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Raphael Bernier
University of Washington http://faculty.washington.edu/rab2 What does your research focus on? Broadly speaking my research focuses on autism spectrum disorders (ASD) — spanning etiology, neuroscience, diagnosis, and intervention. More specifically, I am interested in bridging the gap in our understanding of the relationship between putative causal genetic events, neurological underpinnings of deficits in social cognition, the behavioral presentation of ASD, and how to intervene to address the challenges in social cognition. What drew you to this line of research and why is it exciting to you?
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Marc Berman
University of South Carolina Rotman Research Institute at Baycrest, Canada www.psych.sc.edu/faculty/Marc_Berman or www.huffingtonpost.ca/marc-berman/ What does your research focus on? I focus on understanding the interaction between individual psychological processing and environmental factors that give rise to human behavior. My research has two main lines. In one line of research I study how external environments, such as the physical environment and social environment, affect human behavior.
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Andy Baron
University of British Columbia http://childdevelopment.psych.ubc.ca What does your research focus on? My research focuses on the development of intergroup cognition from infancy through adolescence. In particular, I examine the development of intergroup attitudes and stereotypes across implicit and explicit levels of analysis. My work also examines how children’s conceptual representations of group membership (as an ingroup or an outgroup member) develop across these years and how such representations constrain a variety of psychological processes including categorization, induction, evaluation, memory, and perception.
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OppNet Request for Applications: Basic Sociobehavioral Research on Stigma
OppNet's 2nd FY2013 RFA: Basic Sociobehavioral Research on Mechanisms of Stigma Application due: August 2, 2013, by 5:00 p.m. local time of applicant organization Letter of intent due: July 2, 2013 Although not required or binding, an intent letter allows NIH review staff to estimate the number and themes associated with planning this RFA’s peer review process. The purpose of this NIH Opportunity Network (OppNet) request for applications is to support projects that elucidate mechanisms underlying stigma that are relevant across health conditions or stigmatized statuses.
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Gazzaniga Book Signing at APS Convention
Few scientists know the brain as well as APS Past President Michael Gazzaniga does. A pioneer in cognitive neuroscience, Gazzaniga was the first researcher to study patients in whom the right and left hemispheres of the brain had been split to treat epilepsy. This research contributed greatly to scientists’ understanding of lateralized cognitive function within the brain and communication between the two brain hemispheres. More recently, Gazznniga has been asking whether advances in neuroscience should change our beliefs about personal responsibility.
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Mirror Neurons Help Us Identify Emotion in Faces
Madeleine L. Werhane won an APSSC Student Research Award for her work examining mirror neurons’ role in the identification of facial emotions. She received the award in May 2012 at the 24th APS Annual Convention. Mirror neurons are unique in that they engage not only when we perform specific actions, but also when we see others performing specific actions. The same neurons that control hand and mouth actions in monkeys, for instance, are activated when one monkey sees another monkey pick up a piece of food. Mirror neurons allow humans to learn through observation and communication.
