Choice of half or full course units each sem. covering a range of subjects and approaches in academic psychology.

Introduction to the structure and function of the vertebrate nervous system. We begin with the cellular basis of neuronal activities, then discuss the physiological bases of motor control, sensory systems, motivated behaviors, and higher mental processes. This course is intended for students interested in the neurobiology of behavior, ranging from animal behaviors to clinical disorders.

This course will introduce students to neuroeconomics, a field of research that combines economic, psychological, and neuroscientific approaches to study decision-making. The course will focus on our current understanding of how our brains give rise to decisions, and how this knowledge might be used to constrain or advance economic and psychological theories of decision-making. Topics covered will include how individuals make decisions under conditions of uncertainty, how groups of individuals decide to cooperate or compete, and how decisions are shaped by social context, memories, and past experience.

This course examines how people use language. We will focus on Herb H. Clark’s book “Using Language” (1996). In this book, Clark proposes that language use is a form of joint action, and extensively develop what this claim entails and how it accounts for people’s linguistic behavior. The course will consist of a detailed examination of Clark’s thesis.

Students typically complete 8-10 full assessment batteries on complex patients referred from a number of different sources in the community. This practicum offers intensive supervision, with live (in the room) supervision of every trainee’s first case, and live peer-supervision of their second case. Throughout their time in the practicum they receive close supervision of every case, including checking the scoring of tests and measures, and close reading and editing of every report. Students do a final feedback session with every patient which the supervisor co-leads at the beginning of the year, and observes in the room throughout the rest of the year, thus ensuring direct observation of every trainee throughout the year.

This course provides a hands-on introduction to Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) research. fMRI is a non-invasive neuroimaging technique that allows one to track brain activity more or less in real time as a subject completes a cognitive task. MRI is a recent technology and fMRI is an even more recent use of that technology. While it has traditionally been used to establish functional localization (i.e., mapping what brain regions are involved in what tasks), fMRI can also be used to answer important questions such as how the brain goes about solving these tasks (i.e.,what are the computations the brain performs). fMRI has been used widely in the field of cognitive neuroscience, but it has also been applied in fields such as economics, marketing, sociology, and information systems to name a few.
In this course, we will first cover the basics of MR physics in order to establish how fMRI works. We will then discuss considerations for fMRI experimental design. We will collect some fMRI data. We will spend the bulk of the course working on fMRI data analysis. By the end of this course, you should have the basic skills needed to collect and analyze an fMRI dataset.

The study of the neural systems that underlie human perception, memory and language; and of the pathological syndromes that result from damage to these systems.

In this course, we examine how the recording of eye movements can provide a moment-by-moment record of perceptual, cognitive and linguistic processes. Four areas of research will be discussed: (1) task-based scene perception; (2) language processing (in both reading and spoken language); (3) category learning, and (4) decision making. In all of these domains, eyetracking research has led to a greater understanding of how attention and information selection supports real-time cognitive processes. Students will have access to eyetracking systems, giving them hands-on experience in designing, running, and analyzing eyetracking experiments. By the end of the semester, students will have collected pilot eyetracking data. Projects will be done individually or within small research teams. Requirements: Weekly readings; class presentations and discussion; and a paper.

Introduction to the structure and function of the vertebrate nervous system. We begin with the cellular basis of neuronal activities, then discuss the physiological bases of motor control, sensory systems, motivated behaviors, and higher mental processes. This course is intended for students interested in the neurobiology of behavior, ranging from animal behaviors to clinical disorders.

The course combines classical theories of beauty with current empirical aesthetics. We will discuss a wide range of phenomena from immersion in imaginative worlds to creativity in the arts, narratives and everyday experience. We also review the evidence on the effects of aesthetic experience for happiness and therapeutic effects. Your task is to use some of these insights to conduct an experiment of your own design to test effects and impacts of aesthetics in various contexts. We will also visit the art museum to explore some aesthetic concepts—and to have experiences.