Think of all the ways you experience the world around you. You recognise a song you know by listening to its catchy tune and the singer’s weird voice. Or you recognise a donut by its round shape, disctintive hole, and the faint but unresistable aroma of sugary deliciousness (mmm donuts…). All of this is perception, the brain presenting its version of the world to you from moment to moment and making sense of the barrage of information coming from our sensory tools: eyes, ears, nose, tongue, touch.
In this zone we have one psychologist studying how the brain creates ‘me’ and how this relates to our feelings of having a body, another who works as a technician in a psychology laboratory, and another who uses their skills knowledge about minds and bodies to bust myths about pain and help people living with pain live full and exciting lives. Another psychologist is figuring out who can feel the beat, and who can’t, and how we can use that to help people move to their own groove, and another looks at images of the brain in action to try and figure out how our brains understand the meaning of life, the universe and everything.