Culture, Brain, and Development Public Lecture Archives

Fall 2010 - Spring 2011
CBD-Funded Student Summer Research Presentations September 27

The students who received CBD funding for their internships or research projects this summer will present their findings or progress. What did they do? What was their CBD interest? What challenges did they face? What was the most exciting moment of their summer research? Each student will present for about five minutes, so come at 5:30 to get a plate of dinner and stay to hear the news from these wonderful students. You get to ask them questions and to start thinking about your own CBD opportunities.

[http://www.hampshire.edu/news/19504.htm Click Here for a news story about this event. ]

"From Surviving to Thriving: A Contextual View of Resilience" by Tuppet Yates, Ph.D February 3 "How do children survive and, in some cases, thrive in the wake of adversity? From acute traumatic events, such as Haiti’s 2010 earthquake, to the chronic challenges of wars waged in and outside the family setting, some children are living and growing despite marked threats to their well being, while others are suffering because of them. Nearly 50 years of scholarship has sought to elucidate the processes underlying the better-than-expected developmental outcomes that typify resilience. Despite evidence converging on a “short list” of features and factors that contribute to resilience, this talk will provide evidence that resilience is a developmentally anchored, multiply determined, dynamic developmental phenomenon. Findings from studies following 250 high risk preschoolers across the transition into formal schooling and 200 foster youth across the transition into adulthood will support this contextual view of resilience." Professor Yates is on the faculty of the University of California, Riverside (UCR), where she directs the Adversity and Adaptation Laboratory. Her research focuses on how childhood adversity influences developmental pathways toward psychopathology and competence, with particular emphases on social and regulatory developmental processes. She holds a doctorate in developmental psychopathology and clinical science from the Institute of Child Development at the University of Minnesota.

Dr. Yates has extensive clinical experience with high-risk youth, particularly those involved with child protective services. She is founder and director of the UCR Guardian Scholars program, which provides a comprehensive network of support to emancipated foster youth as they pursue higher education at UCR.

"How the environment gets into the mind" by Patrick Sharkey, Ph.D. April 7 "Research examining the relationship between neighborhood environments and children's cognitive development has struggled to overcome theoretical challenges, empirical challenges, and methodological challenges, leaving unresolved several questions that are central to understanding how the residential environment may influence cognitive growth of children. Among the unresolved questions are the following: What is the temporal relationship between exposure to a disadvantaged environment and its impact on cognitive skills of children? Is the cumulative impact of the environment, as experienced over the life course and over generations of a family, more important than the child's environment at a given point in time? Does moving to a neighborhood with less poverty, higher quality institutions or less violence affect the cognitive skills of children? Do specific events in children's environments impact their cognitive functioning? This talk will describe a set of research projects designed to provide evidence on many of these unresolved questions. While there is substantial evidence indicating that children's neighborhood environments are strongly linked with their cognitive development, the evidence on the mechanisms underlying this link is much less clear - understanding the mechanisms at work should be a central goal for the next stage of research on neighborhoods and cognitive skills." Patrick Sharkey is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at New York University, with an affiliation at NYU's Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service. He holds a Ph.D. in Sociology and Social Policy from Harvard University, and recently completed a two-year fellowship in the Robert Wood Johnson Health and Society Scholars Program. Sharkey's research focuses on stratification and mobility, with a specialized interest in the role that neighborhoods and cities play in generating and maintaining inequality across multiple dimensions. His forthcoming book titled Inheriting the Ghetto, to be published with the University of Chicago Press, examines the transmission of neighborhood inequality to the children who were raised during the civil rights era, and asks how the persistence of neighborhood advantage and disadvantage has affected trends in racial inequality. Moving from the study of multigenerational inequality to the study of "everyday" inequality, Sharkey is beginning a long-term project on the impact of specific stressors in children's environments, such as extreme local violence, on their cognitive functioning, health, and academic performance.

"Cultural neuroscience: A unifying framework for bridging the cultural and biological sciences" by Joan Chiao, Ph.D April 15 "The study of culture and biology have historically been stratified, however, recent theoretical and methodological advances in cultural and biological sciences provide novel opportunities for understanding the nature and origin of human diversity by bridging these gaps. Cultural neuroscience is an emerging interdisciplinary science that investigates cultural variation in psychological, neural and genomic processes as a means of articulating the bidirectional relationship of these processes and their emergent properties. Here I will discuss how cultural and genetic diversity affect mind, brain and behavior across multiple timescales and the implications of cultural neuroscience research for basic and applied fields, including interethnic ideology, population health and merging the scientific study of the social and natural sciences in an ever increasing globalized world." Dr. Joan Chiao is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Northwestern University and an affiliated faculty member of the Neuroscience Institute (NUIN) the Cognitive Science Program and Asian-American Studies Program. Dr. Chiao received her Ph.D. in Psychology from Harvard University in 2006, studying social psychology and cognitive neuroscience. She completed her undergraduate work at Stanford University graduating in 2000 with a B.S. in Symbolic Systems. Dr. Chiao's research interests include cultural neuroscience of emotion and social interaction, social and affective neuroscience across development, social dominance and affiliation, and integrating psychology and neuroscience research with public policy and population health issues. Dr. Chiao is a recipient of funding from the National Science Foundation and Japan Society for the Promotion of Science and Technology to conduct research in cultural neuroscience and has served as Editor for pioneering texts in the field of cultural neuroscience, including an edited volume on cultural neuroscience called “Cultural Neuroscience: Cultural Influences on Brain Function” in 2009 and a peer-reviewed journal special issues on cultural neuroscience in Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience in 2010.

Art on the Brain Series
"Is it Art? A Case Study in the Cognitive Science of Pleasure" by Paul Bloom September 24

Paul Bloom is Professor of Psychology at Yale University.

Panel Discussion: Dancing Through Science November 12 Panelists: Liz Lerman (Choreographer &amp; Director, Liz Lerman Dance Exchange), [Http://www.wesleyan.edu/bio/grabel/grabel.html Laura Grabel] (Lauren B. Dachs Professor of Science in Society, Wesleyan University), Billbob Brown (Director of Chaos Theory Dance and Associate Professor of Dance, UMass, Amherst), Herb Bernstein (Professor of Physics, Hampshire College). Hosted by the Foundation for Psychocultural Research - Hampshire College Program in Culture, Brain, and Development and the Five College Dance Department

"Ferocious Beauty: Genome" by Liz Lerman Dance Exchange November 13

Enter the dialogue about genetics, brain, body, and health through this multi-disciplinary dance. Genetic research raises concrete prospects that previous generations scarcely imagined. How we heal, age, procreate and eat will all be altered in the coming years by scientific research happening right now. Lerman's performance explores this historic moment of revelation and questioning. Hosted by the Foundation for Psychocultural Research - Hampshire College Program in Culture, Brain, and Development and the Five College Dance Department

Rapture: Religious Ecstatics and "Deep Listeners" by Judith Becker February 11  "In her book Deep Listeners: Music, Emotion and Trancing (2004), Judith Becker proposed that there may be a physiological relationship between religious ecstatics and secular 'deep listeners.' She defines 'deep listeners' as those people who may feel chills or goosebumps, or who may cry when listening to music they find moving. She proposes that both religious ecstatics and 'deep listeners' experience strong, deep brain emotional responses when listening to music they find deeply moving. Her talk is about a scientific experiment that she conducted to test the hypothesis concerning a physiological relationship between religious ecstatics and deep listeners." Judith Becker is professor emeritus of ethnomusicology, University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre, and Dance.

Eatertainment and the (re)classification of children's foods by Charlene Elliott, Ph.D April 29 "Ideas of fun and play have emerged as dominant characteristics in children's packaged food marketing. This talk examines both the expression and implications of 'eatertainment' in children's packaged food products, contrasting it with the theme of 'engagement' that typifies the marketing of many adult foodstuffs. It details how child-oriented packaged food both embodies and communicates (historical, culturally specific) ideas about childhood, and explores how Canada's regulatory environment seeks to deal with child-targeted food marketing in light of the childhood obesity epidemic. Drawing from the results of a CIHR-funded study (comprising focus groups with over 300 children), the talk probes how the reclassification of children's food into 'fun food' brings with it a series of unintended consequences that are not merely related to the encouragement of overeating." Charlene Elliot is Associate Professor in Communication, University of Calgary.

Fall 2008 - Spring 2009
"Depression, Suicide, Culture and Global Pharmaceuticals: The Moral and Political Economy of Psychiatric Disorders in Global Health” by Arthur Kleinman, M.D. April 16

Arthur Kleinman is one of the world’s leading medical anthropologists and a major figure in cultural psychiatry, global health and social medicine.