Me, Myself and Id

Have you ever wondered how we become aware of our own bodily sensations like hunger, fullness, or a racing heart? This ability, called interoception, helps us regulate our bodies and emotions. But where does it all begin? Focusing on feeding and eating behaviour, I will explore how infants learn to interpret their internal sensations through early interactions with caregivers. By understanding the early foundations of interoception, we can gain new insights into how we learn to recognise our body’s needs, and why things sometimes go astray.

Together with my collaborators, I am conducting pioneering work using electrical muscle stimulation to study how facial muscle activity influences the way people feel and perceive emotions. For example, we have found that people feel happier and also perceive more happiness in other people’s faces, when we activated their smiling muscles. Not only does this matter for theories emotion and perception; it might also be beneficial to improve mood in depression, or emotion recognition in autism or Parkinson’s disease.

In 2013, I created a map of the London Underground based on concentric circles and spokes and was taken by surprise when it went viral on the internet. In 2024, I updated and improved the design and lightning struck twice, harder the second time round. In this talk I will explain why I created these maps, why they attract attention and what I think are their strengths and weaknesses, delving into the murky landscape of popularity versus usability in the process. Concentric circles maps definitely have a place in the world, but maybe not for London.