Academic and Research Communication with Prof. Jamie Ward

On April 14th, 2019,Prof. Jamie Wardvisited thefaculty of psychology of Southwest University. Heis a professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Sussex. He is aleading expert on the topic of synaesthesia, and related issues includingcross-modal plasticity after sensory loss. He is also a well-known textbookauthor in the fields of Cognitive Neuroscience and Social Neuroscience.

He gave two lectures about hisresearches in the morning. Firstly, he gave us a talk entitled ‘Feeling thepain of others: Social neuroscience of individual differences in vicariousexperience’. This research has important implications for social neurosciencemodels of empathy more generally.

His another talk entitled ‘What can synaesthesia tell us about thenormal mind and brain?’ He presented the current state of knowledge aboutanomalous perceptual experiences in synaesthesia (e.g. experiencing colours forletters, tastes for words) that links together various levels of understandingfrom genetics through to brain structure, cognition, and perceptualexperiences.

In the afternoon, the members in Qiulabdiscussed a lot with Prof. JamieWard. They summarized the collaboration that had been carried out and plannedthe future collaboration.