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‘I’ll never trust another trapezoid.’
Part of a series of educational films produced by Bell Laboratories between 1956 and 1964, Gateways to the Mind (1958) explored human senses and perception using animations, demonstrations and in-the-lab sequences. In this brief excerpt, the US English professor and public educator Frank C Baxter walks the audience through three experiments carried out at Princeton University’s Perception Demonstration Center, each highlighting the powerful relationship between perception and past experience.
Director: Owen Crump
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Mood and emotion
A century of letters captures the emotions of life in a new city, far from home
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Ageing and death
Death is a trip – how new research links near-death and DMT experiences
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Technology and the self
Adaptive technologies have helped Stephen Hawking, and many more, find their voice
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Gender and identity
‘When you’re done, you stay human!’ What gender transition means to John
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Stories and literature
Solaris and beyond – Stanisław Lem’s antidotes to the bores of American sci-fi
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Ecology and environmental sciences
To renew Yosemite, California should embrace a once-outlawed Indigenous practice
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Music
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Art
Is paying with hand-drawn banknotes artistry or forgery? The knotty case of J S G Boggs
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Neuroscience
The brain repurposed our sense of physical distance to understand social closeness
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