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Psychology Workshop by Ray Norbury

On the twelfth of May, the psychology cohort was lucky enough to attend a live webinar by Ray Norbury, a Senior Lecturer at Brunel University. The title of the talk was I don’t do mornings: Chronotype and emotional processing. We learnt about different chronotypes and how they may link to deficits in emotional processing and increase the risk of depression. During the webinar, we learnt that 'Larks' are individuals that generally feel more energetic within the morning were less likely to develop depression. That evidence suggested that 'Owls', people who feel more energetic towards the evening, were more likely to develop depression other than larks. An example of one experiment to investigate the theory the owl/lark link to depression used was facial expressions, whereby participants had to identify what facial expressions were being displayed to them. Although both larks and owls could identify a 'happy' face, owls were able to identify a typical 'sad' face more than a lark. This experiment contributed to how an owl chronotype is more likely to become depressed within the future (owing to a cognitive bias for seeing the negative side of things). As part of the webinar, students took part in a self-reporting quiz, which demonstrated how more younger individuals were owls. Apart from this, Professor Norbury also discussed other topics such as; age affecting your chronotype and opening school at a later time as most young individuals are owls. All in all, Professor Ray Norbury delivered a remarkably engaging and informative presentation that discussed findings on a mental condition that has greatly affected hundreds and thousands of individuals.