Dear Bergers, I am delighted to announce that today'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 -------------------------- 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 ________________________________ Scotland’s University for Sporting Excellence The University of Stirling is a charity registered in Scotland, number SC 011159 ________________________________ Scotland’s University for Sporting Excellence The University of Stirling is a charity registered in Scotland, number SC 011159