News
2024
April - Phaedra Longhurst discussed her recent research on the Appearance Matters podcast, hosted by the Centre for Appearance Research at UWE.
April - Jane Aspell will give a talk as part of the Seminar Series of the Department of Psychiatry, Cambridge University/CPFT
March - Jane Aspell has been announced as a finalist in the 'Researcher of the Year' category of the 2024 Cambridge Independent Science and Technology Awards.
March - Congratulations to VC PhD Scholar Phaedra Longhurst for publishing the second study from her PhD project in Body Image! Her paper is a psychometric evaluation of a revised version of the Body Appreciation Scale-2 for autistic adults.
March - VC PhD Scholar Phaedra Longhurst delivered a workshop and gave a talk at the International Conference on Eating Disorders (ICED) in New York.
March - New paper accepted in Scientific Reports. The paper describes our Bial Foundation-funded study on relations between depersonalisation symptoms and bodily experiences in dreaming and waking. Congratulations to lead author Matt Gwyther!
March - Jane Aspell gave a talk on "Constructing the self: how the brain creates self-consciousness" at the International Bioethics Conference (2024 Theme: The metamorphosis of the body: bioethics and neuroscience".
January - We have had a paper accepted in the journal Biological Psychology. It reports our Versus Arthritis-funded study on interoception in adults with fibromyalgia. Congratulations to lead author Dr Jenny Todd!
2023
December - The Mirror covered our VR study on fibromyalgia.
December - Congratulations to Utkarsh Gupta for passing his PhD viva!
November - Jane Aspell's ARU Psychology Subject Spotlight is now available on the Springpod website. Any post-16 students considering different university courses can view Subject Spotlights for free after creating an account.
November - Congratulations to VC PhD Scholar Phaedra Longhurst for publishing the first paper from her PhD project already! Her paper - a qualitative study of positive body image in autistic adults - is published in Body Image.
November - Congratulations to Dr Piers Grey for officially graduating from his PhD this month!
November - Really happy to welcome Edoardo Chidichimo who has joined the lab as a Research Assistant to work on a new depersonalisation study.
September - Delighted to welcome Lovell Jones -new PhD student - to the lab! Lovell's first supervisor is Dr Flavia Cardini, her second supervisor is Dr Jane Aspell and her third supervisor is Dr Matt Bristow.
September - Jane Aspell gave a talk on depersonalisation at the Cambridge Rotary Club.
August - An editorial for a Special Collection of papers on "The Bodily Self", guest-edited by Jane Aspell, Morten Overgaard and Catherine Preston has been published in Scientific Reports.
July - PhD study of Utkarsh Gupta is now out as a preprint. It provides evidence for interactions between the bodily self and episodic autobiographical memory.
July - We have published a new preprint reporting the results of our study - funded by Versus Arthritis - investigating interoception in people with the chronic pain condition fibromyalgia. Read the preprint here.
July - Jane Aspell, Peter Bright and Alex Clarke received the 2023 Faculty Award for Best PhD Supervisory Team. Huge thanks to Utkarsh for nominating us!
July - Ryan Laughton and Phaedra Longhurst presented their latest research findings at a Psychology Research Seminar at ARU.
June - Utkarsh Gupta and Lovell Jones presented their recent research findings at the International Multisensory Forum (IMRF) in Brussels.
June - Happy to welcome Varvara Belova to the lab for her summer studentship project.
May - Really pleased to welcome Lily Vissouze (from Sorbonne university) to the lab for her summer internship.
May - We have published a new preprint reporting the results of our study - funded by The Bial Foundation - investigating the experience of the bodily self in dreams in people with depersonalisation traits. Read the preprint here.
April - Jane Aspell was interviewed for the BBC Science Focus magazine "Instant Genius" podcast on the topic of out of body experiences. Listen here.
April - We were honoured to host representatives from the Unreal charity for a visit to our lab. Fantastic to hear about the great work Unreal is doing to support people with depersonalisation and raise awareness of the condition.
March - Big congratulations to Dr Grey who passed his PhD viva with minor corrections!
March - Jane Aspell will give a public talk entitled "Can selves leave bodies? How science explains out of body experiences" at the Cambridge Festival on March 22nd. See details and book here.
March - We are partnering with students and staff from the Cambridge School of Art to create an immersive, interdisciplinary exploration of the self in dreams via an exhibit at the Cambridge Festival on March 31st and April 1st. No need to book. See details here.
March - Congratulations to Jenny Todd for receiving the Vice Chancellor's Award for Outstanding Research (Early Career Researcher)!
March - Jane Aspell received the Vice Chancellor's Award for Outstanding Doctoral Supervision.
2022
December - Jane Aspell received the 2022 Faculty of Science & Engineering (Individual) Award for Research and Partnerships.
December - Delighted to welcome MA art students Jewel Chang, Kelsey Wu, Suhong Zhou, Xinyue Peng, Jinpu Guan, Megann Ma, Yuxin Gu and Qianyi Zhang as they start a placement with our lab and work towards an exciting, immersive art-science exhibition at the next Cambridge Festival!
December - Jane Aspell gave a research seminar ("Distorting the Bodily Self") in the Department of Psychology, Durham university.
December - Jane Aspell has been appointed to the BBSRC Pool of Experts to support the research council's funding decision-making via its research committees.
December- We have a new publication in PlosOne (lead author Jenny Todd): "Are Some Interoceptive Sensibility Components More Central than Others? Using Item Pool Visualisation to Understand the Psychometric Representation of Interoception."
November - Utkarsh Gupta gave a talk entitled "Is forgetting part of learning?" to the Interprofessional learning network at ARU. You can view the talk here
September - Jane Aspell has been invited to join the College of Experts for the charity Versus Arthritis to support decision-making on funding applications.
September - A warm welcome to Phaedra Longhurst who has just joined the lab as a PhD student. Phaedra is funded by a Vice-Chancellor's PhD Scholarship and will be investigating body image in autism. She will be supervised by Jane Aspell, Viren Swami and Jenny Todd.
September - Utkarsh Gupta presented his research at the annual meeting of the Body Representation Network (BRNet) in Sion, Switzerland, and he was awarded the Best Poster prize!
July - Utkarsh Gupta, Matt Gwyther and Hamish Miller presented posters at the ASSC meeting in Amsterdam.
July - Our scoping review of assessment tools for pain associated with pelvic mesh implants has been accepted in BMC Women's Health.
June - A Leverhulme Trust Research Grant of £153,406 has been awarded to Flavia Cardini (PI), Jane Aspell, Elisa Ferre and Francesca Cavallerio (Co-Is) for the project “Pain in gymnasts: understanding its neural mechanisms to prevent overuse injury.”
June - Congratulations to PhD student Utkarsh Gupta, who has been awarded a Brain Travel Award of £600 by the Guarantors of Brain! This will fund his attendance at the annual meeting of the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness (ASSC) in Amsterdam, where he will present his latest research findings.
May - A Special Issue on the topic "Mindfulness, Interoception and the Body", guest edited by Jenny Todd and Jane Aspell, has been published in Brain Sciences.
April - Matt Gwyther presented findings from our Bial project at the Phenomenological Methods in Neuroscience & Consciousness Research workshop in Zurich.
March - We have two events at this year's Cambridge Festival, both taking place on April 6th: Jane Aspell will give a talk entitled "Losing and Finding the Self in the Brain" (book here), and Matt Gwyther, Utkarsh Gupta and Jenny Todd will present an interactive showcase of some of the lab's recent research (details here).
February - Special issue co-edited by Jane Aspell, Els Ortibus, and Silvio Ionta on 'Psychology and Neuropsychology of Perception, Action, and Cognition in Early Life' consisting of 15 articles, has been published in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience. The Editorial written by the co-editors is available here.
February - We have a fully funded PhD studentship (Vice Chancellor's Scholarship) available. The topic is body image in autism. Advert here .
2021
December - Jane was interviewed on the BBC Radio 4 programme "All in the Mind"
November - Jane received the 2021 Vice Chancellor's Award for Outstanding Research and Innovation.
November - Jane Aspell, Catherine Preston and Morten Overgaard are guest editing a Special Collection in Scientific Reports on the topic "The Bodily Self". The Collection is now open for submissions here: Calls for Papers | Scientific Reports (nature.com) .
September- Really happy to welcome Ryan Laughton - a new PhD student - to the lab! Ryan is supervised by Dr Flavia Cardini, Dr Jane Aspell and Dr Francesca Cavallerio.
September - Huge Congratulations to lab alumnus James Pamment who has just passed his Clinical Doctorate with minor corrections!
September - Our new paper in Cortex was covered by several newspapers and news websites including The Daily Telgraph, the Evening Standard, The Daily Express and Florida TV news (Bay News 9).
August - Jane Aspell's talk ('Out of Body, In the Mind), to be held during the British Science Festival (Chelmsford, 7th September), is now open for bookings here. Jane was interviewed about the talk for The Herald (article here) and The Daily Express (article here).
July - Jenny Todd, Jane Aspell and collaborators have had a new paper accepted for publication in Cortex, based on Jenny's PhD work. Congratulations Jenny!
July - An Innovation and Research Award of £57,290 has been awarded to Nikesh Thiruchelvam (PI), Jennifer Todd, Michael Lee, Jane Aspell, Kelly Leonard and Amanda Stranks (co-applicants) by The Urology Foundation. We will be seeking to develop and validate a patient reported outcome measure (a new questionnaire) for the pain related to pelvic mesh implants and their removal .
June - Congratulations to PhD student Utkarsh Gupta for winning business competition 'The Big Pitch' to develop his social networking platform Neurogether!
June - Jenny Todd, Jane Aspell, Viren Swami and collaborators have published a new paper in International Perspectives in Psychology. Congratulations Jenny!
May - Jane Aspell gave an invited talk on “The Development of Body Representations in Childhood” at a one-day symposium entitled “NeuroPedagogy of Vision and beyond: from Perception to Cognition” (in Lausanne/on Zoom).
May - We are really happy to welcome Matt Gwyther to the lab! Matt will join us as a Research Assistant to work on our Bial-funded project on depersonalisation.
April - Jane Aspell and Jennifer Todd are guest editing a Special Issue of Brain Sciences on the topic "Mindfulness, Interoception and the Body", now open for submissions here
March - We are seeking to hire a part-time Research Assistant to work on our project funded by The Bial Foundation (Advert here)
March - We are looking for participants to take part in a pilot 'interoceptive awareness training program' to reduce stress and increase wellbeing. This is a collaboration with Dr Ian Tenant at Thrive & Enjoy, Ltd. More details here.
January - Delighted to welcome Azeezat Aminu - a new PhD student - to the lab! Azeezat is supervised by Prof Peter Bright, Dr Jane Aspell and Dr Debora e Sa.
January - We have a new publication in Frontiers in Psychology: Perception Science (special issue on 'Body Representation and Interoceptive Awareness: Cognitive, Affective, and Social Implications')
2020
December - Our lab has been awarded a grant of 48,000 euros by The Bial Foundation for a project entitled "Living in a Dream: Body and self experience during waking and dream states in depersonalisation". Excited to start working on with with an amazing group of co-investigators: Anna Ciaunica, Bigna Lenggenhager and Jennifer Windt!
November - We have a new 8-week paid graduate internship opportunity on the topic of interoception, working with Dr Jane Aspell and a private company (Thrive & Enjoy Ltd.). Advert and link to apply here.
November - Dr Jenny Todd has started as a postdoctoral research fellow in the lab, working on a project funded by Versus Arthritis.
October - Excellent news that Jenny Todd passed her PhD viva with no corrections! Congratulations Dr Todd!
October - PhD student Utkarsh Gupta has been successful in his application for a NENS exchange grant to fund a research stay at Zurich university. Congratulations, Utkarsh!
May - Congratulations to PhD student Jenny Todd for having her paper on relations between gastric interoception and body image accepted for publication in Body Image!
April - Frontiers Special Topic -Psychology and Neuropsychology of Perception, Action, and Cognition in Early Life - guest edited by Silvio Ionta, Jane Aspell and Els Ortibus is now open for submissions
April - Thrilled to report that Cari-lene Mul has just been officially awarded her PhD. Congratulations Dr Mul!
March - Congratulations to PhD student Jenny Todd for publishing her new paper "Translation and Validation of a Bahasa Malaysia (Malay) Version of the Multidimensional Assessment of Interoceptive Awareness (MAIA)" in PlosOne!
February - Our symposium "(A)typical Multisensory Processing: from Bodily Self-Consciousness to Social Interactions" has been accepted for the IMRF conference in Ulm! Speakers: Anna Ciaunica, Bigna Lenggenhager, Jane Aspell, Harry Farmer, Malika Auvray and Helge Gillmeister.
February - Congratulations to Utkarsh Gupta for success in his application for a Travel Award from the Guarantors of Brain!
February - Jane Aspell's talk "My Self and my Brain" at the 2020 Cambridge Science Festival (18/03/20) is now open for bookings.
January - Our lab has been awarded a Pain Challenge Research Award from Versus Arthritis to investigate body representations in fibromyalgia, with our fantastic collaborators: Dr Flavia Cardini, Dr Mike Lee and Dr Paola Finoia.
January - Congratulations to Jenny Todd and Farah Hina who have just had their paper accepted in Experimental Brain Research!
2019
November: We have a new preprint online -"Reduction of auditory input improves performance on the heartbeat tracking task, but does not necessarily enhance interoception."
October: We are delighted to welcome Utkarsh Gupta to the lab! He has just started his PhD looking at links between the bodily self and autobiographical memory.
October: Congratulations to PhD student Jenny Todd for publishing her new study in Body Image - paper number six and counting!
August: We are pleased to see the lab's research profiled in feature article on 'The Shattered Self' in BPS magazine The Psychologist
August: Congratulations to Farah Hina on the publication of her study in the International Journal of Psychophysiology!
July: Thrilled to report that Cari-lene Mul has passed her PhD viva with minor corrections!
June: Jane Aspell, Cari-lene Mul, Flavia Cardini, Eleonora Vagnoni and Ana Tajadura-Jimenez presented their work in their symposium 'Plasticity in the representation of one’s body and its surrounding space:Adaptive and Maladaptive Effects' at the European Congress of Psychology in Moscow.
June: New paper on changes in peripersonal space during pregnancy published in Scientific Reports.
April: Congratulations to PhD student Cari-lene Mul for publishing her study in Autism, with press coverage in Newsweek and New Scientist!
March: Jane Aspell's talk at the Cambridge Festival of Science - 'The Neuroscience of Out of Body Experiences' - is on March 20th.