All in the Mind Folgen

The Touch Test. When did someone last touch you? Maybe they kissed you goodbye this morning or someone touched you on the arm on the bus because you’d dropped something. The Touch Test explores touch in its many forms and launches a major piece of research in which we want as many people as possible to take part.Commissioned by Wellcome Collection to conduct The Touch Test in collaboration with BBC Radio 4 is Michael Banissy Professor of Psychology at Goldsmiths University of London. Also in the studio are Deborah Bowman, Professor of Medical Ethics at St Georges University, and Laura Bates from the Everyday Sexism campaign. Exploring the future of touch is Hannah Limerick from Ultraleap, demonstrating how touch sensations will be used in the near future.Professor Roger Kneebone and lace maker Fleur Oakes explain how medical students can learn to touch, and Claudia visits Dr Sarah Wilkes at the Institute of Making and encounters some extraordinary tactile materials including the lightest material ever made. We hear a preliminary taster from the drama company 20 Stories High from their show Touchy, and paper engineer Helen Friel creates an artwork in the studio with a revealing message.

Are bucket lists always a good thing? Many people choose to write a bucket list to fill their life with exciting and new experiences. Blogger Annette White tells Claudia Hammond about how her bucket list has helped her overcome anxiety. But clinical psychologist Linda Blair is not convinced that they really help people’s well-being.A new paper found that people tend to worry more about the actions of significant others in their lives than their own actions or the actions of people they are not that close to. Surprisingly, people also worry more about moderate friends than they do about themselves. Annie Hickox is a consultant clinical neuropsychologist with 35 years experience of helping clients with their mental health. One day she got a call from her daughter Jane and discovered that her own daughter had depression. Jane and Annie share their story of navigating depression.A new paper shows that people who engage in altruistic behaviours may experience an instantaneous buffer to physical pain. Producer: Caroline Steel

There’s a growing number of children with severe allergies to peanuts and other foods. Parents and children themselves have to learn not only to cope with the physical risks but mental health issues that severe food allergies can bring. Rebecca Knibb, Associate Professor of Psychology from Aston University discusses how the psychological impacts are being addressed which until now have been slow to be recognised.Imposter syndrome is the feeling that you shouldn’t really be allowed to do what you’re doing and that eventually everyone else will realise that. And new research shows that it’s more widespread than we thought. Claudia Hammond discusses fraudulent feelings with Professor Richard Gardner from the University of Nevada, who’s done this new research and Dr Steve Nimmo, Editor of the Journal Occupational Medicine.How good at humans at recognising their dog’s emotions? Is it something we can all do or something you have to learn? Federica Amici from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig has published new research on this little studied area, that could help reduce problems when human-hound encounters go wrong.Producer Adrian Washbourne