Weird Science: An Introduction to Anomalistic Psychology Speaker: Professor Chris French
Ever since records began, in every known society, a substantial proportion of the population has reported unusual experiences labelled as “paranormal”. Opinion polls show that the majority of the general public accepts that paranormal phenomena occur. Such widespread experience of and belief in the paranormal can only mean one of two things. Either the paranormal is real, in which case this should be accepted by the wider scientific community which currently rejects such claims; or else belief...
A Little Bit of Stress does you Good? Rethinking the Meaning of Stress for Health and Well-Being in Children and Adults Dr. Julie Turner-Cobb
This talk will examine the notion of the popular concept of stress. As well as looking at the science behind how stress can contribute to physical illness, I will also challenge the view that stress is always bad for you. The talk draws from studies of adults across a range of different physical health conditions and takes a life course perspective drawing from research on stress and health in children. I will present a number of different...
How sexual desire works. The range of sexual desires and behaviour is vast (e.g. fetishes, voyeurism, exhibitionism, pornography, addictive and violent desire). Trying to understand this can be daunting. This talk will argue that considerable insight can be gained by seeing how a few underlying component processes that are features of ‘normal desire’ can get out of normal alignment and contribute to such deviations from normal. The role of dopamine, learning and arousal will be discussed.
A new study led by the University of Exeter and Swansea University claims researchers have pinpointed the changes in the brain that lead gamblers to react in the same way to near-misses as they do to winning.
The research shows that near-misses are underpinned by increases in the brain’s electrical activity, particularly in the theta frequency range - known to be involved in processing win and loss outcomes.
They found that these increases in theta are linked to both how severe someone’s gambling history is and how susceptible they might be to developing a future gambling...
So, my first ever blog. After much procrastination, excuse making and general displacement activity I’ve actually sat down and written something! If I’m honest, it’s all a bit scary. I’ve got no ‘blogging’ experience and yet I find myself sat in front of the computer typing as if I know what I’m doing.
So what’s needed in a first blog? I guess that you need to know something about me? The first hurdle – fundamentally I have no idea how to describe myself. In a desperate attempt to answer this (and in true lonely hearts fashion) I turned to my friends and asked them for three words...
