̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - Tim Dalgleish

British Academy elects Cambridge researchers to Fellowship

ta385 — Thu, 18 Jul 2024 10:59:00 +0000

They are among 86 distinguished scholars to be elected to the fellowship in recognition of their work in fields ranging from medieval history to international relations.

̽��ֱ��Cambridge academics made Fellows of the Academy this year are:

Professor Elisabeth van Houts (History Faculty; Emmanuel College)

Professor Tim Harper (History Faculty; Magdalene College)

Professor Rosalind Love (Department of ASNC; Robinson College)

Professor James Montgomery (FAMES; Trinity Hall)

Professor Ayşe Zarakol (POLIS; Emmanuel College)

Professor Tim Dalgleish (MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit)

Founded in 1902, the British Academy is the UK’s national academy for the humanities and social sciences. It is a Fellowship consisting of over 1700 of the leading minds in these subjects from the UK and overseas.

Current Fellows include the classicist Professor Dame Mary Beard, the historian Professor Sir Simon Schama and philosopher Professor Baroness Onora O’Neill, while previous Fellows include Dame Frances Yates, Sir Winston Churchill, Seamus Heaney and Beatrice Webb. ̽��ֱ��Academy is also a funder of both national and international research, as well as a forum for debate and public engagement.

In 2024, a total of 52 UK Fellows, 30 International Fellows and 4 Honorary Fellows have been elected to the British Academy Fellowship.

Professor Ayse Zarakol said: “I am absolutely delighted to be elected a Fellow of the British Academy in recognition of my interdisciplinary work at the intersection of international relations, global history and historical sociology. It is an honour to join such a long line of distinguished scholars. I very much look forward to working with the Academy to advance research on the big questions of our day and to ensure that UK remains a hospitable environment for social sciences and humanities research that attracts the best talent from around the world.”

Professor Rosalind Love said: “As a grateful recipient of one its Postdoctoral Fellowships, I have always revered the British Academy and am deeply humbled by this honour. It shows that the Academy values the teaching of Medieval Latin, and research in that area, at a time when the subject faces cuts elsewhere. I’d like to express sincerest gratitude to the teachers who gave me a solid grounding and to all who have supported me over the years: they made this possible. I look forward to working with other FBAs to shape the future of the Humanities.”

Professor Tim Harper, Head of Cambridge’s School of the Humanities and Social Sciences, said: “It is an honour to be elected a fellow of the British Academy. As a historian, I am very aware of the challenges and opportunities for the humanities and social sciences that we collectively face. I look forward to continuing to strive to strengthen their position.”

Welcoming the Fellows, President of the British Academy Professor Julia Black said: “We are delighted to welcome this year’s cohort of Fellows, and I offer my warmest congratulations to each and every one. From the Academy’s earliest days, our Fellows are the lifeblood of the organisation, representing the very best of our disciplines – and we could not do all that we do without their expertise, time and energy. I very much look forward to working closely with our new Fellows – the breadth and depth of their expertise adds so much to the Academy.”

Six academics from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge have been made Fellows of the prestigious British Academy for the humanities and social sciences.

It is an honour to join such a long line of distinguished scholars.

Ayşe Zarakol

̽��ֱ��British Academy

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

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Rhythm and bleughs: how changes in our stomach’s rhythms steer us away from disgusting sights

cjb250 — Tue, 24 Nov 2020 16:00:00 +0000

Disgust is a natural response to unpleasant sights, such as rotting food, bodily waste and creepy crawlies, and has evolved to help us survive, encouraging us to avoid things that might spread disease. But for some people, disgust can become pathological, affecting their mental health and quality of life.

In a study published today in Current Biology, researchers at the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit show that domperidone, a commonly-prescribed anti-nausea medicine, can help significantly reduce how much volunteers look away from disgusting images.

Domperidone works by stabilising the rhythm of the electrical signals in our stomach muscles. Normally, these signals help the stomach expand and contract, helping move food through the digestive tract. These rhythms become abnormal when we are nauseous or when we are hungry or full, for example. When they are strongly disrupted – for example, when we feel strong revulsion towards something – they can cause us to throw up the contents of our stomach.

In the study, twenty-five volunteers aged 18-35 were randomly assigned to one of two groups: one group to receive domperidone, the second a placebo.

Before taking their pills, the volunteers were shown a series of unpleasant images along with neutral images, such as a scarf or buttons, while the researchers tracked their eye movements. Thirty minutes after taking their tablets, the volunteers were again shown the images while their eye movements were tracked.

Next, the researchers offered an incentive to the volunteers: for every four to eight seconds that they could look at a disgusting image, they would receive 25p – and hear a ‘kerching!’ sound. ̽��ֱ��volunteers then viewed the images again for a final round, but this time with no incentive.

̽��ֱ��volunteers were also asked to rate how disgusting they found the images at the start and end of the trial.

̽��ֱ��researchers found that initially, taking domperidone made little difference to the time the volunteers spent looking at a particular image. As could be expected among both groups, the dwell time increased dramatically when they were paid to look at the images.

In the final condition – when the volunteers were no longer being incentivised – the team found that volunteers who had received domperidone spent significantly longer than the placebo group looking at the disgusting images. By the end, people looked at the neutral image roughly 5.5 seconds more than the disgusting image, but under the influence of domperidone, the difference was only about 2.5 seconds.

Domperidone made no difference to how disgusting the volunteers rated the images to be.

“We’ve known for some time that when you see something disgusting, your stomach muscles’ electrical signals become dysregulated, which in some cases causes people to feel sick or their stomach to turn. You’re then likely to avoid that thing,” said Dr Camilla Nord from the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge.

“What we’ve shown here is that when we steady the stomach’s electrical signals, people become less avoidant of a disgusting image after engaging with it. Changes in the stomach’s rhythm led to reduced disgust avoidance in our study – and so the stomach’s rhythm must be one cause of disgust avoidance in general.”

“In another recent study, we showed that we do not become immune to looking at disgusting images – a fact supported by the placebo condition in this new study,” said Dr Edwin Dalmaijer, also from the MRC Unit. “This is one reason why treating pathological disgust by exposure is often unsuccessful. Our research suggests domperidone may help.”

“We’ve shown that by calming the rhythms of our stomach muscles using anti-nausea drugs, we can help reduce our instinct to look away from a disgusting image,” added Professor Tim Dalgleish, also from the MRC Unit, “but just using the drug itself isn’t enough: overcoming disgust avoidance requires us to be motivated or incentivised. This could provide us with clues on how we can help people overcome pathological disgust clinically, which occurs in a number of mental health conditions and can be disabling.”

Explaining why the stomach should play a role in our disgust response, Dr Nord added: “When the brain constructs its representation of the environment, it integrates signals from the outside world, such as ‘is it daylight?’ with signals from the inside world, such as ‘am I hungry?’. So your internal environment, and your perception of it, plays a large role in how you experience the world.

“Many studies have shown that the state of our body influences emotion, perception, and action. For example, the timing and your awareness of your heartbeats influences learning, anxiety, and other emotion perception. Our study shows that the state of your stomach also influences your behaviour.”

̽��ֱ��research was supported by the Medical Research Council, AXA Research Fund and the National Institute for Health Research Cambridge Biomedical Research Centre.

Reference
Nord, CL & Dalmaijer, E, et al. A causal role for gastric rhythm in human disgust avoidance. Current Biology; 24 Nov 2020; DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2020.10.087

Does the sight of maggots squirming in rotten food make you look away in disgust? ̽��ֱ��phrase ‘makes my stomach turn’ takes on a new meaning today as researchers at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge reveal that changes in the rhythm of our stomachs prompt us to look away from disgusting images.

What we’ve shown here is that when we steady the stomach’s electrical signals, people become less avoidant of a disgusting image after engaging with it

Camilla Nord

Wellcome Images

An expression of disgust

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

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