Past Colloquia

Title: Probing the Role of the Cerebellum in Sensorimotor Learning and Cognition

Host: Johannes Burge

Abstract:  An impressive body of research over the past 35 years has implicated the human cerebellum in a broad range of functions, including motor control, perception, language, working memory, cognitive control, and social cognition. The relatively uniform anatomy and physiology of the cerebellar cortex has given rise to the universal cerebellar transform hypothesis (UCT), the idea that the cerebellum can be conceptualized...

Title: Why Social Mobilization Is Essential For Confronting the Climate Crisis And What Academic Psychologists Can Do

Host: Russell Epstein

Abstract: Global heating appears to be accelerating and to prevent it from disrupting organized existence we must quickly and substantially reduce the burning of fossil fuels, reduce consumption and demand, and achieve a just transition to renewable energy. Local decision makers, including university chancellors, and city and state officials generally have not, and will not, implement policy in a timely...

Title: Budgeting Strategies & Consumer Behavior

URL for more information: https://marketing.wharton.upenn.edu/profile/wendyde/

Title: Cognitive neuroscience of learning and memory in human infants 

URL for more information: https://ntblab.yale.edu/

Title: Reward Processing in the Social Brain

From winning a raffle to receiving praise from a colleague, the experience of reward elicits positive emotions, shapes our behavior and influences our emotional well-being.  Central to processing rewards is the role of the striatum - the input unit of the basal ganglia and a key node in a putative human reward circuit.  This talk will first describe early efforts aimed at characterizing a reward-related signal in the human striatum, its association with other brain regions and...

Title: "Memory consolidation during sleep and implications for mental health". 

Title: The role of empathy in morality: A force that can bind or blind us    

 Abstract: Empathy can be a strong motivation for moral behavior, but its influence can also have the opposite effect. People who are concerned for the well-being of others are more likely to help, care for them, and respect them. Empathy provides information for moral decision-making, which can supplement information based on reasoning, rational belief, and inference. However, empathy is limited and fragile, thus not always a reliable source of information in moral...

Title:"Communicating Behavior: Bottom-Up Processes of Social Influence" 

Abstract: This talk will begin with an analysis of interindividual processes of person perception and communication that unfold in brief verbal messages such as those on social media. I will describe experiments designed to establish whether merely alluding to behaviors can influence others to perform those behaviors. After discussing the processes underlying the effects of interindividual messages, I will present big data...

Title: TBA

URL for more information: https://psych.la.psu.edu/directory/yo-jackson-professor-of-psychology