Entitlement and bad luck; Awards finalist; intermittent fasting and memory

All in the Mind

Why do some people feel they deserve good fortune - and what happens to them if they expect everything to go their way and then encounter bad luck? Emily Zitek, Associate Professor of Organisational Behaviour at Cornell University, discusses her new insights into entitlement.

There have been more than 1100 entries for the All in the Mind Awards and in the Professionals category, Joanna, who suffered from depression, nominates her occupational therapist, Richa Baretto. They’re now finalists and they tell Claudia about their special therapist-patient relationship.

Could occasional fasting improve some important aspects of our memory? In what’s thought to be the first human study, Sandrine Thuret, head of the neurogenesis and mental health lab at Kings College London, showed that by restricting the number of calories you eat on 2 days a week, the ability to differentiate between very similar or overlapping memories can increase. Does this have the potential to be used as an intervention to prevent or boost cognitive decline.

Claudia Hammond's guest is Mathijs Lucassen, Senior Lecturer in mental health at the Open University.

Producer Adrian Washbourne

Produced in association with the Open University