The controversial science of sensory deprivation is investigated in Horizon – Total Isolation. Six volunteers – including comedian Adam Bloom and a self-proclaimed hermit – are each taken to a former nuclear bunker and left alone for 48 hours.
Deprived of all sensory stimulation and human contact, the changes in their mental functioning are investigated and interpreted by leading psychologists Dr Tim Green and Professor Ian Robbins – the man who debriefed British Guantanamo detainees after their release.
The psychologists test the memory, concentration, ability to process information and to resist suggestion of each guinea pig, before and immediately after their incarceration.
The film comes amid reports of increasing numbers of prisoners being held in solitary confinement and of sensory deprivation being used in penal systems across the world. Horizon also interviews former solitary confinement inmates Parris Carriger, who was imprisoned for 18 years, and Brian Keenan, who was taken hostage in Beirut, about the effects of long-term imprisonment.
Incredibly, virtually no scientific work has been carried out since the Sixties to investigate the effects of sensory deprivation. This documentary is one of the few explorations into an area of science which has been untouched for decades.
How will the volunteers cope with their short spell of confinement? Will they pace back and forth for hours on end, as solitary inmates have been known to do? Will they have vivid hallucinations? How will their memory be affected? How much will their brains deteriorate? And will they make it through what is, quite possibly, the longest 48 hours of their lives?
Alone takes viewers on a journey into one of the darkest, and most unexplored, areas of science.
Tuesday 22 January
9.00-9.50pm BBC TWO
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