Investigating the mysteries of the brain

Many people living with dementia experience difficulties at mealtimes. This is particularly true in care/nursing homes, where mealtimes are inflexible routines. My talk is about a research study, which aimed to improve meals and mealtime experiences in two dementia care wards. The talk will invite you to imagine yourself in the position of a person with dementia who has mealtime difficulties. I plan to show that my research findings bear relevance to all of us – not only people with dementia.

An intact language system (e.g. “grammar, vocabulary, etc.”) is not adequate for making successful social interactions but language is interpreted in context e.g. based on speaker/listener’s mood, knowledge about the world, speaker etc. Individuals with autism have social communication difficulties, usually without any language impairments, associated with difficulties in integrating information from context. I will address how and to what extent people with/without autism rely on speakers' voices to anticipate a message and what happens in the brain when voice and message don't match.

How do we think about art? How do we decide that something is art or isn't? Why do we treat artworks as special? Why do we appreciate some artworks more than others? In this participatory talk/demonstration, interdisciplinary researcher Freya Vass-Rhee uses arts-sciences experiments to offer answers to these and other questions, and also show how researchers use finding about “your brain on the arts” to enhance well-being.