Emory College, Emory Center for Mind, Brain and Culture (CMBC)

Center for Mind, Brain, and Culture

Education EN ↓ 309 episodes

What is the nature of the human mind? The Emory Center for Mind, Brain, and Culture (CMBC) brings together scholars and researchers from diverse fields and perspectives to seek new answers to this fundamental question. Neuroscientists, cognitive psychologists, biological and cultural anthropologists, sociologists, geneticists, behavioral scientists, computer scientists, linguists, philosophers, artists, writers, and historians all pursue an understanding of the human mind, but institutional isolation, the lack of a shared vocabulary, and other communication barriers present obstacles to realiz...

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Emory College, Emory Center for Mind, Brain and Culture (CMBC)

Episodes

Public Conversation | Alan Abramowitz and Scott Lilienfeld | Personality, Partisanship, and the Presidency 06.10.2016 12:35

What personality traits make for successful politicians? What contributes to political partisanship? In this heated election season, come join Dr. Alan Abramowitz (Political Science) and Dr. Scott Lilienfeld (Psychology) for a conversation about the factors influencing presidential elections from the standpoint of both voters and candidates. Dr. Abramowitz will discuss the growing political partis...

Lecture | Sarah Brosnan | Comparative Decision Making in Non-Human Primates 23.09.2016 58:12

Humans routinely confront situations that require coordination between individuals, from mundane activities such as planning where to go for dinner to incredibly complicated activities, such as multi-national agreements. How did this ability arise, and what prevents success in those situations in which it breaks down? To understand how this capability evolved across the primates, my lab uses the m...

Lecture | Aniruddh Patel | The Evolution and Neurobiology of Musical Beat Processing 22.03.2016 1:18:57

Music is ancient and universal in human cultures. In The Descent of Man, Darwin theorized that musical rhythmic processing tapped into ancient and widespread aspects of animal brain function. While appealing, this idea is being challenged by modern cross-species and neurobiological research. In this talk I will describe research supporting the hypothesis that musical beat processing has its origin...

Lecture | Elliott Sober | Ockham’s Razor ─ When is the Simpler Theory Better? 15.03.2016 1:16:46

Many scientists believe that the search for simple theories is not optional; rather, it is a requirement of the scientific enterprise. When theories get too complex, scientists reach for Ockham’s razor, the principle of parsimony, to do the trimming. This principle says that a theory that postulates fewer entities, processes, or causes is better than a theory that postulates more, so long as the s...

Lecture | John Hawks | Homo Naledi and the Evolution of Human Behavior 25.02.2016 58:15

Hominin remains were discovered in October, 2013 within the Rising Star cave system, inside the Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site, South Africa. Lee Berger and the University of the Witwatersrand organized excavations with a skilled team of archaeologists and support of local cavers, which have to date uncovered 1550 hominin skeletal specimens. The hominin remains represent a minimum of 15 i...

Lecture | Patrick Colm Hogan | Cognitive Aesthetics: Beauty, the Brain, and Virginia Woolf 18.02.2016 1:13:37

In this talk, drawn from his book, Beauty and Sublimity: A Cognitive Aesthetics of Literature and the Arts (Cambridge University Press, 2016), Hogan outlines an account of aesthetic response that synthesizes the insights of cognitive neuroscience with those implicit in Virginia Woolf’s novel, Mrs. Dalloway. Hogan begins by briefly outlining an explanation of beauty based on human information proce...

Emotions Conference 2016 (20 of 20) | Jim Grimsley, Don Saliers | Discussion: Aesthetic Emotions 12.02.2016 25:39

Emory CMBC Conference: The Foundations of Emotions in Mind, Brain, and Culture 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...

Emotions Conference 2016 (19 of 20) | Jim Grimsley | Emotion as Danger: Trigger Warnings and Dangerous Prose 12.02.2016 43:07

The phenomenon of trigger warnings, intended to help guide students in dealing with the emotions raised by difficult or provocative works of art, indicates the ability of artistic works to raise powerful and even cathartic feelings in members of the audience. The author will discuss the use and abuse of these warnings in relation to works of fiction. (February 12, 2016) If you would like to become...

Emotions Conference 2016 (18 of 20)| Don Saliers | Processing Emotions Musically 12.02.2016 38:21

This paper begins by setting out several important theories of how music is claimed to “express” human emotions. An inevitable comparison follows with how human emotions are linguistically constituted and expressed. This, in turn, highlights the complexity of musical “syntax” and “grammar” as well as the limits of language—or at least the limits of “cognitive” theories of emotion. Contrasting...

Emotions Conference 2016 (17 of 20) | Laura Otis, Philippe Rochat | Discussion: Unsavory Emotions 12.02.2016 18:23

Emotions Conference 2016 (16 of 20)| Laura Otis | The Bodily and Cultural Roots of Metaphors for Obnoxious Emotions 12.02.2016 41:53

Some human emotions are so unloved that few people admit to feeling them. In Western cultures, these include self-pity, resentment, spite, hate, envy, and grudge-bearing. Metaphors for these “banned” emotions reveal their grounding in bodily sensations and postures. At the same time, religious and political beliefs have shaped the ways that these unsavory emotions are represented. To offer insight...

Emotions Conference 2016 (15 of 20) | Philippe Rochat | Origins of Uncanny Self-Conscious Emotions 12.02.2016 40:40

Self-consciousness and self-conscious emotions are hallmark characteristics of human psychology, a gift and curse from Nature. It is a gift because it allows us to be incomparably creative. It is a curse because it determines uncanny conscious experiences such as the inescapable awareness of impending self-disappearance (death). I will argue that the fear of separation and the basic affiliation n...

Emotions Conference 2016 (14 of 20) | Frans de Waal, James K. Rilling, Paul Root Wolpe | Discussion: Moral Emotion 12.02.2016 13:01

Emotions Conference 2016 (13 of 20) | Paul Root Wolpe | The Ethics Chicken and Egg: Emotions and Intellect in Determining Moral Action 12.02.2016 42:33

Scholarship taking place in philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience have begun to illuminate the complex relationship between the emotional and intellectual contributions to our moral thought and behavior. However, the assumptions often made in the West – that ethical decision-making should be primarily an intellectual exercise, and that emotional contributions are suspect at best and corrupting...

Emotions Conference 2016 (12 of 20) | James K. Rilling | The Neural Correlates of Human Social Emotions in the Context of Reciprocal Altruism 12.02.2016 44:42

In a now classic 1971 paper, Robert Trivers proposed that many human social emotions evolved in response to the need to negotiate relationships based on reciprocal altruism, which were likely crucial to the survival of our hunter-gatherer ancestors. In the same paper, he argued that the iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma game could serve as a model for relationships based on reciprocal altruism. Over the...

Emotions Conference 2016 (11 of 20) | Frans de Waal | Animal Emotions and Empathy 12.02.2016 47:46

Emotions suffuse much of the language employed by students of animal behavior --from "social bonding" to "alarm calls" -- yet are often avoided as explicit topic in scientific discourse. Given the increasing interest of human psychology in the emotions, and the neuroscience on animal emotions such as fear and attachment, the taboo that has hampered animal research in this area...

Emotions Conference 2016 (10 of 20) | Melvin Konner, Robyn Fivush | Discussion: Gender and Emotion 11.02.2016 13:43

Emotions Conference 2016 (9 of 20) | Melvin Konner | Gender Differences in Emotion, Motivation, and Behavior: Can Culture Explain Them All? 11.02.2016 49:39

Konner will argue, as he did at length in Women After All: Sex, Evolution, and the End of Male Supremacy (Norton, 2015), that a current consensus of neural and neuroendocrine research, in the context of neodarwinian sexual selection and phylogenetic, cross-cultural, historical, and psychological perspectives, now suggests that sex differences in some behaviors (notably violence and driven sexualit...

Emotions Conference 2016 (8 of 20) | Robyn Fivush | Gender and Emotion in Autobiographical Reminiscing 11.02.2016 41:31

In this presentation, I describe a feminist sociocultural model of autobiographical memory that provides a framework for understanding how gender and emotion are mutually constructed within everyday reminiscing about the personal past. Autobiographical narratives both reflect and create representations of what happened and what it means for the individual in terms of understanding self, others, an...

Emotions Conference 2016 (7 of 20) | Andrea Scarantino, Jocelyne Bachevalier | Discussion: Emotional Regulation 11.02.2016 26:58

Emotional Regulation Discussion 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.

Emotions Conference 2016 (6 of 20) | Andrea Scarantino | A New Perspective on Basic Emotions: No Selection without Regulation 11.02.2016 43:16

Emotions Conference 2016 (6 of 20) | Andrea Scarantino | A New Perspective on Basic Emotions: No Selection without Regulation 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 reflec...

Emotions Conference 2016 (5 of 20) | Jocelyne Bachevalier | Brain Mechanisms in Emotion Regulation 11.02.2016 33:11

Regulation of emotion is important for adaptive social functioning and mental well-being. It involves the ability to inhibit or modulate primary emotions to produce contextually appropriate emotions and behaviors. The neural networks underlying this regulatory process will be reviewed and discussed. Particularly, interactions between the hippocampus and the prefrontal cortex are becoming of majo...

Emotions Conference 2016 (4 of 20) | Paul Thagard, Stephan Hamann, Joseph LeDoux | Discussion: Theories and Models of Emotion 11.02.2016 18:55

Theories and Models of Emotion Discussion (February 11, 2016) 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...

Emotions Conference 2016 (3 of 20) | Paul Thagard | Brain Mechanisms Explain Emotion 11.02.2016 46:06

Is love a judgment, a body process, or a cultural interpretation? Emotion theorists dispute whether emotions are cognitive appraisals, responses to physiological changes, or social constructions. That emotions are all of these can be grasped by identifying brain mechanisms for emotions, including representation by groups of spiking neurons, binding of representations into semantic pointers, and co...

Emotions Conference (2 of 20)| Stephan Hamann | Neuroscience Perspectives on Psychological Theories of Emotion 11.02.2016 36:33

Neuroimaging and other neuroscience approaches have generated a wealth of new findings about the brain correlates of emotion, for example, changes in brain activity patterns corresponding to variations in emotion intensity and type. Such evidence is playing an increasingly important role in debates about the nature and organization of emotion, for example, whether emotions are best represented by...