Dear Bergers,
I am delighted to announce that this week's BERG seminar (Wednesday, May 10th at 4pm,
hybrid), will be Dr Arnaud Tognetti from the Karolinska Institute in Sweden. He will be
discussing the identification of sickness. The abstract and link are below. Please join
us, either in the Psychology common room or online!
Identification of sickness: some past, current and future projects
Humankind is an inherently social species. Although social life brings clear benefits,
sociality also facilitates transmission of infectious pathogens. Many social species,
including mandrills, mice, and lobsters identify sick conspecifics via olfactory and
visual cues and strategically avoid physical contact with them. Humans are likewise able
to identify sick individuals based on visual cues of sickness, such as vomiting, coughing,
sneezing or rashes, and the perception of these cues induces strong emotional disgust and
subsequent avoidance. However, these sickness cues are expressed when people are already
at an advanced disease stage and, often, have been contagious for a while. The ability to
detect and avoid sick individuals in the early stages of infection would be even more
efficient in reducing the likelihood of contamination. In this talk, I will present an
overview of my recent work that suggests that sickness can be identified based on
different sensory sickness cues (e.g., facial, olfactory, vocal) only a couple hours after
an experimentally induced systemic inflammation.
Link:
https://teams.microsoft.com/l/meetup-join/19:meeting_MjI5NTVhOGItNWM0OC00Nz…
Looking forward to seeing you there!
Sharon
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Sharon Kessler (she/her), PhD
Lecturer in Psychology
Cottrell Building Room 3B92, Faculty of Natural Sciences
University of Stirling, Stirling, FK9 4LA, SCOTLAND
Tel: +44(0)1786 467 651
Email: sharon.kessler(a)stir.ac.uk
Website:
https://www.stir.ac.uk/people/1104622#research;
https://www.sharonekessler.com/
Book review editor: International Journal of Primatology
Academic editor: PLOS ONE
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