With the flowers blooming and birds singing, our scientific fancy is turning to love. In collaboration with the French Embassy, we’ll be investigating just what that slushy, fizzy feeling means scientifically. Why do we fall for the people we do? Is it all about pretty faces or personalities – or do we just go for the ones who remind us of our parents? Dave Perrett is a professor of psychology in St Andrews who studies attractiveness and mate choice, and he’ll be on hand to give us the details on where our romantic choices spring from. Lucy Vincent, a neurobiologist at the French Centre nationale de la recherche scientifique, knows all about the synaptic sparks that go off when we fall in love. What’s happening in the brain when we love someone – and what about when we break up? Can science offer us any tips on winning someone over and staying together? And does all this scientific talk about love spoil the magic? Come see our speakers (across a crowded room) and find out for yourself!

This evening comes in two parts: after the talk, the Ciné Lumière will be showing a film specially chosen to tie in with our topic. Since the French are, after all, acknowledged world experts on romance, we’re sure they’ll come up with something perfect. Check www.rigb.org for more details soon.

David Perrett was born in the Shropshire countryside in 1954, and educated in Psychology at the University of St Andrews (BSc 1976) and University of Oxford (D.Phil., 1981). He has worked in research ever since at St Andrews (appointed as a Royal Society University Research Fellow 1983, Lecturer 1990, Professor 1998). He works on how we process faces from a variety of perspectives (inc. developmental, comparative, perceptual, social and evolutionary psychology, and neuroscience). In much of his work he uses computer graphics to make subtle alterations to the appearance of face images and then find out how the alterations impact on perception and attraction to the faces.

Lucy Vincent holds a doctorate in neuroscience. She broadcasts on scientific subjects for Radio France and is the author of several books, including Comment devient-on amoureux? (How do we fall in love?).

Registration required:

Yes

Free:

No