All In The Mind

Four people are tasered every day in the UK and a man who's been at the receiving end describes how much it hurts. But new evidence suggests it could also affect thinking and memory. Professor Rob Kane from Drexel University in the US tasered students and then measured their ability to recall facts in the hours after being tasered. He found serious deficits: the tasered group mirrored the ability of a 78 year old man with mild cognitive impairment, with some of the taser victims performing so poorly in cognitive tests that they could be diagnosed with Alzheimer's Disease. Claudia Hammond asks what implications these new findings have for the timing of police interviews after somebody has been tasered.Claire experienced amnesia after she had viral encephalitis and she has lost memory of most of her life. Her experience, along with the lesion or abnormality she had in her brain, has inspired an exhibition called Lesions in the Landscape, a collaboration with artist Shona Illingworth at The Gallery in Southwark