:42What he did is he hired a prostitute for $50, a woman he called a lady of the night.
49:49Her job was to have sex with a gay man with electrodes sticking out of his head.
49:54The wires led to recording devices in the next room, where the psychiatrists were keeping a record of what was going on inside his skull.
50:04Well, astonishingly enough, I mean, I'm absolutely gobsmacked, but astonishingly enough, according to Heath, intercourse was successful.
50:14In fact, the man said he'd had so much fun, got so much pleasure out of it, he would like to go and do it again and again.
50:25Unlikely as it sounds, Heath's use of electrode stimulation seemed to have worked.
50:31But his patient's desire to become heterosexual wasn't entirely fulfilled.
50:35The young man went off and he did actually begin an affair with a married woman that lasted for 10 months.
50:43But he also continued to have sex with men, so a rather mixed outcome.
50:48And Heath himself never tried to repeat the experiment.
50:51Heath's methods were primitive, but they did pave the way for some important medical developments.
51:08Today, the technique of deep brain stimulation has been refined and improved,
51:13and is now used to treat a range of conditions.
51:15It has been particularly successful for sufferers of Parkinson's.
51:24Electrodes are placed in the areas of the brain that control movement,
51:29and help to reduce symptoms.
51:32However, implanting electrodes involves major surgery, and the risks are considerable.
51:40Although it is a huge improvement on what went before,
51:43electrical stimulation is still fairly crude.
51:47Even the most carefully positioned of electrodes stimulates a large area of brain matter,
51:52consisting of thousands of cells.
51:55But just recently, the technology has moved on.
52:00Here at Oxford University, they have found new ways to manipulate the brain and control behaviour,
52:07using a technique called optogenetics.
52:09With optogenetics, scientists can control the brain simply using light.
52:16I'm here to meet neuroscientist, Gero Misenbach, who's been refining his technique on flies.
52:23Hello there.
52:25Hi. Hello.
52:26Hello.
52:27Hello.
52:28Hello.
52:29Hello. I'm Misenbach.
52:30Hello. I gather you are Lord of the Flies.
52:31In some circles, I am, yes.
52:32And how many flies do you have here?
52:34We haven't really counted them, but we have thousands of vials like these.
52:41Each vial has maybe 50 to 100 flies in them, so you do the math.
52:44It's probably millions passing around somewhere.
52:47Millions.
52:48You are Lord of the Flies.
52:49Yeah.
52:51Misenbach earned his nickname through his ability to control and manipulate the choices flies make.
52:58We've come quite far in controlling not only simple motor acts of the animals,
53:04but actually their psychology in rather profound ways.
53:08Okay. I don't think of flies as having a psychology.
53:11We just haven't worked with them for long enough.
53:14I'd love to see it in action, can we?
53:15Yeah, let's take a look.
53:16Okay.
53:18Controlling a fly's psychology is possible because of the 200,000 or so cells that make up their brains,
53:25he has managed to isolate a few that are responsible for learning.
53:29We did find a particular small group of just 12 cells lying in the central brain.
53:36These 12 cells don't dictate behaviour per se.
53:39They dictate whether behaviour should be changed.
53:42And dictating whether behaviour should be changed is a crucial part of learning.
53:47Misenbach likens the role of this group of cells to that of a nagging critic.
53:53Critic is, if you wish, the structure that holds the key to intelligence.
53:57It's the structure that decides whether something is good or bad, whether it's right or wrong.
54:03Sort of the brain's version of the Catholic Church, if you're an Austrian like me,
54:08or the super-ego if you're a Freudian, or your mother if you're Jewish.
54:13Misenbach has genetically engineered his flies so that he can switch on this negative, nagging, critical voice
54:20simply by exposing them to blue light.
54:24When the blue light comes on, the cells are activated and the flies start to learn.
54:29The flies are taught to dislike whatever is in their surroundings when the blue light is on.
54:35This is then stored as a bad memory.
54:38In this experiment, the flies are taught to dislike the smell of licorice.
54:42Each of these chambers contains just one fly, and the fly walks up and down the length of the chamber.
54:51The left and the right half of the chamber are each filled with a different odor.
54:57One of these smells a bit like, as they say, a tennis shoe in July, and the other one a little bit like licorice.
55:03Licorice, okay.
55:05You can see that before our optogenetic intervention, the fly just explores the chamber in its entirety.
55:14They kind of start off not caring one way or the other, and then you're going to manipulate their choices.
55:18Exactly.
55:21When the blue light is switched on, the chamber is flooded with the smell of licorice.
55:25Now the effect of this light is to turn on the 12 cells of the critic in the fly's brain, and that then leads to the implantation of memory.
55:36Right.
55:38When the blue light switches off, the chamber returns to its original smells.
55:42Tennis shoes on the left, licorice on the right.
55:46So now, because of that blue light, the fly has come to associate the smell of licorice with something it doesn't like.
55:52Something it needs to avoid, something it should avoid.
55:56Right.
55:57What you see is it's backtracking already.
55:59It made a mistake.
56:00It stepped into the odor of licorice, which is on the right here, and now it's back in tennis shoe, which is on the left.
56:07And you see, whenever it reaches the interface between the two odors, it recoils.
56:12You can almost see how it goes, oh, this is awful, and turns around.
56:18It's very impressive.
56:19The ability of optogenetics to pinpoint and act on very specific cells in the brain suggest it could be used in the future for modifying human behavior.
56:31I think there's medical benefits in many possible directions.
56:35The neurons that matter for a particular brain function, be it appetite control, mood, anxiety, sleep and wakefulness, attention, you name it.
56:43But there are some major obstacles to optogenetically controlling humans.
56:48I think it's not something that's around the corner in the next few years, because remember, for optogenetics to work, you would have to genetically modify the brain.
56:59Indeed. We are some way of doing it at the moment.
57:01Exactly. A fly normally doesn't mind, but I certainly would if you wanted to implant light receptors somewhere into my brain.
57:09Now, that really was quite astonishing. The idea that you can control really quite sophisticated behavior in a fly just by manipulating twelve neurons.
57:23It's astonishing and also slightly worrying because it makes you wonder whether the same is true of humans.
57:29But I think that because human brains are so much bigger and more complex than insect brains, it is going to be a long time, if ever, before technology like that is applied to us.
57:41I've no doubt the technology used to study the brain will continue to advance.
57:54And that in doing so, we will make giant strides in understanding the workings of our own minds.
58:01But what I find reassuring is that although many people have tried to manipulate our minds, the human brain has so far proved to be too complex to finally control.
58:14Our personalities too resilient.
58:19Down the years, the brain has been pushed around, probed, drugged and electrified.
58:25But it remains impressively hard to control.
58:30And I find that very comforting.
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