The Human Mind (BBC1): "WHEN I came home, I just took my shoes off, dumped my bag, took my coat off, sank into the settee and watched the telly," confessed young Elliot, sounding like a TV critic.

Unlike those who criticise TV programmes for a living, he can turn off and do something else - especially now this County Durham schoolboy is part of a scientifically-controlled trial.

Every day, he and his classmates take six tablets containing a natural substance found in some oily fish which has, in the words of presenter Robert Winston, "a simple but extraordinary effect on brains".

It promotes better concentration and memory. In many cases, the effect is noticeable with children are doing better in lessons. The change in Elliot is amazing. "The best place in all the world is the library. I absolutely love it," he said.

This was one of the more fascinating parts of The Human Mind which aims to explain how our brain works.

Winston does this through ordinary people, like the 43-year-old mother-of-two who's training to be a midwife and having to reactivate parts of her brain to do so. And the gymnast who learns a difficult new move - "flying off the high bar performing a back somersault and half-twist before catching the bar" - simply by visualising it over and over again.

Winston, being a presenter who likes to get in on the act, is put to the test himself.

Andi Bell, the 2002 world memory champion, correctly recalled the position of 520 cards in ten packs of playing cards. That was remarkable enough. Then he told Winston he'd teach him to remember 30 words by the location method, in which you associate a particular word with a particular place. He was given just 15 minutes to memorise the words using this method. Then, after a full day's work, he was able to remember all the words.

His way of illustrating the gap between two brain cells that needs to be bridged in order to learn was sillier. This was, he told us, like crossing a deep ravine. Cut to a deep ravine where Winston and a colleague constructed a rope bridge across the divide to represent the working of the mind. "We have finally learned something," said Winston, standing in the middle of the precarious bridge.

What viewers learned was that he's willing to go to any lengths to illustrate a point - even being hooked up to dozens of wires to measure when he had an original thought. My thought was that he looked very silly which wasn't, I think, the point.

Published: 02/10/2003