A Fight for Sight campaign is to launch this weekend, to raise awareness of eye health and the need for vital eye research. Former House of Commons Speaker the Rt Hon Baroness Boothroyd will kick off the campaign with an interview on BBC Radio 4 on Sunday (5 August). Sight loss affects more than two million people in the UK, a figure that is set to double by 2050. Despite this, eye disease is a desperately under-funded area of research in the UK. Professor Anna Horwood, in the Department of Psychology and Clinical Language Studies, explains how Reading research aims to tackle these issues.
Sight loss is an under-funded area of health research
Research into sight loss is a neglected area of research funding, but imagine what it is like to lose your sight? What would you be able to do? Read? Drive? Watch TV?
We are all familiar with research into diseases like cancer and dementia, but funding for sight loss is a fraction of that set aside for those conditions. With an ageing population, more and more people are having their lives affected by not being able to see. What might be an active old age can be devastated by not being able to do things most people take for granted.
The University Chaplaincy’s next Café Théologique will be held on Monday 4th June, 7.30pm-9pm, Zero Degrees Bar, Bridge Street.
The speaker is Revd Dr Joanna Collicutt, Karl Jaspers Lecturer in Psychology and Spirituality at the University of Oxford.
She’ll be exploring the connections between human creativity and mental health.
The format of the evening is an informal presentation for 45 minutes followed by open discussion.
All are welcome. Café Théologique is an initiative of the University of Reading Chaplaincy and the Bishop of Oxford. It aims to provide a space to discursively explore contemporary theological issues.
Pain is a complex cognitive and emotional experience, which means that understanding the structure of our pain experience is far from easy. Our beliefs and expectations about pain alter perceptual, emotional and behavioural responses and, as such, can play a critical role in adapting to long term pain conditions. The symposium will consider pain’s meaning, how this shapes the experience of the individual in pain and how this, in turn, shapes their interactions with the environment. We will take an inter-disciplinary approach to these questions, drawing from Philosophy, Anthropology, Psychology and Neuroscience. We will also attempt to translate these perspectives into the clinical domain. The second day will be organised as an interactive discussion led by Dr. Salomons, Dr. Ravindran, and Dr. Thacker, examining how our understanding of pain-related beliefs and expectations might be integrated into clinical practice.
Audience:
The symposium is designed to bring together people interested in the philosophical, neuroscientific, and clinical examination of the elements which structure pain experiences, asking how propositional and affective states (e.g. beliefs and feelings) alter the pain experience and how such knowledge should properly inform clinical practice.
You can book tickets hereor find out more information about the event on the website, including a full schedule and list of speakers here.
The School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences is delighted to be welcoming Professor Elizabeth Loftus to the University of Reading, as part of our Albert Wolters Visiting Professorship in May.
The school will be hosting a research workshop The Future of Eye Witness Testimony, on Friday 4 May 2018, at 2pm.
Professor Elizabeth Loftus will be joined by Professor Martin Conway and Professor Peter Hancock for this exciting event.
The purpose of this workshop is to highlight important and emerging aspects in the field and discuss future developments and perspectives. The workshop will cover a range of issues and approaches including research into face recognition (by humans or automated systems), fundamentals of human memory and the practice of interviewing (especially vulnerable) eyewitnesses and eyewitness identification.
The day will culminate in a moderated panel discussion with all of our invited speakers where audience members can ask questions.
The event will be held in Nike Lecture Theatre, 2-4pm.
Professor Elizabeth Loftus will be delivering the Albert Wolters Public Lecture 2018 on Thursday the 3rd of May.
A world-leading expert on human memory, her lecture on ‘The Fiction of Memory’ will look at ‘false memories’ – and the ethics involved.
“For several decades, my research group has been busy tampering with people’s memories. Sometimes we change details of events that someone actually experienced. Other times we plant entire memories for events that never happened – “rich false memories”. Time and again, we have found that people can be led to falsely believe that they had experiences, some of which would have been emotional or traumatic had they actually happened. False memories, like true ones, also have consequences for people, affecting later thoughts, intentions, and behaviours. If false memories can be so readily planted in the mind, do we need to think about “regulating” this mind technology?”
The ‘language of depression’ can be spotted using computer analysis which looks for patterns of words used by those who are suffering from the disorder, explains PhD researcher Mohammed Al-Mosaiwi in a new post for The Conversation.
From the way you move and sleep, to how you interact with people around you, depression changes just about everything. It is even noticeable in the way you speak and express yourself in writing. Sometimes this “language of depression” can have a powerful effect on others. Just consider the impact of the poetry and song lyrics of Sylvia Plath and Kurt Cobain, who both killed themselves after suffering from depression.
Scientists have long tried to pin down the exact relationship between depression and language, and technology is helping us get closer to a full picture. Our new study, published in Clinical Psychological Science, has now unveiled a class of words that can help accurately predict whether someone is suffering from depression.
Dinosaurs, chickens and the Russian revolution were among the topics that won University of Reading academics prizes for their research last week.
The prize winners with Prof Steve Mithen, Lord Waldegrave, and Sir David Bell
The five academics, one from each research theme, were honoured with a Research Output Prize for Early Career Researchers at University Court, the showcase annual event for the University community, on 20 March.
Professor Steve Mithen, Deputy Vice Chancellor, said: “Congratulations to all five winners. They were selected by peer-review from a strong field of outputs by our Early Career Researchers in each of our five research themes.
“Whether having produced single or multi-authored works, the success of these award winners represents not only their own outstanding achievement , but the support and hard work of many more people at the University and further afield.”
By Katie Barfoot – Nutritional Psychology Lab, University of Reading
We all know that fruit and veg is good for us. But some new research from the University of Reading has revealed there is more than meets the eye with the little blue super fruits we call blueberries.
These berries, which are full of a type of nutrient called flavonoids, were shown in two separate studies to improve the positive mood of children and young adults just two hours after consumption.
The two studies, which were conducted by the University’s School of Psychology and Clinical Language Science’s Nutritional Psychology Lab, were run in two populations – healthy young adults aged 18-21, and healthy schoolchildren aged 7-10.
After consumption of a flavonoid-rich blueberry drink, both groups rated their positive mood as being significantly higher than before the blueberry drink consumption.
What’s more, we know it was the flavonoids present in the blueberry drink that made the difference, because no such finding was observed in a group of study participants who consumed a placebo control drink, which was matched for sugars, vitamins and taste.
Researchers at the University of Reading secured more than £3.9 million in research awards in December.
A total of 21 research projects were given the go-ahead in the last month of 2016, with funders from a variety of sources including government, research councils, charities and business.
Steve Mithen, Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Pro-Vice-Chancellor for research, said: “Congratulations to everyone whose research grants were confirmed during December. I am particularly pleased that Reading has continued to collaborate with a wide range of funders, including the European Horizon 2020 programme.
“I have no doubt that these awards represent an excellent investment in knowledge and will reap great rewards for society in the near future.”
