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The latest discoveries in neuroscience present a new view of how the brain ages. Overturning decades of dogma, scientists recently discovered that even into our seventies, our brains continue producing new neurons. Scientists no longer hold the longstanding belief that we lose vast numbers of brain cells as we grow older. The normal aging process leaves most mental functions intact, and may even provide the brain with unique advantages that form the basis for wisdom. The aging brain is also far more resilient than was previously believed.
2002 • The Secret Life of the Brain • Brain
The adult brain is the apotheosis of the human intellect, but what of emotion? The study of emotion was once relegated to the backwaters of neuroscience, a testament to the popular conception that what we feel exists outside our brains, acting only to intrude on normal thought. The science has changed: Emotion is now considered integral to our over-all mental health. In mapping our emotions, scientists have found that our emotional brain overlays our thinking brain: The two exist forever intertwined.
2002 • The Secret Life of the Brain • Brain
When examining the adolescent brain we find mystery, complexity, frustration, and inspiration. As the brain begins teeming with hormones, the prefrontal cortex, the center of reasoning and impulse control, is still a work in progress. For the first time, scientists can offer an explanation for what parents already know -- adolescence is a time of roiling emotions, and poor judgment.
2002 • The Secret Life of the Brain • Brain
A child's brain is a magnificent engine for learning. A child learns to crawl, then walk, run and explore. A child learns to reason, to pay attention, to remember, but nowhere is learning more dramatic than in the way a child learns language. As children, we acquire language -- the hallmark of being human.
2002 • The Secret Life of the Brain • Brain
A baby's brain is a mystery whose secrets scientists are just beginning to unravel. The mystery begins in the womb -- only four weeks into gestation the first brain cells, the neurons, are already forming at an astonishing rate: 250,000 every minute.
2002 • The Secret Life of the Brain • Brain
Why is a party one of the most demanding and complex situations the human mind ever has to deal with? This programme investigates the extraordinary way that our minds work to allow us to communicate with other people.Professor Winston discovers how we recognise people, read their faces and bodies to understand what they’re thinking, and then charm them.Find out how to tell whether a smile is genuine, what happens when people 'click' with one another, and how to spot when someone's lying.
2017 • The Human Mind • Brain
Recommended
For centuries scientists have been attempting to come up with an elixir of youth. Now remarkable discoveries are suggesting that ageing is something flexible that can ultimately be manipulated.
A close-up view of sex, bug-style, as David Attenborough talks viewers through the different ways in which creepy-crawlies reproduce. Size matters for the minuscule male orb spider, creepily sneaking up on its intended and trying to mate without her noticing, while there's no rest for the lothario-like butterfly, which has plenty of notches on its proverbial bedpost. However, the harvestman spider has no use for sex at all, and reproduces by cloning itself.
Scientists genuinely don't know what most of our universe is made of. The atoms we're made from only make up four per cent. The rest is dark matter and dark energy (for 'dark', read 'don't know'). The Large Hadron Collider at CERN has been upgraded. When it's switched on in March 2015, its collisions will have twice the energy they did before. The hope is that scientists will discover the identity of dark matter in the debris. The stakes are high - because if dark matter fails to show itself, it might mean that physics itself needs a rethink.
We’re still only at the dawn of learning how to use drugs properly – knowing what drugs we need and when we should take them. We look forward to a brighter future for drug use.
2016 • The School of Life • Health
Imagine a world where dinosaurs still walk the earth. A world where the Germans won World War II and you are president of the United States. Imagine a world where the laws of physics no longer apply and where infinite copies of you are playing out every storyline of your life. It sounds like a plot stolen straight from Hollywood, but far from it. This is the multiverse. Until very recently the whole idea of the multiverse was dismissed as a fantasy, but now this strangest of ideas is at the cutting edge of science. And for a growing number of scientists, the multiverse is the only way we will ever truly make sense of the world we are in. Horizon asks the question: Do multiple universes exist? And if so, which one are we actually in?
Series premiere of a docudrama that chronicles the rebel tribes that brought down the Roman Empire. In the opener, An epic 700-year battle for freedom begins as the barbarians rise against Rome; Hannibal builds a rebel alliance and conquers the Alps; the shepherd Viriathus unleashes a wave of resistance to save his people from destruction.
2016 • Barbarians Rising • History
People
What will humanity look like in 1000 years? Watch as we cover some cutting-edge innovations happening today. Thanks to the National Geographic Channel for sponsoring this video!
2015 • AsapSCIENCE • People
Can love change the world? Morgan Freeman is on a global quest to understand how this primal force binds us together as a species. From orphanages to battlefields, from arranged marriages to life on the streets, Freeman sees how love can be found in unexpected places - and how this force inspires us all.
"Richared Feynman won the nobel prize for physics in 1965. He was considered by many to be the greatest scientific mind since Einstein."
2011 • The Feynman Series • People
"... we had a lot of little games, like you would say at the dinner table..."
2011 • The Feynman Series • People
Richard Dawkins urges all atheists to openly state their position — and to fight the incursion of the church into politics and science. A fiery, funny, powerful talk.
Hank Green talks about the issues of rising global population.
2012 • People
Nature
A look at how dogs have become part of human life and the closest of companions. An example of this special relationship is the amazing story of a cliff-diving Jack Russell.
2016 • Secret Life of Dogs • Nature
Attenborough describes the course the Amazon, starting high up in the Andes of Peru, whose streams flow into the great river. Young rivers are by nature vigorous and dangerous: they flow fast and form rapids, thick with mud and sediment.
1984 • The Living Planet • Nature
When you picture the lowest levels of the food chain, you might imagine herbivores happily munching on lush, living green plants. But this idyllic image leaves out a huge (and slightly less appetizing) source of nourishment: dead stuff. John C. Moore details the "brown food chain," explaining how such unlikely delicacies as pond scum and animal poop contribute enormous amounts of energy to our ecosystems.
Explores how animals sense time and how some can alter their metabolism for survival.
In the Gulf of Oman, survival is all about defense. Some species of sea urchins and sea slugs rely on toxins to keep predators at bay, while guitarfish use their size and armored bodies to stay off the menu. Peek into a little-known reef where fortune favors the bold and the well-prepared.
2018 • Arabian Seas • Nature
From the mountains to the sea, from the scorching desert to the arctic tundra, explore Europe's last great wilderness - full of a delicious and surprising burst of life.
2016 • Wildest Europe • Nature
Randoms!
This episode reveals the fascinating chain of events that made quick and safe travel possible even across the greatest distances a possibility. From the Rolls Royce aero-engine factory in Derby, Michael Mosley, Prof Mark Miodownik and Dr Cassie Newland tell the amazing story of three more of the greatest and most transformative inventions of all time, the steam locomotive, the internal combustion engine and the jet engine. Our experts explain how these inventions came about by sparks of inventive genius and steady incremental improvements hammered out in workshops. They separate myth from reality in the lives of the great inventors and celebrate some of the most remarkable stories in British history.
2013 • The Genius of Invention • Technology
Everyone loves giraffes, but what do we really know about them? Dr Julian Fennessy starts to reveal their secrets - the most important being that they are disappearing. In an urgent and daring mission, with a determined Ugandan team, he plans to round up 20 of the world's rarest giraffe to take across and beyond the mighty Nile River. The stakes are high, but if they succeed the reward will be a brighter future for an animal we have somehow overlooked.
2016 • Natural World • Nature
The story is told in a documentary way, looking at the present day. The future mission is filmed as a movie. In this episode scenes are changing in these timeframes.
One in three of us will develop cancer and many will die from it.
2001 • Superhuman • Health
The Ship of the Imagination travels back in time to reveal 11th century Europe and North Africa during the golden age of Islam, when brilliant physicist Ibn al-Haytham discovered the scientific method and first understood how we see, and how light travels. Later, William Herschel discovers the infrared and the signature hidden in the light of every star, eventually unlocking one of the keys to the cosmos.
2014 • Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey • Astronomy
From giant burning gas spheres to icy orphaned worlds wandering in interstellar space, explore the strange planets that inhabit the vast spread of the universe.
2010 • How the Universe Works • Astronomy