Katerina Semendeferi: UCSD Department of AnthropologyThe organ of the mind, the brain, is the focus of several fields of study. This lecture will address the role of neuroanatomy in reconstructions of cognitive evolution. It will present new data on the internal organization of the brain of humans and great apes and will revisit, in a […]
John Novembre: UCLA Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology & Interdepartmental Program in BioinformaticsNovel technological developments are providing an unprecedented opportunity to study the geographic distribution of human genomic diversity. This information has been leveraged to study population structure and interrogate signatures of natural selection. In this talk I will review emerging results from geographic […]
David Liu: UCSD Department of PsychologyMuch research and debate around theory of mind (the ability to attribute mental states to actions) have revolved around whether X have a theory of mind. X might be 3-year-olds, infants, children with autism, chimpanzees, rhesus macaques, and so forth. I will argue that the better question is what aspects […]
Catherine Reed: Claremont-McKenna College Department of PsychologySocial psychologists have embraced the tenants of embodied cognition to explain how we understand the emotions of others. They claim that the reinstantiation of previous sensorimotor experience during emotional and social information processing is an essential process for understanding others’ emotions (e.g., Neidenthal, Barsalou, Winkielman, Krauth-Gruber, & Ric, 2005). […]
Adriana Galvan: UCLA Department of PsychologyAdolescence is a developmental period marked by heightened sensitivity to reward and increased proclivity towards risk-taking behavior. These behavioral changes are paralleled by significant developmental changes in neural circuitry related to reward processing and cognitive control. In this talk, I will describe recent data on adolescent brain development, propose a […]
Lynn Fairbanks: UCLA Department of Psychiatry & Biobehavioral SciencesThe ability to form and maintain social relationships is an important attribute that has broad implications for health and fitness in humans and nonhuman primates. In this presentation, I will describe the development of a quantitative measure of sociability in the Vervet Research Colony, a multigenerational pedigreed […]
Tim Waring: UC Davis Department of Environmental Science and PolicyNumerous scholars have shown that increasing ethnic diversity is correlated with reduced cooperation and fewer public goods. This result has significant implications for development policy, lowering expectations for success in public infrastructure investment with ethnically diverse populations. I present evidence that ethnic hierarchy may be driving […]
Nameera Akhtar: UCSC Department of PsychologyParents and researchers in Western middle-class societies emphasize dyadic interactions and teaching children new skills directly. This emphasis obscures the fact that young children can learn much through observation of others’ interactions. I will describe the results of several recent studies of young children’s learning from third-party interactions. Some of […]
Eric Vilain: Professor of Human Genetics, Pediatrics and Urology Director, Center for Gender-Based Biology, Chief, Medical Genetics - Department of Pediatrics, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLAHuman sexual orientation, one’s preference for male or female sexual partners, is a largely stable behavioral trait with a significant genetic component. It is a highly sexually dimorphic […]
Karen Bales: UC Davis Department of PsychologyIn socially monogamous mammals like humans, many individuals such as mothers, fathers, and alloparents often display parenting behaviors. While the hormonal and neural basis of maternal care has been well-studied, both fathering and alloparenting remain more mysterious. Studies from prairie voles and titi monkeys, both monogamous mammals, implicate oxytocin, […]
