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The writings of Oliver Sacks and others have shown us that we can learn much about ourselves by looking closely at the deficits shown by people with neurological problems. V.S. Ramachandran has seen countless patients suffering from anosognosia, phantom limb pain, blindsight, and other disorders, and he brings a remarkable mixture of clinical intuition and research savvy to bear on their problems.

He is one of the few scientists who are able and willing to explore the personal, subjective ramifications of his work; he rehumanizes an often too-sterile field and captures the spirit of wonder so essential for true discovery.

Phantoms in the Brain is equal parts medical mystery, scientific adventure, and philosophical speculation. Whether you’re curious about the workings of the brain, interested in alternatives to expensive, high-tech science (much of Ramachandran’s research is done with materials found around the home), or simply want a fresh perspective on the nature of human consciousness, you’ll find this to be an interesting documentary.

Three films exploring the very thing that makes us human. Each episode features an extraordinary character who can do extraordinary things with their brain.

Marc Yu is only 7 years old, but he already has a repertoire of over 15 classical piano pieces – some of them over 20 minutes long. Chess grand master Susan Polgar tells the story of how her father turned her and her sisters into chess prodigies.

Autistic Savant George Widener stuns us with his superhuman calculating and memory skills. And prepare to be moved by Tommy McHugh – the Liverpool hardman who turned into an obsessive artist after surviving a stroke. We find out how they do it.

In this three-part documentary, Robert Winston explores all aspects of the human mind – from how we learn, to how we’re able to recognise faces and what makes one person ‘click’ with another.

Episode 1: The first programme in the series uncovers what happens in our minds when we learn, remember and have original ideas. It explores what we can do to improve our ability to learn and manipulate knowledge, and shows how eating fish oils may help boost our brain power.

Professor Robert Winston looks at how memory can be improved and how we can learn physical tasks more easily. He discovers what happens when we have those “eureka” moments of original thought – and how to have more of them.

We meet the fire chief who tapped into his intuitive powers and saved the lives of his fire crew and follow a trainee midwife in the run-up to her exams. Will she be able to remember the huge amount of information she’ll need to know to pass? More importantly, can she apply it to a real childbirth?

Sipho Agmatir Thwala was South Africa’s Phoenix Strangler. Although he only operated for the relatively short period of a year from 1996 to 1997 he was to make it a terrifying year for KwaZulu-Natal province and rapidly became the most wanted man in the region.

His MO was straightforward – he would lure women to sugar cane fields with the promise of work before raping and strangling them with their own underwear, then bury them in shallow graves.

Thwala appeared normal around his family and was above average intelligence. A police profile described him as “intelligent and charming to women, but extremely dangerous”.

He was arrested in 1997 after police matched DNA found on the victims to DNA taken from Thwala several years earlier when he was arrested for rape, though he was later acquitted of those charges.

On 31 March 1999, Thwala was found guilty of 16 murders and 10 rapes, and sentenced to 506 years in prison. In testament to the strength of local feeling about the murders, Thwala’s house was burned down by an angry mob who had received a false tip-off that he was there. His mother and sister were locked inside at the time and only just managed to escape with the help of a friend.

For forty years, Charles Manson has survived most of his life in what he calls ‘the hallways of the all ways,’ the reform schools, jails and prisons that have been his home and tomb. His thought was born in the hole of solitary confinement, apart from time and beyond the grasp of society.

In his cell, he created his own world and speaks his own language: he has concluded that there is only the mind. This DVD will relinquish to you the extreme story of the killer of all killers: Charles Manson. From convincing his followers to move into the desert to train for the apocalypse, to leading a murderous crew through a string of devilish murders, you will see and hear from Manson himself of how he created a preconceived terror based on his philosophy of life.

Manson claims that the so-called ’straight’ world outside of prison is but an inverted reflection of the underworld in which he has lived. To him, the reality that presidents and law-abiding citizens accept begins in the hermetic alternate universe of criminals, cons and outlaws.

Much as simplistic historians have dismissed Hitler’s 3rd Reich as the overcompensation of a failed artist, Manson’s vision of a holy war has been generally categorized as nothing more than the jealous rage of a spurned musician.

We are bad at making decisions. According to science, our decisions are based on oversimplification, laziness and prejudice.

And that’s assuming that we haven’t already been hijacked by our surroundings or led astray by our subconscious!

Featuring exclusive footage of experiments that show how our choices can be confounded by temperature, warped by post-rationalisation and even manipulated by the future, Horizon presents a guide to better decision making, and introduces you to Mathematician Garth Sundem, who is convinced that conclusions can best be reached using simple maths and a pencil!

Take ten volunteers, half have psychiatric disorders, the other half don’t – but who is who? Over five days the group are put through a series of challenges – from performing stand-up comedy to mucking out cows.

The events are designed to explore the character traits of mental illness and ask whether the symptoms might be within all of us.Three leading experts in mental health attempt to spot which volunteers have been diagnosed with a mental health condition. But will the individuals who have suffered from mental illness reveal themselves?

Ten volunteers have come together for an extraordinary test. Five are “normal” and the other five have been officially diagnosed as mentally ill. Horizon asks if you can tell who is who, and considers where the line between sanity and madness lies.

Over 40 million Americans have seen Dateline’s ongoing popular series To Catch a Predator, which has caught over two hundred potential child predators.

While the show exposed this epidemic, Chris Hansen’s book, To Catch a Predator, shares the true stories of families who have been targeted by predators, revealing the tactics predators use to manipulate their victims and why even cautious families can be vulnerable to their attacks.

He also offers suggestions from police officers, therapists, and child predators on the best approaches for preventing these crimes.

Most critically, he provides parents with concrete steps they can take to protect their kids today, including how to initiate meaningful conversations with their children. To Catch a Predator teaches parents and children what they need to know before the next predator strikes.

Filmed in France, Israel, USA, Algeria, Argentina, Uruguay, South Africa and the UK, this disturbing and candid BBC documentary explores the history of modern interrogation techniques and the rise of modern torture using revealing interviews with state interrogators and state torturers.

The legacy of this history continues to shapes our present, especially in the United States, and some of these techniques have now become routine in the war on terror – be it the use of dogs, water-boarding, or sexual humiliation.

This long, unbroken line of inhuman cruelty connects Nazi Germany to Abu Ghraib, and is an essential issue in today’s political landscape.

A Brilliant Madness is the story of a mathematical genius whose career was cut short by a descent into madness. At the age of 30, John Nash, a stunningly original and famously eccentric MIT mathematician, suddenly began claiming that aliens were communicating with him and that he was a special messenger.

Diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, Nash spent the next three decades in and out of mental hospitals, all but forgotten. During that time, a proof he had written at the age of 20 became a foundation of modern economic theory. In 1994, as Nash began to show signs of emerging from his delusions, he was awarded a Nobel Prize in Economics. The program features interviews with John Nash, his wife Alicia, his friends and colleagues, and experts in game theory and mental illness.

Go beyond the Oscar-winning drama “A Beautiful Mind” and learn more about the life of troubled mathematician and Nobel Prize-winner John Nash and his struggle with mental illness in this PBS “American Experience” documentary. Exclusive interviews with Nash and wife Alicia are included.