How the early social environment influences the structure and function of the genome in the offspring
Date: October 2014
Length: 1:02:38
Michael J. Meaney, Professor and Director of Program for the Study of Behaviour, Genes and Environment at McGill University, provides an accessible overview of the mechanisms by which maternal care and childhood environment affect gene expression and subsequently translate into behavior.

Juror perceptions of identification witnesses: Estimating the impact of estimator variables
Date: October 2014
Length: 56:07
Brian Bornstein, Professor of Psychology at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, discusses his research on factors which influence jurors' perceptions of the reliability of eyewitness testimony and the implications for education the legal system.

Modeling multiple time-scales of development: sounds, animations, games, tweets, and mobile data
Date: October 2014
Length: 1:04:18
Nilam Ram, professor of Human Development and Family Studies at Pennsylvania State University, discusses his research modeling complex data, including novel ways to represent the data visually and sonically.

How do I hate thee? Let me count the ways: Empirical tests of a triangular theory of hate
Date: August 2014
Length: 44:01
Karin Sternberg, research associate in the College of Human Ecology, discusses development of a scale for measuring hate and empirical tests of a theory of hate, which includes three components: negation of intimacy, passion, and commitment. She proposes that different combinations of these components lead to different kinds of hate.

Embryos, stem cells, human meaning and policy
Date: May 2014
Length: 44:43
Using his participation on the President's Council on Bioethics as a case study, Michael Gazzaniga shares his insights on helping the public understand science. He goes on to discuss his perspective on free will and responsibility, based on his neuroscience research. Gazzaniga is a professor of psychological and brain sciences at University of California, Santa Barbara.

Study reveals origins of facial expressions
Date: March 2014
Length: 01:51
Why do our eyes widen when afraid and narrow to slits when disgusted? Research findings by Cornell neuroscientist Adam Anderson suggest that human facial expressions arose from universal, adaptive reactions to environmental stimuli and not originally as social communication signals, lending support to Charles Darwin's 19th-century theories on the evolution of emotion.

The Neuroscience of Risky Decision Making Book Talk
Date: February 2014
Length: 51:42
Whether or not to have unprotected sex, save money or spend it, consent to surgery, take that extra dessert--risky decisions permeate our lives, sometimes with disastrous consequences. How and why risk taking occurs has important implications, yet we have many unanswered questions about what influences risky behavior. In a Chats in the Stacks book talk February 10, 2014 at Mann Library, Dr. Valerie Reyna discusses her new book, The Neuroscience of Risky Decision Making, which aims to help us understand the neural roots of bad decisions and paves the way for translation of science into practice and policy.

Sternberg talks about culture, intelligence, and education
Date: December 2013
Length: 57:00
Robert Sternberg presents his research on measuring intelligence and what that means in different contexts.