Since the “Decade of the Brain,” neuroscientists and clinical psychologists have been particularly interested in understanding how the brain contributes to psychopathology (commonly referred to as mental illness or mental disorder). However, despite all the resources poured into pursuing questions along these lines, there is little overlap in research findings between studies; it remains difficult to effectively translate neuroscience research into clinical practice, arguably the ultimate goal in studying the brain basis of psychopathology. One reason for these limitations may be that the predominant neuroscientific framework used to study the influence of the brain on these complicated clinical phenomena largely do not align with how the brain actually contributes to behavior, including psychopathology.
Why do people look like their names?
There must be times when you have just met a person who introduced herself as “Susan,” and you think to yourself: “Ha! I knew she was ‘Susan!’” You might think that this feeling of being right is illusory. But in fact, you might not be blind-guessing – at least you were not surprised by her name. Let’s take another example. Look at the man’s face below – most people may feel surprised if his name turns out to be “Bob,” but are less surprised if he is “Andy” or “Timothy.”
Pink for girls…?
We’ve all seen it before: little girls dressed head to toe in pink, surrounded by dolls, glitter, and unicorns. It seems like a natural inclination for girls to dress pink all over. I myself, as a girl, favored cold colors all the time, and my mother even wondered if there was something wrong with me. It sounded like I was not qualified to be a girl. Does a girl have to like pink? This question haunted me all the way through my childhood.
Graphene: A single-layer magic material
This post was written by Isaac Delgass.
What is Graphene?
You’re likely familiar with graphite: the chalky gray material we often refer to as pencil lead. In recent years, graphite has been making headlines due to increased interest in its younger sibling: graphene, lauded as a supermaterial of the new age for properties that hold out the promise of novel technological feats. Graphene has the potential to replace silicon-based computer chips, improve the performance of touchscreens, realize ultra-sensitive biometric sensor devices, and even faster charging and increased storage capacity in batteries and capacitors. An early example of such technology is a cellphone case that extends the life of the phone’s battery by bleeding heat more efficiently. But more on this “nanocase” to come.
Love math, but don’t care too much
As part of my job as a researcher and graduate student in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, I invite parents and children to play math games in our lab. As I lead parents and children through studies about how children learn, I’ve seen very different attitudes in parents towards math. Some parents would happily talk about numbers and inferences in their daily interactions, and they make a lot of attempts to start a conversation about math. They are not upset when children run away from those conversations. Other parents “care too much” about how their children respond. They eagerly ask me whether their children are competitive in math and get upset when their children are reluctant to engage. Although this kind of attitude is different from what we call “math anxiety,” these emotional responses, we believe, play a big role in children’s “math life.”
Demystifying Artificial Intelligence: A crash course in machine learning
This post was written by ScIU Undergraduate Intern Komal Kumar.
Artificial intelligence continues to make the news, especially with technologies like ChatGPT – an AI Chatbot – and DALL-E – an image-generating software – becoming increasingly accessible to the public. Reports of modified syllabi in colleges and universities and sentient chatbots may have piqued your interest recently, and for a good reason! AI has gradually become embedded in our daily lives as an influential tool for COVID-19 contact tracing, national security, healthcare, and much more. Of course, that’s not even touching on AI’s impact on popular culture, from The Terminator (1984) to the more recent M3GAN (2022). Depictions of AI as sentient, self-aware, and, more often than not, evil, undoubtedly affect our attitude toward AI. With its increased prevalence in our daily lives, it’s worth taking a look at exactly what AI is and how it works. (more…)
#PrimatesAreNotPets: A social media animal welfare campaign
Have you ever seen “#PrimatesAreNotPets” floating around Twitter and other social media platforms? There’s a good reason this hashtag is becoming more prominent on the internet; primatologists, animal welfare activists, and conservationists are pushing to bring attention to the illegal pet trade and the devastation that it wrecks on the animals and their natural habitats. Primates aren’t the only exotic animals affected by the illegal pet trade, but they provide an excellent example of what removing a species from an ecosystem can do both at home and in the wild. Putting a primate in your home most likely will result in a grumpy, aggressive, lonely pet, and their absence in the wild can actually topple entire ecosystems. (more…)
Switching it up: Using sneaker culture to teach chemistry to PEERs
When you look at the statistics of the amount of underrepresented, underserved, and marginalized students pursuing Chemistry degrees. As it’s been said, “The Math ain’t Mathin’,” and there is, therefore, a need to incorporate new teaching styles (pedagogies) that are inclusive and culturally relevant. (more…)
Back to the Stone Age: Monkey see monkey do
Primate archaeology is a fast growing field. While archaeology usually refers to the study of the human past through the excavation of past tools, remains, and civilizations, primate archaeology unearths the technological (tool use) past of our primate relatives as well as observes tool use by primates in real time (Click here to learn more). Each year, scientists make new discoveries about primates and their behaviors that prompt questions about the full extent of our primate relatives’ cognition and how it relates back to our own cognitive evolution. (more…)
How computer science aids psychology: Cognitive modeling of natural objects
Could you imagine that a computer program can infer the nutritional content of some food item from reading articles on related topics? How about an algorithm that can give medical diagnoses based on radiological images? Although these abilities sound like science fiction, they are becoming closer to reality thanks to the recent integration of computer science and cognitive science. In cognitive science, plenty of cognitive models have been established and developed over decades to explain and describe human cognitive processes in a computational language. However, despite their exceptional explanatory power, cognitive-process models suffer from a major limitation: almost all cognitive experiments are done in a lab setting where participants are asked to interact with visually simplified stimuli on a computer screen. For example, they could be asked to categorize a bunch of shaded squares varying in size and darkness. However, limiting cognitive research to only artificial stimuli raises the question of whether the same findings about human cognition still hold true for real-life situations. Thanks to the advancement of computer science, there is now a potential solution to this problem. (more…)