Tell us a little more about your career to date
Well, I’m a professor of neuroscience at the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London, where I’m very much a research scientist, but I teach as well. I love science, so I’m interested in everything, but the main focus of my research is the neuroscience of voices, speech and laughter – how humans communicate – and how the brain supports that.
What attracted you to a career in science?
Apart from learning from the Christmas Lectures that there was a whole world of people out there ‘doing’ science (I can still remember it felt like being let in on a secret!), I didn’t really have any recognition that science was a career option until I did my 2nd year exams at polytechnic. I was studying biology and one of my lecturers suggested I consider a PhD. So I looked for a research assistant job and found I loved it; I think as you get older there are so many other calls on your time, but this was three years when it was just me and my research; you’re just learning how to do things and it’s just great! So I then went on to look for a research job and landed at Cambridge and the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, where I started working in brain scanning which was the precursor to cognitive neuroscience. I started running my lab here at UCL in 2001 and then was awarded the Chair in 2006.
What do you see as the future of communication?
It’s very hard to predict. As humans we’re very good at exploiting different methods, but the basics remain the same. I was at my Mum’s house recently and saw some postcards exchanged between my grandparents and it was like they had been exchanged daily, almost like emails now, and of course that form of communication has dropped away, as indeed emails are among young people. But we continue to find a way to communicate and that’s the only constant; we just keep on communicating. What we do know is that language doesn’t stay the same and where it changes, it changes with young people. The most commonly studied groups at the moment are young deaf people where they are inventing new forms of sign language. Changes move up through the population, but they all start with young people. So as long as there are humans, there will always be communication and it will always change.
Tell us a little about the science of laughter
It’s interesting because it’s everywhere yet it’s been very, very little studied. The psychologist Robert Provine described it as hiding in plain sight. I worked on emotion in the voice for about 6 years before I even thought about looking at laughter. It’s extremely commonly encountered; friends having conversations are laughing for 10% of the time and that’s a lot of laughter. And it’s interesting because nearly everything we assume about it is wrong. We associate laughter with jokes, and we do laugh at jokes obviously, but actually most laughter is a social bonding thing at its heart – we do it when we’re with other people to show agreement and affiliation as much as amusement.
What’s the best thing about your job? And what’s the worst?
I really love looking at data. I’ve never not been interested in the results of a study, even when I don’t think it will work. As soon as I have the data in, that’s the pleasure of finding things out, even when it doesn’t work, it is still interesting. So absolutely no question it’s data that’s the best thing about the job.
The worst thing is that there’s just not enough hours in the day, but I guess that’s being working mother or just life in general!
Who has had the most influence on your career and why?
That’s a very good question. I think Dorothy Bishop at Oxford. She was a senior scientist at Cambridge when I was a junior post-doc there and she was unusual in that she was a very high powered woman and there weren’t that many at the time, but also she had this desire to find out why things were and that takes an awful lot of time and data. I’d met a lot of impressive scientists before, but meeting Dorothy was the first time I remember thinking how much I wanted to be like someone else; and she’s been very supportive of me.
And also Sue Iverson from Oxford. I’ve only met her a few times but she has been enormously supportive and helpful to me. Academia can feel like a shaky ladder you’re trying to climb and Sue Iverson and Dorothy Bishop are two examples of people who’ve put a hand down the ladder to help me up!
What do the Christmas Lectures mean to you?
If you could do anything as a scientist and as a science communicator then they’re your absolute target!
I think their contribution is at least a two-fold. It’s the main focal point for the amazing amount of other science communication and engagement undertaken by the Ri; it’s very much a figure head series for them and has a lot of recognition.
And it’s an important example of taking science communication seriously. If you look at the history of the people who have given the lectures and the things they’ve done, the Lectures make science accessible but not pointless or ridiculous by that accessibility. I have clear memories of watching my first Christmas Lectures, delivered by Carl Sagan, and it felt like I’d been let in on a secret, that there was a whole world of people out there ‘doing science’. Science in the 1970s was lots of nice books with pretty pictures, but felt very much like a presentation of ‘stuff we know’ and you didn’t get a sense of process or that it’s an on-going thing. So it was extraordinary to me – that in the same way there are authors out there thinking of stories, there are also scientists thinking of research.
So I’m absolutely delighted to be the 2017 Christmas Lecturer. It’s really exciting and a huge honour, and I’m looking forward to some great demonstrations and posing a few fundamental questions about the sort of future we want.
What’s your favourite Christmas Lecture of the past?
Well, Carl Sagan’s Lectures obviously, because they were my first and a seminal moment for me. But last year’s were just brilliant, I loved Bruce Hood’s, the standard is always so unbelievably high and I love the variety; it’s reflecting and respecting the breadth of science. The Christmas Lectures mean a lot in the range of science they represent and the different ways science has a meaning for our lives.
Are the Christmas Lectures still relevant today?
Absolutely; because science is still relevant and science communication, today, is more important than ever. One of the problems I think we face in science is people’s perception. People often don’t see people like themselves, they don’t see themselves represented, and the Ri takes that very seriously and has clearly given a lot of thought as to what that means; it’s a long game to play, but it’s an important one. And they take the diversity of real science seriously and that’s an important message to us all. As I said, I had no idea you could have a career in science until I head Carl Sagan speak, so who knows, without the Christmas Lectures maybe I wouldn’t be here today doing something I absolutely love.
Can you tell us a little more about this year’s Christmas Lectures?
Well my lips are sealed on the detail, but among other things we’re going to strip communication right back, looking at links to our animal past, how language has evolved, the 93% or so of communication that’s non-verbal, and then how speech is transformed into the written word, including textspeak and emojis. Communication is such a fundamental part of animal and human lives, that it’s a subject that can be of interest to everyone. There are deaf people in remote parts of the world who communicate though sign and will travel for days to find someone else who signs, just so they can have a conversation. And that, is amazing!
And what do you want the young audience to take away with them?
I would like people to realise just how complex communication is and how unaware we are of a lot of what we do. And also what a very diverse science psychology and cognitive neuroscience is – it has its basis in biology, but we use a lot of physics and neuroscience, so there’s something to interest many people. And apart from that, I think just a love of science; the Christmas Lectures are fun and engaging and a great family-focused way to stimulate an interest in science.
What’s the place of science in society?
It should be absolutely central, and whether we recognise it or not, it really is central. I often think of it as being more like art than we realise; trying to understand and reflect the world we live in. It’s certainly as creative an endeavour as art – artists are often amazed at how creative scientists are and scientists are often amazed by how structured and ordered artists are. There are more similarities than differences. It’s a combination of innovation and productivity, with the engines of basic scientific research giving phenomenal results in everyday life. There’s a guy who, after the second world war, predicted how the cochlear works, which at the time was very much blue sky thinking, but when his theories were tested in the 1970s when techniques got better they were proven to be right – the cochlear does indeed make sounds called otoacoustic emissions – and that is now a test that is undertaken on every new born child whereas before children were going to school before anyone knew they were deaf. So even if it feels like a long way from the lab to making things better in life, the pipeline is there.
Who’s your scientific hero and why?
Paul Ekman. He’s worked from 1960s onwards about how people process emotion from the face and like Dorothy Bishop he isn’t afraid to do difficult things to deal with difficult questions, like travelling round Papua New Guinea to see if anyone who’d never encountered a white European before, or even someone not from their tribe, could recognise emotion in the same way. He also developed a kid of phonetics for face muscle movements and it’s very clever because it lets you talk about what the muscle groups are doing when making certain facial expressions. As humans we use our expressions very precisely so he didn’t just study how people recognise them, but also what’s underlying them. Basically he was building on a lot of Charles Darwin’s work. And it’s not uncontroversial – the row still rumbles on about the extent to which emotions are cross-culturally recognisable or culturally determined. His science is very clean and clear and well thought through and he’s never stopped thinking about good ideas. He is just a fantastic scientist and he just keeps moving forward.
What do you like to do outside of science?
Vanishingly little! I like doing stand-up comedy, I like going to see comedy… I like comedy! I try and prioritise things that mean I get to spend time with my family and to get outside, being active, doing exercise. The only wisdom I’ve developed with age is that it’s important to prioritise some of that. So I work very hard at work, I works weekends sometimes, but when I am not working I make sure I am enjoying my life.
Tell us about your stand up career.
It was entirely driven by UCL, where Steve Cross started something called Bright Club about 8 years ago, which were proper comedy nights in proper comedy clubs with a proper comedian as compere…but everyone else was an academic or researcher from UCL. And when I first heard about it I thought it would be the worst thing on earth, but once I’d done it I immediately wanted to do it again and do it better. So it’s been an interesting two-fold learning experience – as a skill that I want to get better at, but also as an exercise that’s made me realise a lot about laughter; that it’s much more nuanced in audiences than I’d realised.
And it’s certainly made me a lot more confident and I was pretty confident beforehand!
Who would you have at your ideal dinner party and why?
How many can I have? OK, 4, so I don’t know whether they’d get on, but I’d have loved to meet Jane Austen, I don’t think I’m alone in that, but I think she’d be very interesting and I suspect she’d judge everybody else at the party. And Morecambe and Wise, just because they make me laugh and because there’s something very interesting about the dynamics of double acts and how they work together. And I would have liked to have met Tony Hancock – a very interesting and skilled performer and very different to Morecambe & Wise. I haven’t mentioned any scientists…that’s very bad isn’t it?!
So one more, Norman F Dixon, who wrote about the psychology of military incompetence. It’s a book I read when I was an undergraduate and it was the first time I thought to myself there really is something in this; that understanding human behaviour could be really helpful. I think he’d get on with Jane Austen!
What would be your desert island discs?
This was hard to decide on…
Sweet Talking Woman – ELO
You’re going to lose that Girl – The Beatles
Transmission – Joy Division
Public Image Limited – Public Image
Kate – The Benfolds Five
Good thing – Fine young Cannibals
I’m in the Mood for Ska – Lord Tanamo
That Thing – Lauryn Hill
And your book and luxury item?
Coming from Behind, by Howard Jacobson. I’ve read it many times and it still makes me laugh, a lot.
And a guitar – I play but not very well – but if you’ve got a guitar, or a piano then if you ever got bored of your eight records, then you’d never be without music.