Speaker: Fernanda Pérez Gay Juárez, Neurophilosophy Lab, McGill University
Bio: Fernanda Pérez-Gay Juárez is a medical doctor, cognitive neuroscientist and science communicator born in Mexico City in 1988. She obtained her MD degree in UNAM, Mexico in 2013 and her PhD in Neuroscience from McGill University in 2018, studying Category Learning and Learned Categorical perception. Currently, she is a postdoctoral fellow and Course Lecturer at McGill University, where she studies different aspects of social cognition and teaches the “Introduction to Neuroscience” and “Categorization, Communication and Consciousness” courses. One of her lines of research during the pandemic explored the link between mental health symptoms, mistrust in institutions and social-threat related beliefs (conspiracy theories and fear of contagion). She is also studying neurocognitive mechanisms of Theory of Mind (ToM) using neuromodulation paradigms and leads a project about the link between Social Categorization and ToM, assessing whether this effect can be modified through fiction reading. As a science communicator, she has given conferences to the general public in various settings, published more than 40 science journalism articles in Canadian and Mexican media and I wrote, directed and hosted a video series that explores some of the links between art and neuroscience.
Abstract: Among the list of psychosocial stressors brought by the COVID-19 pandemic brought are fear of contagion, grief due to separation from loved ones and COVID-19 related deaths of friends and relatives, the relational restrictions and social isolation brought by public health measures, tensions among families in lockdown together, increased uncertainty, feelings of helplessness, loss of freedom, financial loss or adverse economic effects and an overall increased perception of social threat. On one hand, numerous studies have reported an increase in mental health symptomatology both in particular countries and in international samples. On the other hand, there is also abundant evidence about COVID-related conspiracy beliefs, their links to mistrust in institutions and their impact on compliance with public health measures. In this talk, I will present data obtained from a convenience sample of 1,500 respondents from Mexico, US and Canada showing some links between mental health symptomatology, mistrust in institutions and social-threat related beliefs (irrational fear of contagion and conspiratorial ideation) in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, highlighting the interaction between psychosocial stressors, individual proneness to mental health disorders and irrational beliefs.