Horizon (1964–…): Season 44, Episode 4 - Total Isolation - full transcript
Oh, it's getting tough now.
This is harder than I thought.
I don't know if I can do this.
In this controversial test,
six ordinary people are deprived
of all sensory stimulation to
discover the impact on their brains.
Oh, God. I'm hallucinating now.
Tim, I'm hallucinating.
Science has struggled for many
years to investigate this question
but now, in the era of Guantanamo
Bay, mass hostage taking
and the increasing
use of solitary confinement,
it's more important than ever.
You could smell the fear and you
could smell it from 15 or 20 feet.
They decided to go insane,
clinically insane.
This research delves
deep into the human mind
and finds out what happens
when you are left truly alone.
The walls are starting to close in,
the walls of my mind
are starting to close in.
Six people will leave their homes,
jobs and friends
to take part in research
which for the past 40 years has
been too controversial to undertake.
My fear is that I will start to
lose my mind having nothing to do.
I can see meself
pacing round the room and
getting frustrated that I can't
actually go anywhere, that I've got
to stay in one place for 48 hours.
Initially I wasn't that concerned,
but as the date approaches
I find I'm feeling
little ripples of trepidation.
I've no idea how I'll be.
I've no idea. Maybe 48 hours
in the dark's just what I need.
This disused nuclear bunker is
the setting for a piece of research
which is designed to study
what happens to the brain
when it's deprived of stimulation.
In charge is Professor Ian Robins,
the man who treated some of
the British Guantanamo detainees
when they were released.
He's one of the country's leading
experts in treating the victims of
solitary confinement and torture.
We cannot feature his face
for security reasons.
I think it's very important that
we're looking at the impact of
sensory deprivation,
particularly when we think of the
number of places around the world
where sensory deprivation's
being used as a weapon and being
used as an aid to interrogation.
We know that stimulation
helps to increase connections
within the brain that speed the flow
of information around the brain,
but there have been relatively
few studies of the impact of a
reduction in sensory stimulation.
So it's quite a useful thing to see
whether you get a reduction
in that ability
to process information effectively.
For 48 hours our subjects
will not just be left alone.
Every effort will be made
to starve their senses of
any kind of stimulation.
For hour after hour
some will lie in pitch-black rooms,
unable to see or hear anything.
Others will endure even
greater deprivations.
They will have their sense of touch
cut off, their eyesight
severely impaired,
and all they will hear
is the endless drone of white noise.
During the test the subjects will
also be observed by psychologist
Dr Tim Grainer.
Come on, then, this is the bunker.
Oh, wow. Oh, wow.
Does everybody feel prepared and OK
at the beginning of the experiment?
Yes. Definitely.
55 years ago it was sensory
deprivation of the most extreme kind
which led to
the first experiments in this area.
When my son asks me
what I did in Korea, how can I
tell him that I came over here and
dropped bombs on people, destroying
and bringing death and destruction?
In the 1950s, at the height
of the Korean War, thousands of
American and Canadian POWs,
who had been held in
conditions of sensory deprivation,
appeared to have been brainwashed.
How can I go back and face my family?
How can
I tell them these things, that I am
a criminal in the eyes of humanity?
To understand more, North America's
leading psychologists designed a
series of extreme experiments
to cut off people's senses
and find out how
the isolation affected their minds.
The scientist in charge,
Professor Donald Hebb,
was surprised by the results.
Sensory deprivation really is
a way of producing extreme monotony.
It's apparently a horrible
experience, getting worse and worse.
Some of our subjects
talked about cruelty.
What they said was that the degree of
boredom became intolerable and was,
one subject said, as bad as anything
that Hitler had ever done
to any of his sub...
to his...victims.
The scientists had discovered
that the human brain
needed constant stimulation for
its healthy functioning.
However, the experiments
were considered too cruel
and were closed down.
But since then there have been
40 years of scientific advance.
Knowledge of the brain
has moved on enormously.
During Hebb's period
we knew very little about what was
going on inside the brain.
The only way you could
visualise the brain itself
involved very invasive processes.
Now we have things like CAT scans,
MRI scans, PET scans.
They allow us to know a lot more
about what's going on
inside the brain
and about
the functional relationship between
different parts of the brain.
Now, once again,
normal, healthy people will be
subjected to sensory deprivation.
I feel it's a bit of a paradox.
I feel very safe and very
insecure at the same time.
Hello! Hello.
I'm Adam. Just before I start,
I've got four cats. Any of you
got cats at home?
Adam is a stand-up comedian.
If you're sick of being covered
in cat hair, get some Sellotape
and wrap it round your cat.
The buzz of having a packed room
roaring at everything
you're saying for an hour solid
is, I suppose, the best feeling...
It's better than sex, which just
probably shows how bad I am at sex.
He leads a life of constant
stimulation and fears the solitude
of the dark room.
'When I think about this,
I'm terrified.
'I think people could go mad.
I don't mean mad, mad permanently,
but just, you know...'
If I get to a stage where
I'm freaking out, what if I
start smashing things up?
Beforehand I was quite
looking forward to it
and as the morning's going on I'm
feeling slightly more apprehensive.
Clare is studying
for a psychology PhD.
She likes a challenge.
I'm not physically courageous at all,
so I guess in that sense I do like to
challenge myself, because
that's a limitation which
otherwise you've got to live with.
So I do try and push myself
on things like that.
Nervous, a little bit worried.
To be honest, I want to get it
started and get in there.
Mickey is a postman.
His favourite hobby is
running 100-mile ultra-marathons.
It's mind blowing.
It's not just the physical
thing, it's the mental thing.
He plans to treat the isolation
like an endurance test.
There's times where you're so low
you want to sit down and cry.
You've just got to think about
the positive things in life.
You've just got to say to yourself,
"Yeah, I can do it. I'm going to get
there. I'm going to finish it."
At the heart of the research, the
psychologists want to investigate
precisely how the brain will be
disrupted over the 48-hour period.
They will conduct a series of tests
which will measure any deterioration
in the subject's ability to
perform the simplest of tasks.
They'll be tested before they go in
and when they come out.
This is the visual memory test.
Could you copy this design
onto here for me, please?
Now?
Right now.
30 minutes later they're
asked to recall the design
and re-draw it from memory.
Off you go.
Drawing test, we're looking at
people's ability to recognise and
learn from copying a complex figure
and then be
able to recreate that from memory.
It's a test of how well their memory
is functioning.
This one should be a square.
At this stage they seem to be able
to remember and recreate
the original design well.
What I'd like you to do is read
these words out beginning up here
and going down this column.
And this is
the information processing test.
Blue, black...
In this test the subjects are asked
not to read the words as written
but to say the colour in which
they're printed.
Red, green, black.
It tests the brain's ability
to process two conflicting
pieces of information.
Red, black, blue.
Very good, OK.
At the moment the subjects' brains
seem to be in good shape.
Did I get it all right?
You did actually, yeah.
Their ability
to remember, concentrate
and process information is fine.
But what will they be like
after 48 hours in the dark room
deprived of all stimulation?
This is the room where
the experiment takes place.
OK.
Oh, wow! That's bleak.
So how are you feeling now?
Nervous.
Excited. Nervous and excited? OK.
In this room there are
two cameras, three microphones.
The cameras have infrared
so we can see at all times.
How are you feeling?
Quite depressed actually.
I don't know. There's something
very prison-like about it.
Yeah, 48 hours of this.
OK, Mickey, I'm going to turn the
light off. We'll see you later on.
OK, thanks. See you later.
Good luck, thank you.
Shut the door on your way out!
Will do.
All right, then. Bye.
But within seconds
Clare gets very anxious
and turns the lights back on.
God, this is weird.
I can't see a thing.
It's pitch black.
I can't see my hands.
I'm talking just cos, I suppose,
it's giving me something to hear.
I can't bear the thought of what
it's going to be like in
47½ hours' time.
It's not going to happen.
Straightaway
the lack of stimulation is
having a disturbing effect.
Also, it's a little bit cold in here,
and I think my blanket is wet.
I think, with Clare, firstly she was
very anxious when she went into the
experiment
but, once in there,
was finding it difficult to decide
whether her sensory judgements
were accurate, because she was
in complete darkness so it was
an extremely difficult thing to do.
Hello?
Clare's sheets were checked.
They were a little bit cold
but they were not wet.
'Hello, what's the problem?'
SHE GASPS
I don't think people are taking
my concerns very seriously
about the sheets being wet.
'Nobody should have to sleep
in wet sheets.'
The subjects have been
alone for only a short time.
Across the globe,
thousands of prisoners
are held in solitary confinement
for vastly longer periods of time.
In America alone, there
are 20,000 such inmates.
62-year-old Paris Carriger was
found guilty of murder and sentenced
by an Arizona court to 100 years
in prison and the death penalty.
I have spent
several years off and on
in a standard isolation cell.
What that means is that
this is a cell approximately
six feet by eight feet.
It is a place where
you're kept in the dark.
The times that you were
spending at that time
By law they couldn't
leave you in more than 15 days
without taking you out for four
before they put you back in.
Paris soon developed
his own way of coping.
I went away in my head and I found a
place that I could deal with better.
And I only became aware
that this was self-destructive
when I couldn't stop going into it.
I would imagine dogs, horses
and the smell of freedom,
the sound of a brook.
And I would play this set of images
in my head
and sometimes I would wake up
and I would catch myself sitting
cross-legged on the floor
and rocking.
I would have been sitting
there long enough to wear sores
on the back sides of my knees
and the bottoms of my ankles.
Many psychologists believe sensory
deprivation caused by various
kinds of solitary confinement
can affect a crucial function of the
brain called the central executive.
No-one knows if this is controlled
by a specific part of the brain
but it describes the mental
processes which coordinate functions
such as language, memory and vision.
It allows us to understand and
interact with the world around us.
One aim of this research will be
to find out how badly
the central executive is affected
by 48 hours without stimulation.
The second group of
subjects are about to endure
even harsher conditions
than those in the dark room.
Judy is a copywriter
for a toy manufacturer.
Quite excited to get started,
I think.
Barney is a film archivist.
Just sort of dislocation,
strangeness, fear.
Bill is a former ad executive.
I'm actually starting to feel
a little more nervous about
the whole experience.
This is a very...
rather intimidating place.
He thinks he's going to be able to
cope with the isolation well by
relying on the power of meditation.
Every day I like to
spend time on my own.
I like to get up early
and have those early morning hours
all to myself.
I've sometimes fantasised that I'd
like to be a hermit and maybe just
come out every couple of weeks and
buy a few supplies and
then go back to my cabin.
Once again the subjects have
to undergo a series of tests
to discover the effect of
sensory deprivation on
the central executive.
These will be repeated
at the end of the two days.
So I'll give you one letter and I
want you to list as many words as
possible that begin with that letter.
This is the verbal fluency test,
which requires them to use
memory and language.
OK, the first letter is F.
Fake. OK.
Fig.
Fart.
Then the central executive's
ability to switch to
a different category is tested.
Next I'd like you to list as many
animals as possible in one minute.
A rat, a hamster,
a rabbit.
A leopard, a puma.
They seem to be able to cope for now
but what will happen in 48 hours?
Then the suggestibility test.
So what I'm going to do is read out
a sort of short story to you.
This examines the central
executive's ability
to absorb new information
and check it against that
already stored in the memory.
Anna Thompson of South Croydon was
on holiday in Spain when she was held
up outside her hotel
and robbed
of her handbag, which contained...
The suggestibility test is looking
at the extent to which people start
to accept a different point of view
and to come to believe that they
have somehow made a mistake
and they've changed their view.
30 minutes later,
a series of misleading
questions are put to them.
Were the assailants black or white?
Will the subjects be influenced and
change their account of the story?
Gosh, you know,
I thought they were Oriental.
Did the woman hit one of the
assailants with her fist or handbag?
No, she kicked him.
No.
At the moment they seem able
to resist suggestion.
But will 48 hours of nothing
break them down?
They start to put on the devices
which will cut off their
sensory perception.
Here's the goggles, you can't
see much. Are they comfortable?
- Mm-hm.
- OK.
It's quite claustrophobic, isn't it?
I mean, you know, I can't see
anything but the vaguest of shapes.
Truly bizarre.
I don't know how long I'll last.
I'll just keep going.
Finally they're exposed to
white noise and left alone.
Within an hour,
Judy settles down to sleep.
Shortly followed by Barney.
And the same thing is
happening in the dark rooms.
Only Bill stays awake.
He sticks to his plan and meditates.
This is like a perfect
mantra meditation facility.
It immediately made me very peaceful
and blissful.
The headphones, which give
kind of this low white noise sound,
is sounding
very much like a tropical waterfall.
Bill's been awake for quite a bit.
It's really interesting because
the others all
fell asleep, you know, within
an hour and a half of getting in,
whereas he's stayed awake.
What I think is incredible is
he is the only person who scored high
on the intraversion scores.
Everybody else scored
high on the extraversion.
It's almost as though they've coped
with sensory deprivation by having
to fall asleep.
It's nine hours into the test,
and darkness falls.
Now the subjects have to face up to
the long hours of nothing.
I think this is a bit of a...
bit of a low.
I'm finding it grossly boring
at the moment.
Now I'm awake. If it is the morning
I'm now stuck here all day and
Oh, my God.
That's unbearable.
Dawn breaks on the second day.
18 hours have passed in the bunker.
As part of the research,
the scientists want to find out
how long it takes the subjects
to lose track of time in
the absence of watches or sunlight.
And as the morning progresses,
it's clear some of them are already
becoming disorientated.
Oh, this is weird, I've no idea
how long I've slept for now
because I've slept twice
in the night.
So let me have a little guess now
what time it is.
I can't really know, can I?
It could be six in the morning.
It could be one in the afternoon.
I've no idea how far
through this experiment we are.
But I don't really.
There is no real gauge of time.
That's why we need the sun,
or a clock.
For university lecturer Brain Keenan
the lack of daylight had a profound
effect when he was taken hostage
in Beirut and held in
a windowless cellar.
I reckon I was in the dark about
seven or eight months, I can't be
sure. It was very hard to tell time.
There was no daylight at all
so I slept fitfully.
I didn't go to sleep and sleep for
the eight hours. I catnapped.
I slept for ten minutes,
woke, stayed awake for a couple of
hours, went to sleep for an hour or
maybe three hours.
It was that kind of random pattern.
The darkness didn't just affect
his sleep. It deeply troubled
his waking hours as well.
The nothingness was extremely hard
because the question in your head is,
how am I going to get through
the next ten minutes?
Or, months later, how am I going to
get through the next day,
if there is another day?
Is there enough left in my head?
Until eventually the sensory
deprivation became all-consuming.
The blackness was palpable. There was
nothing there to confirm to me
that there was human existence
outside me or even in me.
I remember on one occasion waking up
and having to...
squeeze my face
and my chest and thinking
to myself, "Am I still alive?
"How do I know I'm alive?"
After just 24 hours in the dark room
some of the subjects are
having unsettling reactions.
It's quite...
it's getting quite...
it's getting quite depressing.
I'd kill for a tiny bit of light.
I'm the guinea pig.
In the other rooms
the subjects are having
their own particular difficulties.
Far from cutting off the stimuli,
the arm cuffs are causing rashes
and pain
so the psychologists
instruct that they be removed.
It's also becoming clear that their
brains are starting to slow down.
I'm finding creative thought a little
bit harder at the moment.
It's really hard to
stimulate your brain with no light.
It's blanking me.
It's not making me...
I can feel my brain just,
I don't know,
not wanting to do anything.
It's hard to know exactly what's
happening, but what we do know
is that the cells which connect
nerve cells together and speed up
the flow of information, dendrites,
may lose some of their connections
in the lack of stimulation.
We certainly know the converse
is true, that if you stimulate
the brain you increase the rate
of dendritic growth and
the number of connections.
Just in the last sort of while
I've been feeling agitated.
I don't really want to be here.
HE LAUGHS
I'd rather be doing other things.
Things are starting to get on
my nerves, just the whole thing.
And I'm not feeling that great.
Kind of being observed like
some kind of helpless lab rat.
I think it's been more challenging
than he suspected.
As it's become increasingly sort
of boring and increasingly sort of
arduous, it's harder to cope
and he's finding there's
no other means that he can
access to sort of help him cope.
Well, it's like I'm in
a little submarine and
I'm getting closer and closer to
the bottom of the ocean
and so, like, the pressure...
That's the only analogy I can make.
It's 30 hours into the experiment.
Judy seems to be sleeping
through the whole experience
but in the other rooms
the pressure is building.
This is a bit of freedom.
That you try to deny me.
As the test progresses,
the subjects pace endlessly
back and forth across their rooms.
This behaviour of pacing up and down
is something we see in animals
as well as people
when they're kept in confinement.
I think it's something you can do
without needing to think about it,
in part attempting to exercise,
but I think it's simply a reaction
to the lack of any input,
and you provide the input
physically to yourself.
I wasn't enjoying it. I thought,
"I'm just doing this
because there's nothing else to do.
I'm walking back and forth."
What could be more monotonous than
walking back and forth in the dark,
where your only thrill is, am I
about to hit the wall by mistake
cos I've miscounted the steps?
Yeah, I did think,
this is close to insanity.
THUMP
Oh!
The same behaviour afflicted
Paris Carriger during the long
years in solitary confinement.
I walked, paced, at a very quick
pace...
..anywhere from 18 to 22 hours a day.
I would pace three steps forward,
three steps back,
and do that pivot, so that...
I would reach a point where
I couldn't stand to pivot
because it hurt at every point.
After 18 years in isolation, he was
released when it was established
that another man had
committed the murder.
However, the effects of isolation
have remained with him.
Only recently do I realise what I
paid for that solitary confinement.
I have no ability
with time whatsoever.
I can tell you whether I did
something or did not do something,
but I can't necessarily
tell you in what order.
follow simple directions.
I cannot function
with anything that has too much
in the way of information coming.
I can't drive on a busy street.
In my opinion I have lost...
..two-thirds
of what was once my capability.
I am now ten years out,
it has not changed,
so I conclude that this is permanent.
The subjects have been
in the bunker for 40 hours.
# Looking from a window above
It's like a story of love... #
Barney seems to have
found a way of coping.
# Can you hear me? #
And Judy is still asleep.
But in the other rooms
it's a different story.
In the last sort of hour and a half
Adam's gone very quiet,
which is unusual for him.
For the first 25 hours, 26 hours,
every time that he was awake and
his eyes were open he was talking.
If he wasn't talking
he was doing something.
In the last while, he looks
almost as though he's been crying.
He's been rubbing his eyes
a few times and we were wondering,
chaps, I really can't do any more."
So he may well be sort of struggling
at the minute
and wondering whether he should stay
or whether it's just too much.
I think I'm hitting a wall now,
in my mind.
HE SIGHS
I think over time it's becoming more
and more difficult for them to
sort of feel safe and keep
themselves distracted.
Another 24 hours might
really push that over the edge.
The long hours without stimulation
are creating some very
strange experiences.
Oh, God, I'm hallucinating now.
Tim, I'm hallucinating, cos
I can see a pile of...
of oyster shells,
like 5,000 oyster shells in a pile.
Oh, God.
Empty shells, to represent all
the food, nice food I could have
eaten while I've been inside here!
I go and touch them.
It's gone.
It's starting to appear now,
come back to me.
I hope someone can hear me.
I'm hallucinating.
'You would just see moving shapes,
lights, saw some little tiny cars,
zebras. You know, it was quite nice.
'The only things that were a
bit scary were the things
'that tricked you that they were
real, like that there was somebody
in the room or something.
'That was a bit scary.'
'It was weird. I started imagining
things and thought the room was
taking off at one time as well.
'There was a load of fighter planes
buzzing round and that,
a swarm of mosquitoes.'
In the dark room people would
hallucinate because there's nothing
to focus attention on.
Now in the absence of information
the human brain carries on working
and processing information, even if
there's no information to process.
After a while it starts to
create that information itself.
Held in the dark for months,
Brian Keenan experienced
the most terrible hallucinations.
I can remember one distinctly,
because it was dreadfully
lucid and clear.
It was about being alone
and in a desert
and being very, very hot
and then being instantly
bone-numbingly cold.
Having the...the winds of the desert
stripping away,
as if you could feel
your flesh falling off you.
And so you were left as a bony hulk
shivering in the corner.
But they were not just
visual hallucinations
from which he was suffering.
I heard music
and it seemed to be coming
into the cell.
But I knew it wasn't, but I heard it.
It was all sorts of
instruments being played.
I heard bagpipes,
I heard African drums,
I heard zithers, flamenco guitars.
And it was really interesting
and then,
when it wouldn't go away after a few
minutes, it got really frightening.
And when I was frightened by it
the tempo of it lifted
and the volume of it lifted
and there were more instruments, and
cellos were playing and
orchestras, pianos,
and everything was happening
louder and louder and louder.
And then I got really afraid
and that's when I kind of started
banging my head against the wall,
just to make this go away.
It's a way you would try and engage
your mind forcefully on something
else, but it wouldn't go away.
And the intoxication of it was
not comforting
and it went on for
a very, very long time
until I was really frightened of it,
more frightened of the music in my
head than the man with a gun,
I'd say it myself.
Brian was finally released
four years later.
It took him many months
to rebuild his mind
and many more years
to rebuild his life.
It's the 47th hour, and amazingly
everyone has stayed the course.
The last sort of while has been
rather heavy and...
feeling the...pressure of...
being here.
Oh, I'm losing the will to think.
I'm losing... I don't have...
I'm just feeling numb now.
I don't want to talk to you.
At last, the long wait is over.
Hello, Clare. It's Ian.
Your 48 hours are up and
we're coming to get you.
OK. Thanks.
Hello, it's Tim. Oh! Oh!
Oh, you scared the life out of me!
Hello.
Sorry about that. Oh, God.
Adam, I'm speaking to you
because the 48-hour period of
the experiment has come to an end.
Ohhhh-ho-ho!
Oh, thank God!
I can't tell you, you've got
no idea how good this feels.
I thought you might be pleased.
Oh, I want to kiss you.
Hello, Judy.
Ahh. Excellent.
For some of the subjects
the past 48 hours have been
a dreadful experience.
Now the scientists will discover
just how the ability to do even
the simplest tasks has deteriorated.
The series of tests
carried out earlier is repeated.
The visual memory test.
The drawing that you drew earlier,
I'd like you to draw it
for me again, if you could.
Mickey really struggled to
recall the design after 30 minutes.
His memory's capacity
has fallen by 36%.
Several other subjects also
had their memories impaired.
But the effect on the central
executive, which controls the higher
functioning of the brain,
seems to have been more pronounced.
So I say the colour of these,
not the word? OK.
In the information processing test,
all the subjects found it difficult
to resist their first impulse,
to read the words written,
rather than the colour of the ink
in which they are printed.
Blue. Black!
But Adam does significantly worse.
Oh, it's so much harder.
It took him
69% longer to complete the test and
he made six times as many mistakes.
Red. Black!
Gosh.
This is painful!
You're nearly there.
Green, black.
Black, red.
That was just...
really hard.
Adam did particularly badly on
the tests of information processing.
Now, this could be down simply to
individual difference
but it could also be explained
by the fact that
Adam's particularly extrovert.
Extroverts set up their lives in a
way where they're constantly seeking
and receiving lots of information.
In the absence of the information
that ability
to process it was reduced.
Now I'm going to give you a letter
of the alphabet and I want you
to list as many words as possible
that begin with that letter.
So the first letter is F.
Fertiliser.
Bill struggles on
the verbal fluency.
In just 48 hours his central
executive's ability to pull together
memory and language to create
a category has been badly affected.
Er...er...
Gosh.
Gosh.
And the same has
happened to several others.
Er...
OK.
One Tuesday morning in July
the couple were leaving
the house to go to work.
For the scientists,
the most important test of all
is the suggestibility test.
Anna and John ran after the boy
and John caught hold of the
bicycle and brought it to a halt.
It reflects how sensory deprivation
makes subjects more vulnerable
to outside influence.
I'll ask you some
prompt questions, OK? Some prompts.
Was the boy frightened of
the big van coming up the hill?
coming up the hill either.
Was the boy frightened of
the big van coming up the hill?
Yes.
Did John grab
the boy's arm or shoulder?
I think he grabbed the bike.
Did John grab the boy's
arm or shoulder?
Arm.
On the suggestibility test
we see an increase in
the level of suggestibility
on the part of the men.
- Was the boy frightened of the big
van coming up the hill?
- Yes.
Both women didn't show any increase
in suggestibility whatsoever,
but the men all had quite
a marked increase in suggestibility.
This leads me to think that when
put under that sort of stress of
reduced sensation,
this particular group of men
were more likely to start to
question their own recall,
question their own beliefs
and be willing to
take somebody else's viewpoint.
It's a controversial conclusion,
throwing doubt over evidence
gathered from people held
in sensory deprivation.
I think it's very important,
this increase in suggestibility when
exposed to sensory deprivation,
because in many parts of
the world people are held in
situations of sensory deprivation.
That means that the evidence that is
accumulated in those places must be
considered very unreliable
because people will, after a while,
start to take on board the views of
their interrogators.
Overall, the tests show for
the first time the critical impact
of such conditions on
the functioning of the
central executive.
We see a reduction in the speed
of information processing.
We see a reduction in ability
to abstract and verbal fluency.
And we see an increase
in suggestibility.
All those would suggest
a deterioration in the functioning
of the central executive.
After two days underground,
the subjects are finally released.
How does it feel to be out?
Fantastic. Absolutely fantastic.
God, I think I'll see this
for a while.
Emotional.
God, sunlight.
Lovely day, innit? Beautiful.
Absolutely beautiful.
How does it feel to be out?
Unbelievable.
God, I never thought a nuclear
bunker would look so beautiful.
It's actually amazing.
Is that all the flowers?
When we arrived I saw the ugliness
and now, now I'm seeing all the...
I'm hearing the birds, I'm seeing
the clouds and the green and
the yellow, the buttercups.
Two days is actually
an incredibly long time to not
see any sunlight, isn't it?
It's the longest in
my life I've ever gone.
That's just great. Ohh!
Our volunteers were in a sensory
deprivation environment for 48
hours, and being treated humanely,
and if they can have quite
marked effects on their memory
and concentration
it gives us a great insight
into what can happen to people
kept in solitary confinement over
possibly many months or even years.
Four decades after the last
examination of sensory deprivation,
these findings suggest just how
fragile the human mind can be
when confronted with the simple
reality of being left truly alone.
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd
This is harder than I thought.
I don't know if I can do this.
In this controversial test,
six ordinary people are deprived
of all sensory stimulation to
discover the impact on their brains.
Oh, God. I'm hallucinating now.
Tim, I'm hallucinating.
Science has struggled for many
years to investigate this question
but now, in the era of Guantanamo
Bay, mass hostage taking
and the increasing
use of solitary confinement,
it's more important than ever.
You could smell the fear and you
could smell it from 15 or 20 feet.
They decided to go insane,
clinically insane.
This research delves
deep into the human mind
and finds out what happens
when you are left truly alone.
The walls are starting to close in,
the walls of my mind
are starting to close in.
Six people will leave their homes,
jobs and friends
to take part in research
which for the past 40 years has
been too controversial to undertake.
My fear is that I will start to
lose my mind having nothing to do.
I can see meself
pacing round the room and
getting frustrated that I can't
actually go anywhere, that I've got
to stay in one place for 48 hours.
Initially I wasn't that concerned,
but as the date approaches
I find I'm feeling
little ripples of trepidation.
I've no idea how I'll be.
I've no idea. Maybe 48 hours
in the dark's just what I need.
This disused nuclear bunker is
the setting for a piece of research
which is designed to study
what happens to the brain
when it's deprived of stimulation.
In charge is Professor Ian Robins,
the man who treated some of
the British Guantanamo detainees
when they were released.
He's one of the country's leading
experts in treating the victims of
solitary confinement and torture.
We cannot feature his face
for security reasons.
I think it's very important that
we're looking at the impact of
sensory deprivation,
particularly when we think of the
number of places around the world
where sensory deprivation's
being used as a weapon and being
used as an aid to interrogation.
We know that stimulation
helps to increase connections
within the brain that speed the flow
of information around the brain,
but there have been relatively
few studies of the impact of a
reduction in sensory stimulation.
So it's quite a useful thing to see
whether you get a reduction
in that ability
to process information effectively.
For 48 hours our subjects
will not just be left alone.
Every effort will be made
to starve their senses of
any kind of stimulation.
For hour after hour
some will lie in pitch-black rooms,
unable to see or hear anything.
Others will endure even
greater deprivations.
They will have their sense of touch
cut off, their eyesight
severely impaired,
and all they will hear
is the endless drone of white noise.
During the test the subjects will
also be observed by psychologist
Dr Tim Grainer.
Come on, then, this is the bunker.
Oh, wow. Oh, wow.
Does everybody feel prepared and OK
at the beginning of the experiment?
Yes. Definitely.
55 years ago it was sensory
deprivation of the most extreme kind
which led to
the first experiments in this area.
When my son asks me
what I did in Korea, how can I
tell him that I came over here and
dropped bombs on people, destroying
and bringing death and destruction?
In the 1950s, at the height
of the Korean War, thousands of
American and Canadian POWs,
who had been held in
conditions of sensory deprivation,
appeared to have been brainwashed.
How can I go back and face my family?
How can
I tell them these things, that I am
a criminal in the eyes of humanity?
To understand more, North America's
leading psychologists designed a
series of extreme experiments
to cut off people's senses
and find out how
the isolation affected their minds.
The scientist in charge,
Professor Donald Hebb,
was surprised by the results.
Sensory deprivation really is
a way of producing extreme monotony.
It's apparently a horrible
experience, getting worse and worse.
Some of our subjects
talked about cruelty.
What they said was that the degree of
boredom became intolerable and was,
one subject said, as bad as anything
that Hitler had ever done
to any of his sub...
to his...victims.
The scientists had discovered
that the human brain
needed constant stimulation for
its healthy functioning.
However, the experiments
were considered too cruel
and were closed down.
But since then there have been
40 years of scientific advance.
Knowledge of the brain
has moved on enormously.
During Hebb's period
we knew very little about what was
going on inside the brain.
The only way you could
visualise the brain itself
involved very invasive processes.
Now we have things like CAT scans,
MRI scans, PET scans.
They allow us to know a lot more
about what's going on
inside the brain
and about
the functional relationship between
different parts of the brain.
Now, once again,
normal, healthy people will be
subjected to sensory deprivation.
I feel it's a bit of a paradox.
I feel very safe and very
insecure at the same time.
Hello! Hello.
I'm Adam. Just before I start,
I've got four cats. Any of you
got cats at home?
Adam is a stand-up comedian.
If you're sick of being covered
in cat hair, get some Sellotape
and wrap it round your cat.
The buzz of having a packed room
roaring at everything
you're saying for an hour solid
is, I suppose, the best feeling...
It's better than sex, which just
probably shows how bad I am at sex.
He leads a life of constant
stimulation and fears the solitude
of the dark room.
'When I think about this,
I'm terrified.
'I think people could go mad.
I don't mean mad, mad permanently,
but just, you know...'
If I get to a stage where
I'm freaking out, what if I
start smashing things up?
Beforehand I was quite
looking forward to it
and as the morning's going on I'm
feeling slightly more apprehensive.
Clare is studying
for a psychology PhD.
She likes a challenge.
I'm not physically courageous at all,
so I guess in that sense I do like to
challenge myself, because
that's a limitation which
otherwise you've got to live with.
So I do try and push myself
on things like that.
Nervous, a little bit worried.
To be honest, I want to get it
started and get in there.
Mickey is a postman.
His favourite hobby is
running 100-mile ultra-marathons.
It's mind blowing.
It's not just the physical
thing, it's the mental thing.
He plans to treat the isolation
like an endurance test.
There's times where you're so low
you want to sit down and cry.
You've just got to think about
the positive things in life.
You've just got to say to yourself,
"Yeah, I can do it. I'm going to get
there. I'm going to finish it."
At the heart of the research, the
psychologists want to investigate
precisely how the brain will be
disrupted over the 48-hour period.
They will conduct a series of tests
which will measure any deterioration
in the subject's ability to
perform the simplest of tasks.
They'll be tested before they go in
and when they come out.
This is the visual memory test.
Could you copy this design
onto here for me, please?
Now?
Right now.
30 minutes later they're
asked to recall the design
and re-draw it from memory.
Off you go.
Drawing test, we're looking at
people's ability to recognise and
learn from copying a complex figure
and then be
able to recreate that from memory.
It's a test of how well their memory
is functioning.
This one should be a square.
At this stage they seem to be able
to remember and recreate
the original design well.
What I'd like you to do is read
these words out beginning up here
and going down this column.
And this is
the information processing test.
Blue, black...
In this test the subjects are asked
not to read the words as written
but to say the colour in which
they're printed.
Red, green, black.
It tests the brain's ability
to process two conflicting
pieces of information.
Red, black, blue.
Very good, OK.
At the moment the subjects' brains
seem to be in good shape.
Did I get it all right?
You did actually, yeah.
Their ability
to remember, concentrate
and process information is fine.
But what will they be like
after 48 hours in the dark room
deprived of all stimulation?
This is the room where
the experiment takes place.
OK.
Oh, wow! That's bleak.
So how are you feeling now?
Nervous.
Excited. Nervous and excited? OK.
In this room there are
two cameras, three microphones.
The cameras have infrared
so we can see at all times.
How are you feeling?
Quite depressed actually.
I don't know. There's something
very prison-like about it.
Yeah, 48 hours of this.
OK, Mickey, I'm going to turn the
light off. We'll see you later on.
OK, thanks. See you later.
Good luck, thank you.
Shut the door on your way out!
Will do.
All right, then. Bye.
But within seconds
Clare gets very anxious
and turns the lights back on.
God, this is weird.
I can't see a thing.
It's pitch black.
I can't see my hands.
I'm talking just cos, I suppose,
it's giving me something to hear.
I can't bear the thought of what
it's going to be like in
47½ hours' time.
It's not going to happen.
Straightaway
the lack of stimulation is
having a disturbing effect.
Also, it's a little bit cold in here,
and I think my blanket is wet.
I think, with Clare, firstly she was
very anxious when she went into the
experiment
but, once in there,
was finding it difficult to decide
whether her sensory judgements
were accurate, because she was
in complete darkness so it was
an extremely difficult thing to do.
Hello?
Clare's sheets were checked.
They were a little bit cold
but they were not wet.
'Hello, what's the problem?'
SHE GASPS
I don't think people are taking
my concerns very seriously
about the sheets being wet.
'Nobody should have to sleep
in wet sheets.'
The subjects have been
alone for only a short time.
Across the globe,
thousands of prisoners
are held in solitary confinement
for vastly longer periods of time.
In America alone, there
are 20,000 such inmates.
62-year-old Paris Carriger was
found guilty of murder and sentenced
by an Arizona court to 100 years
in prison and the death penalty.
I have spent
several years off and on
in a standard isolation cell.
What that means is that
this is a cell approximately
six feet by eight feet.
It is a place where
you're kept in the dark.
The times that you were
spending at that time
By law they couldn't
leave you in more than 15 days
without taking you out for four
before they put you back in.
Paris soon developed
his own way of coping.
I went away in my head and I found a
place that I could deal with better.
And I only became aware
that this was self-destructive
when I couldn't stop going into it.
I would imagine dogs, horses
and the smell of freedom,
the sound of a brook.
And I would play this set of images
in my head
and sometimes I would wake up
and I would catch myself sitting
cross-legged on the floor
and rocking.
I would have been sitting
there long enough to wear sores
on the back sides of my knees
and the bottoms of my ankles.
Many psychologists believe sensory
deprivation caused by various
kinds of solitary confinement
can affect a crucial function of the
brain called the central executive.
No-one knows if this is controlled
by a specific part of the brain
but it describes the mental
processes which coordinate functions
such as language, memory and vision.
It allows us to understand and
interact with the world around us.
One aim of this research will be
to find out how badly
the central executive is affected
by 48 hours without stimulation.
The second group of
subjects are about to endure
even harsher conditions
than those in the dark room.
Judy is a copywriter
for a toy manufacturer.
Quite excited to get started,
I think.
Barney is a film archivist.
Just sort of dislocation,
strangeness, fear.
Bill is a former ad executive.
I'm actually starting to feel
a little more nervous about
the whole experience.
This is a very...
rather intimidating place.
He thinks he's going to be able to
cope with the isolation well by
relying on the power of meditation.
Every day I like to
spend time on my own.
I like to get up early
and have those early morning hours
all to myself.
I've sometimes fantasised that I'd
like to be a hermit and maybe just
come out every couple of weeks and
buy a few supplies and
then go back to my cabin.
Once again the subjects have
to undergo a series of tests
to discover the effect of
sensory deprivation on
the central executive.
These will be repeated
at the end of the two days.
So I'll give you one letter and I
want you to list as many words as
possible that begin with that letter.
This is the verbal fluency test,
which requires them to use
memory and language.
OK, the first letter is F.
Fake. OK.
Fig.
Fart.
Then the central executive's
ability to switch to
a different category is tested.
Next I'd like you to list as many
animals as possible in one minute.
A rat, a hamster,
a rabbit.
A leopard, a puma.
They seem to be able to cope for now
but what will happen in 48 hours?
Then the suggestibility test.
So what I'm going to do is read out
a sort of short story to you.
This examines the central
executive's ability
to absorb new information
and check it against that
already stored in the memory.
Anna Thompson of South Croydon was
on holiday in Spain when she was held
up outside her hotel
and robbed
of her handbag, which contained...
The suggestibility test is looking
at the extent to which people start
to accept a different point of view
and to come to believe that they
have somehow made a mistake
and they've changed their view.
30 minutes later,
a series of misleading
questions are put to them.
Were the assailants black or white?
Will the subjects be influenced and
change their account of the story?
Gosh, you know,
I thought they were Oriental.
Did the woman hit one of the
assailants with her fist or handbag?
No, she kicked him.
No.
At the moment they seem able
to resist suggestion.
But will 48 hours of nothing
break them down?
They start to put on the devices
which will cut off their
sensory perception.
Here's the goggles, you can't
see much. Are they comfortable?
- Mm-hm.
- OK.
It's quite claustrophobic, isn't it?
I mean, you know, I can't see
anything but the vaguest of shapes.
Truly bizarre.
I don't know how long I'll last.
I'll just keep going.
Finally they're exposed to
white noise and left alone.
Within an hour,
Judy settles down to sleep.
Shortly followed by Barney.
And the same thing is
happening in the dark rooms.
Only Bill stays awake.
He sticks to his plan and meditates.
This is like a perfect
mantra meditation facility.
It immediately made me very peaceful
and blissful.
The headphones, which give
kind of this low white noise sound,
is sounding
very much like a tropical waterfall.
Bill's been awake for quite a bit.
It's really interesting because
the others all
fell asleep, you know, within
an hour and a half of getting in,
whereas he's stayed awake.
What I think is incredible is
he is the only person who scored high
on the intraversion scores.
Everybody else scored
high on the extraversion.
It's almost as though they've coped
with sensory deprivation by having
to fall asleep.
It's nine hours into the test,
and darkness falls.
Now the subjects have to face up to
the long hours of nothing.
I think this is a bit of a...
bit of a low.
I'm finding it grossly boring
at the moment.
Now I'm awake. If it is the morning
I'm now stuck here all day and
Oh, my God.
That's unbearable.
Dawn breaks on the second day.
18 hours have passed in the bunker.
As part of the research,
the scientists want to find out
how long it takes the subjects
to lose track of time in
the absence of watches or sunlight.
And as the morning progresses,
it's clear some of them are already
becoming disorientated.
Oh, this is weird, I've no idea
how long I've slept for now
because I've slept twice
in the night.
So let me have a little guess now
what time it is.
I can't really know, can I?
It could be six in the morning.
It could be one in the afternoon.
I've no idea how far
through this experiment we are.
But I don't really.
There is no real gauge of time.
That's why we need the sun,
or a clock.
For university lecturer Brain Keenan
the lack of daylight had a profound
effect when he was taken hostage
in Beirut and held in
a windowless cellar.
I reckon I was in the dark about
seven or eight months, I can't be
sure. It was very hard to tell time.
There was no daylight at all
so I slept fitfully.
I didn't go to sleep and sleep for
the eight hours. I catnapped.
I slept for ten minutes,
woke, stayed awake for a couple of
hours, went to sleep for an hour or
maybe three hours.
It was that kind of random pattern.
The darkness didn't just affect
his sleep. It deeply troubled
his waking hours as well.
The nothingness was extremely hard
because the question in your head is,
how am I going to get through
the next ten minutes?
Or, months later, how am I going to
get through the next day,
if there is another day?
Is there enough left in my head?
Until eventually the sensory
deprivation became all-consuming.
The blackness was palpable. There was
nothing there to confirm to me
that there was human existence
outside me or even in me.
I remember on one occasion waking up
and having to...
squeeze my face
and my chest and thinking
to myself, "Am I still alive?
"How do I know I'm alive?"
After just 24 hours in the dark room
some of the subjects are
having unsettling reactions.
It's quite...
it's getting quite...
it's getting quite depressing.
I'd kill for a tiny bit of light.
I'm the guinea pig.
In the other rooms
the subjects are having
their own particular difficulties.
Far from cutting off the stimuli,
the arm cuffs are causing rashes
and pain
so the psychologists
instruct that they be removed.
It's also becoming clear that their
brains are starting to slow down.
I'm finding creative thought a little
bit harder at the moment.
It's really hard to
stimulate your brain with no light.
It's blanking me.
It's not making me...
I can feel my brain just,
I don't know,
not wanting to do anything.
It's hard to know exactly what's
happening, but what we do know
is that the cells which connect
nerve cells together and speed up
the flow of information, dendrites,
may lose some of their connections
in the lack of stimulation.
We certainly know the converse
is true, that if you stimulate
the brain you increase the rate
of dendritic growth and
the number of connections.
Just in the last sort of while
I've been feeling agitated.
I don't really want to be here.
HE LAUGHS
I'd rather be doing other things.
Things are starting to get on
my nerves, just the whole thing.
And I'm not feeling that great.
Kind of being observed like
some kind of helpless lab rat.
I think it's been more challenging
than he suspected.
As it's become increasingly sort
of boring and increasingly sort of
arduous, it's harder to cope
and he's finding there's
no other means that he can
access to sort of help him cope.
Well, it's like I'm in
a little submarine and
I'm getting closer and closer to
the bottom of the ocean
and so, like, the pressure...
That's the only analogy I can make.
It's 30 hours into the experiment.
Judy seems to be sleeping
through the whole experience
but in the other rooms
the pressure is building.
This is a bit of freedom.
That you try to deny me.
As the test progresses,
the subjects pace endlessly
back and forth across their rooms.
This behaviour of pacing up and down
is something we see in animals
as well as people
when they're kept in confinement.
I think it's something you can do
without needing to think about it,
in part attempting to exercise,
but I think it's simply a reaction
to the lack of any input,
and you provide the input
physically to yourself.
I wasn't enjoying it. I thought,
"I'm just doing this
because there's nothing else to do.
I'm walking back and forth."
What could be more monotonous than
walking back and forth in the dark,
where your only thrill is, am I
about to hit the wall by mistake
cos I've miscounted the steps?
Yeah, I did think,
this is close to insanity.
THUMP
Oh!
The same behaviour afflicted
Paris Carriger during the long
years in solitary confinement.
I walked, paced, at a very quick
pace...
..anywhere from 18 to 22 hours a day.
I would pace three steps forward,
three steps back,
and do that pivot, so that...
I would reach a point where
I couldn't stand to pivot
because it hurt at every point.
After 18 years in isolation, he was
released when it was established
that another man had
committed the murder.
However, the effects of isolation
have remained with him.
Only recently do I realise what I
paid for that solitary confinement.
I have no ability
with time whatsoever.
I can tell you whether I did
something or did not do something,
but I can't necessarily
tell you in what order.
follow simple directions.
I cannot function
with anything that has too much
in the way of information coming.
I can't drive on a busy street.
In my opinion I have lost...
..two-thirds
of what was once my capability.
I am now ten years out,
it has not changed,
so I conclude that this is permanent.
The subjects have been
in the bunker for 40 hours.
# Looking from a window above
It's like a story of love... #
Barney seems to have
found a way of coping.
# Can you hear me? #
And Judy is still asleep.
But in the other rooms
it's a different story.
In the last sort of hour and a half
Adam's gone very quiet,
which is unusual for him.
For the first 25 hours, 26 hours,
every time that he was awake and
his eyes were open he was talking.
If he wasn't talking
he was doing something.
In the last while, he looks
almost as though he's been crying.
He's been rubbing his eyes
a few times and we were wondering,
chaps, I really can't do any more."
So he may well be sort of struggling
at the minute
and wondering whether he should stay
or whether it's just too much.
I think I'm hitting a wall now,
in my mind.
HE SIGHS
I think over time it's becoming more
and more difficult for them to
sort of feel safe and keep
themselves distracted.
Another 24 hours might
really push that over the edge.
The long hours without stimulation
are creating some very
strange experiences.
Oh, God, I'm hallucinating now.
Tim, I'm hallucinating, cos
I can see a pile of...
of oyster shells,
like 5,000 oyster shells in a pile.
Oh, God.
Empty shells, to represent all
the food, nice food I could have
eaten while I've been inside here!
I go and touch them.
It's gone.
It's starting to appear now,
come back to me.
I hope someone can hear me.
I'm hallucinating.
'You would just see moving shapes,
lights, saw some little tiny cars,
zebras. You know, it was quite nice.
'The only things that were a
bit scary were the things
'that tricked you that they were
real, like that there was somebody
in the room or something.
'That was a bit scary.'
'It was weird. I started imagining
things and thought the room was
taking off at one time as well.
'There was a load of fighter planes
buzzing round and that,
a swarm of mosquitoes.'
In the dark room people would
hallucinate because there's nothing
to focus attention on.
Now in the absence of information
the human brain carries on working
and processing information, even if
there's no information to process.
After a while it starts to
create that information itself.
Held in the dark for months,
Brian Keenan experienced
the most terrible hallucinations.
I can remember one distinctly,
because it was dreadfully
lucid and clear.
It was about being alone
and in a desert
and being very, very hot
and then being instantly
bone-numbingly cold.
Having the...the winds of the desert
stripping away,
as if you could feel
your flesh falling off you.
And so you were left as a bony hulk
shivering in the corner.
But they were not just
visual hallucinations
from which he was suffering.
I heard music
and it seemed to be coming
into the cell.
But I knew it wasn't, but I heard it.
It was all sorts of
instruments being played.
I heard bagpipes,
I heard African drums,
I heard zithers, flamenco guitars.
And it was really interesting
and then,
when it wouldn't go away after a few
minutes, it got really frightening.
And when I was frightened by it
the tempo of it lifted
and the volume of it lifted
and there were more instruments, and
cellos were playing and
orchestras, pianos,
and everything was happening
louder and louder and louder.
And then I got really afraid
and that's when I kind of started
banging my head against the wall,
just to make this go away.
It's a way you would try and engage
your mind forcefully on something
else, but it wouldn't go away.
And the intoxication of it was
not comforting
and it went on for
a very, very long time
until I was really frightened of it,
more frightened of the music in my
head than the man with a gun,
I'd say it myself.
Brian was finally released
four years later.
It took him many months
to rebuild his mind
and many more years
to rebuild his life.
It's the 47th hour, and amazingly
everyone has stayed the course.
The last sort of while has been
rather heavy and...
feeling the...pressure of...
being here.
Oh, I'm losing the will to think.
I'm losing... I don't have...
I'm just feeling numb now.
I don't want to talk to you.
At last, the long wait is over.
Hello, Clare. It's Ian.
Your 48 hours are up and
we're coming to get you.
OK. Thanks.
Hello, it's Tim. Oh! Oh!
Oh, you scared the life out of me!
Hello.
Sorry about that. Oh, God.
Adam, I'm speaking to you
because the 48-hour period of
the experiment has come to an end.
Ohhhh-ho-ho!
Oh, thank God!
I can't tell you, you've got
no idea how good this feels.
I thought you might be pleased.
Oh, I want to kiss you.
Hello, Judy.
Ahh. Excellent.
For some of the subjects
the past 48 hours have been
a dreadful experience.
Now the scientists will discover
just how the ability to do even
the simplest tasks has deteriorated.
The series of tests
carried out earlier is repeated.
The visual memory test.
The drawing that you drew earlier,
I'd like you to draw it
for me again, if you could.
Mickey really struggled to
recall the design after 30 minutes.
His memory's capacity
has fallen by 36%.
Several other subjects also
had their memories impaired.
But the effect on the central
executive, which controls the higher
functioning of the brain,
seems to have been more pronounced.
So I say the colour of these,
not the word? OK.
In the information processing test,
all the subjects found it difficult
to resist their first impulse,
to read the words written,
rather than the colour of the ink
in which they are printed.
Blue. Black!
But Adam does significantly worse.
Oh, it's so much harder.
It took him
69% longer to complete the test and
he made six times as many mistakes.
Red. Black!
Gosh.
This is painful!
You're nearly there.
Green, black.
Black, red.
That was just...
really hard.
Adam did particularly badly on
the tests of information processing.
Now, this could be down simply to
individual difference
but it could also be explained
by the fact that
Adam's particularly extrovert.
Extroverts set up their lives in a
way where they're constantly seeking
and receiving lots of information.
In the absence of the information
that ability
to process it was reduced.
Now I'm going to give you a letter
of the alphabet and I want you
to list as many words as possible
that begin with that letter.
So the first letter is F.
Fertiliser.
Bill struggles on
the verbal fluency.
In just 48 hours his central
executive's ability to pull together
memory and language to create
a category has been badly affected.
Er...er...
Gosh.
Gosh.
And the same has
happened to several others.
Er...
OK.
One Tuesday morning in July
the couple were leaving
the house to go to work.
For the scientists,
the most important test of all
is the suggestibility test.
Anna and John ran after the boy
and John caught hold of the
bicycle and brought it to a halt.
It reflects how sensory deprivation
makes subjects more vulnerable
to outside influence.
I'll ask you some
prompt questions, OK? Some prompts.
Was the boy frightened of
the big van coming up the hill?
coming up the hill either.
Was the boy frightened of
the big van coming up the hill?
Yes.
Did John grab
the boy's arm or shoulder?
I think he grabbed the bike.
Did John grab the boy's
arm or shoulder?
Arm.
On the suggestibility test
we see an increase in
the level of suggestibility
on the part of the men.
- Was the boy frightened of the big
van coming up the hill?
- Yes.
Both women didn't show any increase
in suggestibility whatsoever,
but the men all had quite
a marked increase in suggestibility.
This leads me to think that when
put under that sort of stress of
reduced sensation,
this particular group of men
were more likely to start to
question their own recall,
question their own beliefs
and be willing to
take somebody else's viewpoint.
It's a controversial conclusion,
throwing doubt over evidence
gathered from people held
in sensory deprivation.
I think it's very important,
this increase in suggestibility when
exposed to sensory deprivation,
because in many parts of
the world people are held in
situations of sensory deprivation.
That means that the evidence that is
accumulated in those places must be
considered very unreliable
because people will, after a while,
start to take on board the views of
their interrogators.
Overall, the tests show for
the first time the critical impact
of such conditions on
the functioning of the
central executive.
We see a reduction in the speed
of information processing.
We see a reduction in ability
to abstract and verbal fluency.
And we see an increase
in suggestibility.
All those would suggest
a deterioration in the functioning
of the central executive.
After two days underground,
the subjects are finally released.
How does it feel to be out?
Fantastic. Absolutely fantastic.
God, I think I'll see this
for a while.
Emotional.
God, sunlight.
Lovely day, innit? Beautiful.
Absolutely beautiful.
How does it feel to be out?
Unbelievable.
God, I never thought a nuclear
bunker would look so beautiful.
It's actually amazing.
Is that all the flowers?
When we arrived I saw the ugliness
and now, now I'm seeing all the...
I'm hearing the birds, I'm seeing
the clouds and the green and
the yellow, the buttercups.
Two days is actually
an incredibly long time to not
see any sunlight, isn't it?
It's the longest in
my life I've ever gone.
That's just great. Ohh!
Our volunteers were in a sensory
deprivation environment for 48
hours, and being treated humanely,
and if they can have quite
marked effects on their memory
and concentration
it gives us a great insight
into what can happen to people
kept in solitary confinement over
possibly many months or even years.
Four decades after the last
examination of sensory deprivation,
these findings suggest just how
fragile the human mind can be
when confronted with the simple
reality of being left truly alone.
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd