Knowing me knowing you

For three years, academics from Durham and Newcastle worked in the remote Caribbean coast of Nicaragua, documenting body ideals and attitudes amongst a population just getting regular access to global media. I will discuss the highs and lows of attempting to run Psychology experiments in the jungle, and answer one of the defining questions of the modern era: does television make us want to be thinner?

Where is your body? Of course, it’s the one you can see right there. But illusions can make you believe otherwise: so in fact the brain uses information from the senses to construct its best guess of where the body is. I will discuss how this field is improving our understanding of childhood development, medical conditions, and virtual reality.