Profile

I live in Cambridge with my eight year daughter and two cats called Lily and Lola. I’m very lucky to get paid to think, read and write about cool things in science all day. I’ve loved science since I was a little girl growing up in the countryside of South Wales, observing the wonders of biology as the seasons unfolded. Science wasn’t taught that well at my school but luckily my local library had lots of inspiring science books which showed me what science is really about – not Bunsen burners and horseshoe magnets (although they have their place!) – but discovering truths about how the universe works. How could that not be fascinating? In my spare time I like to evangelise about science to my daughter, to convert her too(!), explore nature, travel, and listen to Bach. If I had more time I’d join a choir again (I’m Welsh after all, it’s in the genes…) If I wasn’t a neuroscientist I’d be a space scientist and I can sometimes be found watching live streams of the international space station and mission launches on NASA tv (really! – check it out).

The photo above shows a photo of me taking part in a full body illusion experiment! Yes it looks weird and it is…even weirder to experience it. On my head I’m wearing virtual reality goggles so that I can view the feed from a video camera that is filming me as I sit in the lab – so what I see is myself ‘from the outside’. At the same time the experimenter is tapping me with a stick(!) This creates the bizarre illusion that my self is in one place and my body in another…similar to an out of body experience that people with some brain disorders can be prone to. So on a typical day I might have an out of body experience  – or induce one in other people! I also supervise students and research assistants who also carry out similar experiments and I spend the rest of my time looking at the results that we get from these experiments, and writing up our findings for scientific journals. And I give lectures on neuroscience topics on our psychology courses at my university. And there’s lots of drinking tea in between 🙂