2023-09-29 12:30:07
FRANCE CULTURE – ON DEMAND – PODCAST
During the 7e edition of the Grand Prix strategies for media innovation, May 24, Your brain received the Gold Award (best editorial initiative-best native podcast category). In fact, this collection of podcasts, a pretext for an experiment on the functioning of the human brain, is particularly successful, even – and perhaps especially – for non-scientists. Indeed, each season (four to date) is simple (without being simplistic) and, which spoils nothing, interactive, since the listener is taken to task and “becomes a guinea pig of his own experience” by engaging in cognitive games and following the principle of the experimental protocol. And it works!
In season 1, clinical psychologist and neuroscience researcher Albert Moukheiber questioned us about how our brain can be a source of illusions. In season 2, Richard Monvoisin, a science educator, set out to teach us how to “to protect ourselves from more or less voluntary manipulations which attempt to play with our cognitive capacities, in order to know how to defend ourselves and avoid questionable practices, even dangerous to our physical or moral health”. In the following, Samah Karaki, doctor in neuroscience, explained how and why the creativity of our brain is a human skill that is learned, trained and enriched through life.
Latest, season 4, on what anxiety does to our brain, is particularly well done, thanks to the very clear explanations of Antoine Pelissolo, head of the sectoral psychiatry department (CHU Henri-Mondor, AP-HP, in Créteil), specializing in obsessive-compulsive disorders and severe anxiety disorders.
Problematic side effects
Episode 1 highlights how anxiety makes the brain more alert. After subjecting the listener to sounds such as ambulance-style sirens, it’s impossible not to be on alert. At the initial burst, the organs are activated: the muscles become tense, breathing is modified, as is the heart rate. We become “mentally more attentive, with a subjective feeling of fear or internal tension, commonly called stress”.
In episode 2, the listener is asked to spell and count the number of letters contained in several of the words proposed to him: it is clear that it takes longer to spell “pistol” and “torture” – words that create stress. This is the “Stroop effect”, that is to say “the interference produced by irrelevant information during the execution of a cognitive task. The difficulty in ignoring, or filtering, irrelevant information results in a slowdown in reaction time and an increase in the percentage of errors. However, as Professor Pelissolo reminds us, “in a hurry, we risk making a mistake”.
It is also a question of chronic stress and anxiety attacks, but also of cortisol, this hormone produced when stress is prolonged and with problematic side effects. But we can sometimes play at scaring ourselves – that’s the subject of episode 6, or how to treat yourself to a free ride, thanks to our ears, in a so-called “thrill” attraction.
Your brain, by Antoine Pelissolo, directed by Louise André (Fr., 2023, 6 × 10 min). On Radiofrance.fr and all the usual listening platforms.
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