Event overview
Are media representations of brain-related disorders (amnesia, dementia, autism, etc.) accurate or misleading...? Come and find out what a neuropsychologist thinks.
Many of us learn a lot of things about the world through popular media such as films, TV shows and books. There are many representations of brain-related disorders in films such as Fifty First Dates (Amnesia), Memento (Amnesia), Still Alice (Alzheimer's) and The Diving Bell & The Butterfly (Locked-In Syndrome).
In this talk, I will review how accurate some of these representations are to demonstrate that while popular media plays an extremely useful role in educating society, in a relatively new field such as neuropsychology, it is important that representations are more accurate.
This series of talks is a follow-up to 10 talks that I gave during Lockdown I; to see recordings of those previous talks, go to https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLI4K1waPBEL1Z9hHK3LqZGDlM4tTYc5fo
Who is this talk aimed at:
Anyone! The talks in this series are aimed at a general audience with no prior knowledge being necessary. In the previous set of talks, the audience ranged from secondary school pupils to members of the public and even professionals working in the field. The language is pitched so that it is not technical and presented that if a person's English is proficient, they will understand irrespective of their mother tongue.
About Ashok Jansari:
I am Senior Lecturer in the Department of Psychology and my work involves studying individuals with brain damage to try to understand how healthy brains function. So for example, studying people with memory disorders to understand how healthy memory works; eventually, this knowledge will help us to develop methods of helping individuals with memory disorders including Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia.
I work in three main areas: memory disorders (we are developing a test that we think might be able to detect preclinical signs of dementia at much earlier points that is currently possible with tests); face-recognition (I study people with a rare disorder called 'prosopagnosia' which is an inability to recognise familiar people such as family from their faces, as well as people who are exceptionally good at recognising faces, known as 'super-recognizers'; and executive functions (these are the managerial abilities of the brain which allow us to plan, make decisions and think outside the box).
Public engagement with science is something that I am passionate about since as we have seen during the covid pandemic, it is science that can give us many answers and often the ultimate source of help. Communicating this accurately, efficiently and in a manner that is both accessible and enjoyable are central to some aspects of my work.
Dates & times
| Date | Time | Add to calendar |
|---|---|---|
| 14 Nov 2020 | 5:00pm - 6:00pm |
Accessibility
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