© Pint of Science, 2024. All rights reserved.
For three days in April, Birmingham plays host to some of the world's greatest brains at the BNA2017 Festival of Neuroscience. But what can we really learn from brain science? Find out at this special event at the lovely Cherry Red's, where past stars of Pint of Science are joined by exciting newcomers for two evenings of cutting-edge brain science in the pub. Most of us take our senses for granted, rarely stopping to consider how they work. Tonight, researchers Max Di Luca and Eirini Mavritsaki show us why perception might not be as simple as it seems.
What makes sense for your senses?
Dr Max Di Luca
(Lecturer in Computational Neuroscience, University of Birmingham)
Our brain allows us to perceive our surroundings by combining information from our senses with previous knowledge and expectations about the world. What happens when the information that our senses give us is not consistent with our expectations, when it contains incoherence, or when it leads us to perceive things that just don’t make sense?
Can culture change the way we see?
Dr Eirini Mavritsaki
(Senior Lecturer in Cognitive Psychology, Birmingham City University)
Visual attention is very important in many aspects of our everyday life, including for driving, eating, dressing, and socialising. A lot of work in this area mainly focuses on European cultures. In this talk we are going to explore how visual attention actually differs between individualist European cultures and collectivist East Asian cultures, and see how scientists investigate this using computer modelling.
Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors.