Center for Mind, Brain, and Culture

Imitation is multifunctional; it is crucial not only for the transmission of instrumental skills but also for learning cultural conventions such as rituals (Herrmann, Legare, Harris, & Whitehouse, 2013; Legare & Herrmann, 2013). Despite the fact that imitation is a pervasive feature of children’s behavior, little is known about the kinds of information children use to determine when an eve...

We hypothesize that when people engage sacred values that underpin many political conflicts, they behave differently than when operating with the more mundane values of the marketplace and normal social interactions. Given the importance of sacred values, and their potential for triggering violent conflict, it is important to understand how sacred values become intertwined in decision making. Trad...

While ritualized behavior is not exclusively associated with religious experience, there is clearly a powerful affinity between religion and ritual. A look at the evolutionary roots of human ritual and several of its cognitive and experiential characteristics sheds interesting light on some of the underlying reasons for this affinity. If you would like to become an AFFILIATE of the Center, please...

Theorists in the cognitive science of religion have proposed that many religious proclivities are by-products of garden-variety cognitive systems that humans share. This general theoretical proposal has generated a variety of notable experimental findings pertaining to such matters as the character and memorability of religious representations, the failure of religious participants to deploy ortho...

A focus on interpretation at the expense of explanation in the humanities, particularly religious studies, an insistence on the autonomy of the social sciences at the cost of underestimating the value of psychology, and an overemphasis on cultural differences while being blind to human commonalities in anthropology all presented obstacles to developing a theoretically sophisticated, empirically tr...

Enabling computers to understand images remains one of the hardest open problems in artificial intelligence. No machine vision system comes close to matching human ability at identifying the contents of images or visual scenes or at recognizing similarity between different scenes, even though such abilities pervade human cognition. In this talk I will describe research---currently in early stages-...

What can we learn from brain imaging, and what are its limits? Drs. Gregory Berns and Scott Lilienfeld will discuss – and debate – the promise and perils of brain imaging with regard to mind-reading, neuromarketing, lie detection, criminal responsibility, and psychiatric diagnosis. More broadly, they will explore scientific and ethical controversies concerning neuroimaging, and strive to separate...

Relationships between genes and social behavior have historically been viewed as a one-way street, with genes in control. Recent analyses have challenged this view by discovering broad alterations in the expression of human genes as a function of differing socio-environmental conditions. My talk summarizes the developing field of social genomics, and its efforts to identify the types of genes subj...

Recent advances in network science have greatly increased our understanding of the structure and function of many networked systems, ranging from transportation networks, to social networks, the internet, ecosystems, and biochemical and gene transcription pathways. Network approaches are also increasingly applied to the brain, at several levels of scale from cells to entire nervous systems. Early...

Critiquing a number of stubborn clichés about autism and embracing the concept of neurodiversity, Savarese presents the work of Tito Mukhopadhyay, a man whom the medical community would describe as “severely autistic” and whom he has been mentoring for the past five years. (Feb. 20, 2014) The author of Reasonable People, which Newsweek called “a real life love story and an urgent manifesto for the...

This collaborative discussion turns attention to gender in the academy (February 21, 2014). How are academic work and the academic workplace gendered? We approach these broad questions not simply from the perspective of relative numbers, promotion records, pay, etc. of women/men in the ranks of students, staff, faculty and administrators, but by exploring the subtle dimensions and performances of...

Emory Center for Mind, Brain, and Culture Lecture (January 31, 2014). The represented face is so ubiquitous and important to narrative film that it deserves separate consideration. In this talk I define and defend what I call a “cognitive cultural” approach to film theory and illustrate its usefulness with an analysis of some key functions of facial representation in The Silence of the Lambs (1991...

In 2012, an interdisciplinary team of scientists at the University of Oxford reported that, based on their clinical experiment, the beta-blocker drug, Propranolol, could reduce implicit racial bias among its users. Whites were given a single oral dose of the drug, then asked to complete the Implicit Association Test, a reliable measure of racial prejudice. Relative to the placebo, those who were g...

Panel discussion follows film screenings of "Ritual Burdens" and "Kites and Monsters" (Oct. 22, 2013). If you would like to become an AFFILIATE of the Center, please let us know. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to get updates on our latest videos. Follow along with us on Instagram |   Facebook   NOTE:  The views and opinions expressed by the speaker do not neces...

Director and anthropologist Dr. Robert Lemelson screens and discusses his films on culture, psychology, mental illness, and personal experience, which are based on years of fieldwork conducted in Indonesia since 1997 (October 22-23, 2013). If you would like to become an AFFILIATE of the Center, please let us know. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to get updates on our latest videos. Follow along w...

Panel discussion follows film screening of "Shadows and Illuminations" (Oct. 22, 2013). If you would like to become an AFFILIATE of the Center, please let us know. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to get updates on our latest videos. Follow along with us on Instagram |   Facebook   NOTE:  The views and opinions expressed by the speaker do not necessarily reflect those held...

Film and Lecture Series | Jim Hoesterey and Bradd Shore | Afflictions: Culture and Mental Illness in Indonesia – PANEL DISCUSSION on Religion and Faith If you would like to become an AFFILIATE of the Center, please let us know. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to get updates on our latest videos. Follow along with us on Instagram |  Facebook   NOTE:  The views and opinions expressed by the speaker...

CMBC Lecture held September 27, 2013
. Why do we unite such different kinds of objects as music, literature and painting together under the rubric of art? The tradition of the sister arts since Plato has been built on such connections, but perhaps it ought to seem strange that we associate objects and events that appeal to us so differently, through different senses and in different forms. Underst...

Laura Otis and Philippe Rochat discussed unsavory human emotions from literary, physiological, and evolutionary perspectives. Otis will give an overview of her 2012 CMBC course, Cognitive Science and Fiction, and its role in inspiring a new research project on metaphors used to represent self-pity, anger, hate, and refusal to forgive. In descriptions of these emotions, religious, socio-political,...

Talk sponsored by the Center for Mind, Brain, and Culture on March 4, 2013. If you would like to become an AFFILIATE of the Center, please let us know. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to get updates on our latest videos. Follow along with us on Instagram |   Facebook   NOTE:  The views and opinions expressed by the speaker do not necessarily reflect those held by the Center for Min...

We will explore how people vary in their individual experiences of mental imagery and how this might relate to their creative abilities, with particular reference to writing. Then we will consider neural processes that underlie imagery and its variable expression across individuals. If you would like to become an AFFILIATE of the Center, please let us know. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to get...

Psychiatric science presumes that hallucinations are an uninteresting byproduct of psychosis. This comparison of the voices heard by people with schizophrenia suggests that there are significant cultural variations between the voice-hearing experiences, and that these differences may have implications for treatment. The paper argues that the differences arise because of differences in local theori...

What were the factors that contributed to the outcome of the 2012 Presidential Election?  How did campaign tactics, current events, the media, and the changing face of the electorate influence voter turnout and voting patterns? Insights will be provided from a political science perspective on election forecasting and polling, and from a psychology perspective on campaign messaging and the roles of...

Talk sponsored by the Center for Mind, Brain, and Culture on February 7, 2013. If you would like to become an AFFILIATE of the Center, please let us know. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to get updates on our latest videos. Follow along with us on Instagram |   Facebook   NOTE:  The views and opinions expressed by the speaker do not necessarily reflect those held by the Center for...

CMBC Talk, Fall Semester, 2012 If you would like to become an AFFILIATE of the Center, please let us know. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to get updates on our latest videos. Follow along with us on Instagram |   Facebook   NOTE:  The views and opinions expressed by the speaker do not necessarily reflect those held by the Center for Mind, Brain, and Culture or Emory University.