Adding subtitles is a well known way to make difficult to hear speech easier to understand – e.g. TV subtitles provide a huge benefit to hearing impaired individuals and are commonly added to interviews with heavily accented speakers of English. However, these subtitles don’t only help speech understanding, they also provide an illusion that the […]
Archives for 2012
John Duncan appearance at Café Scientifique evening
Professor John Duncan recently appeared at a Café Scientique evening of informal science, a series hosted by the “Naked Scientists” of the University of Cambridge and sponsored by the MRC. In his lecture and Q&A session John explored human intelligence and the neurons and circuits in the brain that enable us to have the thoughts, […]
Student internship at House of Commons
The British Psychological Society is currently funding one of our PhD students, Theresa Dahm, to work at the House of Commons Select Committee on Science and Technology for three months. At any given time the Committee has several different inquiries to cover and the committee specialists summarise the evidence, write briefs for the MPs who […]
Mind Changers – Donald Broadbent remembered
A recent BBC Radio 4 programme explored the legacy of psychologist Donald Broadbent, who was Director of the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit from 1958-1974. Broadbent propagated his belief that psychology should be applied to practical problems, such as optimising human performance by the design of aircraft cockpits or nuclear reactor control rooms. He […]
Word processing – faster than we thought
A recently published study by researchers at the CBSU led by Lucy MacGregor (left) helps us understand more about the remarkable speed with which the brain can access neural representations of words – that is, memories of words encoded by the brain. Volunteers heard real words (such as “lake”) intermixed with nonsense words (“lape”) whilst […]
Cambridge Science Festival – Science evening at CBSU
An entertaining and educational evening of demonstrations and lectures at the CBSU was held on Wednesday 14th March. Our annual science open evening this year titled “A window on the brain” was given as part of the Cambridge Science Festival and featured lectures from three of our leading scientists highlighting our varied research, plus the […]
Cambridge Neuroscience Seminar, March 20th 2012
The 24th Cambridge Neuroscience Seminar, hosted by the Department of Pharmacology, will be held on Tuesday 20th March 2012, in the Babbage Lecture Theatre, Cambridge. This year, the theme is Translational Neuroscience with sessions covering obesity and appetite, pain, and sleep and circadian rhythms. An exciting line up of internal and external speakers has been […]
What we say and what we do
Moral ideals are strongly ingrained within society and individuals alike, but actual moral choices are profoundly influenced by tangible rewards and consequences. Using a paradigm which pits financial self-benefit at the expense of another’s welfare, scientists from the CBSU led by Oriel Feldmanhall (left) show that real moral decisions can dramatically contradict moral choices made […]