Monthly focus

More than a feeling

02 August 2018

Emotions have long been explored by artists, but new work by scientists is helping us understand more about how we feel. Image credit - Flickr/David Gaines, licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0

This month, Horizon takes an in-depth look at a shared human trait – our emotions. We find out how science is seeking to better understand and regulate human emotions across a range of applications, from mental health to politics. We uncover the implications of a neuroscientist’s efforts to determine how the brain controls fear and anxiety, with possible implications for treating mental health disorders and autism. We explore how emotions shape our politics and ask whether this can help provide a different perspective on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And we look at research examining how apps and online games can help people manage their emotional sides.

A study published in January this year showed that group interventions broadened dozens of Israelis’ views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Image credit - Flickr/Apps for Europe, licensed under CC BY 2.0

health

16 August 2018

How focusing on emotions helps diffuse political tension

Workshops focusing on intergroup emotions are showing how deeply-rooted beliefs can be changed to support conflict resolution.

health

09 August 2018

The mobile apps and wearable tech tapping into users' emotions to tackle depression and anxiety

Personalised smartphone applications and wearable technologies that are attuned to the user’s state of mind are offering customised ways of helping people cope with mental illness.

Dr Nadine Gogolla is studying the insular cortex and its connections to anxiety disorders. Image credit - Dr Nadine Gogolla

interview | health

02 August 2018

'Island of the brain' explains how physical states affect anxiety

A fold of tissue hidden deep inside the human brain which collects inputs from both inside and outside the body could explain how our physical states influence our emotions and may be the key to understanding anxiety disorders, according to Dr Nadine Gogolla, a neuroscientist at the Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology in Munich, Germany. She is using cutting-edge scientific techniques to probe this poorly studied brain region, known as the insular cortex, to reveal the role it plays in regulating our emotions.

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Image credit - Ricardo Gomez Angel/Unsplash

Construction: Building for the future

The construction industry has a heavy carbon footprint, accounting for some 40% of global emissions, and yet, as the world’s population grows, demand for housing and building is only soaring. We kick off 2021 by looking at how the construction sector can become greener and some of the radical solutions required. We speak to sustainable architecture expert Dr Catherine De Wolf about the need to design recyclable buildings and how that will require a fundamental restructure of the way the construction industry works. We look at nearly zero energy wooden homes and investigate whether this material can help us kick our concrete habit – concrete being the most used substance on Earth. We home in on techniques to make cement greener and piezoelectric to light up spaces with the addition of vegetable waste, and at how self-healing building materials can prolong the life of civil infrastructures. And we explore the promise of fungal architecture to see whether structures grown from fungus can green the way we build.

Image credit - ESA/Gaia/DPAC, licenced under CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

The Milky Way

In December, as the European Space Agency’s Gaia mission to create a precise 3-D map of a billion objects in the Milky Way releases its next tranche of data, we take an in-depth look at what we know – and what we don’t – about our home galaxy. We speak to astrophysicist Prof. Ralf Klessen about why it might enhance our understanding of the Milky Way to consider it as a constantly evolving ecosystem rather than studying different parts in an isolated way. We speak to scientists who are trying to image the centre of the galaxy, which is hidden from view behind giant dust and gas clouds, and we explore the latest research into how stars are formed. And finally, we find out what the galaxies surrounding the Milky Way can tell us about our home system.

Scientists are exploring the possibilities of turning mycelium, the fungus that produces mushrooms, into a new type of building material. Image credit - Rob Hille/Wikimedia, licensed under CC SA3.0

Why future homes could be made of living fungus

In the summer of 2014 a strange building began to take shape just outside MoMA PS1, a contemporary art centre in New York City. It looked like someone had started building an igloo and then got carried away, so that the ice-white bricks rose into huge towers. It was a captivating sight, but the truly impressive thing about this building was not so much its looks but the fact that it had been grown.

In one experiment, people who spoke more than one language or dialect demonstrated greater executive control abilities - which include inhibition, working memory and cognitive flexibility - than monolinguals. Image credit - Jessica Lewis/Unsplash

Studies into bilingual cognition could help improve language learning

Bilingual people can effortlessly switch between languages during everyday interactions. But beyond its usefulness in communication, being bilingual could affect how the brain works and enhance certain abilities. Studies into this could inform techniques for learning languages and other skills.

More than a feeling

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How focusing on emotions helps diffuse political tension

The mobile apps and wearable tech tapping into users' emotions to tackle depression and anxiety