Faculty of Arts & Sciences

Supervised individual research leading to a tutorial paper.

Focuses on waking, sleeping, and dreaming as examples of conscious states in both humans and animals. Original papers and Antonio Damasio's book (The Feeling of What Happens form the background for discussions of waking, sleeping, and dreaming from the perspectives of neurology, physiology, psychology, and cognitive neurosciences. Discusses various approaches to understanding the functions of sleep and wake (consciousness) and reviews several theories on the topic.

Seeks a comprehensive understanding of addiction and why it has been such a contentious topic. Readings and discussion address (1) the characteristics of addiction as revealed in biographies, epidemiological studies, clinical research, experiments, and historical "natural experiments"; (2) how drugs work; (3) the functional significance of drug-induced neural changes; (4) genetic influences on alcohol use in the context of gene expression (4) a behavioral economic analysis of impulsivity and addiction.

Focuses on the science of happiness, integrating findings from positive psychology, psychiatry, behavioral genetics, neuroscience, and behavioral economics. Begins with a brief history of ideas on happiness from Aristotle to Kahneman. Considers the genetics of happiness including the notion of a biologically determined hedonic set point, the brain's pleasure circuitry, and the mind's power to frame events positively, a tool used in cognitive therapies. Questions whether pleasure and happiness are our purpose.

Renowned neuroscientists from Harvard and elsewhere will lead highly interactive seminars addressing core problems underlying the emergence of conscious visual experience. Topics include the requisite neuronal representations of the content of visual images, their localization within extrapersonal space and the sense of ownership of such images by an attentive self. Related topics include selective attention, the binding problem, recursive neuronal networks and the distinction between phenomenal and access consciousness. Finally, also explores both the commonalities and differences between visual perception and visual imagery so as to achieve a greater understanding of the bases for the emergence of both entities.

Survey of neuropsychology of music. Examines psychological and neural substrates of music perception and cognition (pitch and consonance, melody and harmony, timbre, rhythm and meter, Gestaltist grouping processes). Then considers affective psychology (emotion, meaning, pleasure), music therapy, music and language, and developmental, comparative, and evolutionary perspectives.

Examines human creativity from three perspectives: a) empirical research sources, b) case studies of eminent creative achievers, and c) ourselves as creative subjects. Topics include the definition and measurement of creativity, the creative process, the neuroscience of creativity, the creative personality, the role of family life and culture in creativity, the relationship of creativity to IQ, gender differences, and the relationship of creativity to psychopathology.

Most scientists agree cognition is widespread in nature and involves an organism processing information to solve problems (like avoiding predators, finding prey, attracting a mate, achieving shelter), and in humans higher-level reasoning and conceptualizing. Less clear are the origins and evolutionary basis of cognition-what evolutionary pressures were exerted that selected for such processing? Explores possible ways to answer this question with research in anthropology, neurobiology, philosophy, psychology, genetics, sociality, and other disciplines. Faculty from a variety of departments attend discussions in their areas of expertise and assist students in coming to their own conclusions.

Seeks to reconcile the complicated and messy problems of patients with brain disease with the concise analysis of precisely defined cognitive functions in normal subjects. Students will learn to overlap cognitive functions on to the brain in disease - at the gross dissection and imaging levels - and to understand some of the complex interactions of individual cognitive operations in disease. Includes dissection of a human brain, mapping on to imaging, dissection of multi-dimensional clinical disorders into their component functional parts.

Many questions in the contemporary cognitive sciences seem to benefit from a multi-disciplinary approach, and require a converging multi-layered explanation. MBB faculty in neurobiology, psychology, and philosophy explore topics that can be examined by research methods of the respective fields of study, presenting and discussing common questions from multiple perspectives. Ultimate goals are to (1) give a genuine sense of the difficult but rewarding nature of interdisciplinary work and (2) make progress on difficult questions in the mind-brain sciences through such collaboration. This year, seminar attempts to understand how the mind and brain represent the world.

Humans have a long, conflicting history judging nonhuman cognitive abilities, particularly for nonprimate species. We anticipate and accept communicative and cognitive capacities resembling our own in great apes and cetaceans, but not in birds. Controlled experimental studies have, however, documented impressive avian cognitive traits. This course explores classic and new findings in avian cognition to demonstrate that birds, despite brain architectures lacking much human-like cortical structure and evolutionary histories differing so greatly from ours, equal and sometimes surpass us on various cognitive tasks.

Using contemporary mind-body practices as context, examines evidence (or lack of evidence) linking psychological practices with cancer survival. We will (1) review theoretical foundations for these links including psychoanalysis, psychoneuroimmunology, and cognitive-behavioral therapy; (2) analyze legitimation of mind-body practices for cancer in popular media; (3) interview mind-body medicine practitioners; and (4) examine published scientific data. Students will choose one mind-body practice for in-depth study, analyzing its underlying theories, scientific evidence, and appeal to patients.