During the 7th edition of the Grand Prix strategies for media innovation, on May 24, Your brain received the Gold Prize (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 indulging in cognitive games and following the principle of the experimental protocol. And it works!
In season 1, clinical psychologist and neuroscience researcher Albert Moukheiber asked us about how our brains can be a source of illusions. In season 2, Richard Monvoisin, science educator, set out to teach us how to “protect ourselves from more or less voluntary manipulations that attempt to play with our cognitive abilities, in order to know how to defend ourselves and avoid questionable practices, or even dangerous for physical or moral health.” In the following, Samah Karaki, doctor of neuroscience, explained how and why the creativity of our brain is a human skill that can be 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 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 alert, with a subjective feeling of fear or internal tension, commonly referred to as 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 out, irrelevant information results in a slowdown in reaction time and an increase in the percentage of errors. However, as Professor Pelissolo reminds us, “in an emergency, 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.
