Monday 15th May
It’s that time of the year again – the brilliant Pint of Science festival is returning to Southampton for the third year! This year 6 events were organised: from our society, to galaxies, bodies and brains.
As per tradition the Beautiful Mind theme is organised by a local team of neuroscientists, all part of the Southampton Neuroscience group (SoNG). This year the team members are: Joe Chouhan, Katie Askew, Charlie Hurdle, Patricia Gonzalez, Jessica Teeling  (all BioSci) and Krithika Anil (from FEE)- all have been working hard in the last months to come up with an excellent 3 day programme covering exciting neuroscience in Southampton.
Of course the central team headed by Caroline Barker and Juan Nunez helped a lot with promoting the event – we even made it to the BBC Solent! click here to listen.
On day 1 the topic was:
No rhythm no reason: how your body synchronizes to its environment – an evening to discover how our brain responds to the environment around us and how we can use our surroundings to navigate through life.
Dr Herman Wijnen, a chronobiologist and Associate Professor of Biological Sciences at the University of Southampton kicked off the evening challenging the audience with probing questions: Why is time measured in seconds, minutes and hours? Why do we need to sleep to stay fit and alert? Why is winter time depressing to some people? Why can shift work be bad for you
r health and waist line? Herman promised answers and that’s what we got- a lively talk providing a detailed tour from retina to the centre in the brain that controls light; here complex molecular events occur that keep us healthy, slim and free of misery! Herman also performed a real experiment asking the audience if they were better better suited to an âearly birdâ or ânight owlâ life style by recoding sleep time.
In the short break the audience was kept busy with the Stroop test, the Changing Minds exhibition, PINTO and a chrolograph- all with a pint in hand.
Next up was Ed Redhead, Associate Professor in Psychology at the University of Southampton. Ed explained why finding your way around in Ikea is so difficult, why we forget where we left the car or take short cuts that bring you out somewhere completely unexpected? Ed told us that men are better in finding their way around than females, while females are better at special awareness. All this is lost during anxiety (sometimes provoked by psychologist who make test impossible to solve – on purpose (never trust a psychologist Ed?) Ed’s research might help patients with Temporal Lobe epilepsy combat spatial memory problems and also show how nostalgic cues and anxious feelings can affect our ability to find our way round in opposing ways using virtual environments.
The feedback was brilliant for day 1 — and most (if not all) Â of the audience would return next year!
this is my first time at pint of science and I highly recommend it!
the activities were extremely engaging
Bring on day 2– Forgetting who we are! 