Feelings, Faces, and the Art of the Unexpected

The way our brain processes human emotion underpins some of our unconscious behaviours. This can manifest in emotional disorders such as anxiety and depression. Neuroscience explores the relationship between our brain, body and behaviour, revealing the unconscious processes that can create resilience or susceptibility to emotional disorders. This talk, by Dr Rachael Martin, will explore how neuroscience can be used to understand the processing of human emotion and what this could mean in terms of lived experience. It will focus on the individual differences that are found in the brain for those who are and are not experiencing emotional disorders, the consequence of these differences and how lived experience could be improved. Portable equipment will be used for demonstration purposes.

Facial expression is considered a universal human language, but how true is this? This talk explores the universality of facial emotional expressions and why certain facial signals appear consistent across society and cultures. Dr Abigail Webb will examine the research from psychology that explores the evolutionary benefits of such universal facial expression, the science behind micro-expressions (and whether they truly exist), and look at the evidence behind a persistent question in popular science: can you tell from someone's face if they are lying? Together, myths will be unpacked and the evidence for how crucial the human face is for communicating emotion will be reviewed.

Dr Jane Watt and Dr Susan Barnet will present, Research Art Lab (RAL) on Orford Ness, part of their long-term creative art lab project Power House, run in collaboration with the National Trust Orford Ness. RAL integrates art and science and is inspired by the creative spirit of invention and experimentation that took place on Orford Ness throughout the 20th century. Eleven artists undertook three-week residencies in the Power House, the building becoming a temporary studio laboratory to experiment and test new ways of working based on active research around Orford Ness and to engage with its shifting ecology and heritage.