Biological and Experimental Psychology

Research in this area focuses on the ultimate (evolutionary) and proximate (genetic, developmental and neurobiological) mechanisms responsible for cognition and behaviour. A central consideration for this group concerns cognitive evolution and the biological basis of human social behaviour. We also place a strong emphasis on the experimental approach to research problems in these fields of psychology. Recent topics in which world-class work has been conducted includes physical reasoning and social cognition in Corvids, colour perception in bumblebees, the transmission of cultural information in humans using evolutionary models, the biological origins of human sexual orientation, sex differences in cognition, the use of zebra fish as a model behavioural assay of addiction, visual attention and search in humans and non-human animals, the role of Cannabinoid signalling in several neural processes, social evolution in mole rats, gene-brain interaction in mammalian reproductive behaviour, the utility of Drosophila models of circadian rhythms, face processing and imitation, and the philosophy of mind.