BODY STORY - BASIC INSTINCT - Have you ever wondered what happens to your body in a crisis – a car accident, for example, or an acute allergic reaction? Would you like to know why the cabbage-soup diet doesn’t work, or why eating a chicken can lead to an experience not unlike an alien invasion? How do we get through adolescence, when it sometimes seems as if our bodies are rioting and our brains have given up altogether? The award-winning series Body Story reveals the biological drama behind six critical moments in human lives.
21 year old Greg Moore is in for the night of his life. Having just been promoted at work he has something to celebrate. He plucks up the courage to ask Laura, an attractive girl from his office, out for a drink.
Like all humans, Greg is a man with two brains. Lurking deep beneath his highly evolved and rational brain is another more primitive brain. Usually his higher brain - or cerebral cortex - rules his behaviour, but tonight his animal brain - or limbic system - is going to get the better of him.
At first all goes well. We see how drinking alcohol rids Greg of his inhibitions. Alcohol floods into the gaps between his brain cells and begins to turn off his higher brain. As a result the balance of power tips in favour of his primitive brain, and his animal drives - especially for sex - start to dominate his behaviour. He becomes more and more intimate with Laura and we see how the body gives out and responds to signals of sexual attraction.
But when he loses Laura at a party Greg consoles himself with even more alcohol. Eventually even the most primitve parts of his brain start to shut down and Greg finds himself disorientated, lost and incapable of walking or talking.
