Café Scientifique: What Your Nose Knows about Stress

DOORS 7PM | SPEAKER 7.30PM

Gillian Forrester is a professor of psychology at the University of Sussex. She collaborate with chimpanzees, gorillas, and babies to better understand how brains and behaviours evolve and develop over time. By studying both human and non-human primates, she is on a quest to better understand how we became upright-walking, talking, tool-using great apes. Gillian makes regular contributions to television, radio, newsprint, and podcasts. Look out for the new BBC 2 Horizon programme ‘Secrets of the Brain’ – airing 15thand 22nd September 2025.

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Investigating how we feel is a tricky topic because our psychological state is a combination of our sensory and subjective experiences. Scientists often use survey and biological measures, like heart rate, to understand how we react to stress. But we’re not very good at knowing how we feel – and the act of taking a measurement, like blood pressure, can cause its own stress response. Thermal imaging is emerging as a powerful tool to detect our body’s response to stress in real time without contact and in natural settings. This is a scientific game-changer allowing a window into the psychological wellbeing of not only us but also our non-human great ape cousins.