Loneliness is everybody’s business. Neither a pathology, nor a rare affliction, it is part of the human condition. Severe and chronic loneliness, however, is a threat to individual and public health and appears to be on the rise. In 2018, U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May said, “Loneliness is one of the greatest public health challenges of our time,” and appointed the country’s first ever Minister for Loneliness. Contemporary scholarship is therefore focusing on loneliness not as merely an individual matter, but as a public health issue that negatively impacts both physical and psychological health, even increasing the risk of mortality. This talk examines what is and is not loneliness, conditions of the “lonely society” and the role of culture in loneliness. Based on my long-term ethnographic studies, I point to how society itself can exacerbate experiences of loneliness. One of the most important messages of this talk, is that the anatomy of loneliness is not the anatomy of a single individual, but of a type of society. Link to The Anatomy of Loneliness: https://www.amazon.com/Anatomy-Loneliness-Contemporary-Ethnographic-Subjectivity/dp/0520383494/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=chikako+ozawa+de+silva+the+anatomy+of+loneliness&qid=1632521910&sr=8-1

Center for Mind, Brain, and Culture

Lecture | Chikako Ozawa-de Silva | The Anatomy of Loneliness

Musicians ubiquitously apply spatial metaphors when describing the stability hierarchy established by tonal syntax: stable tones are considered spatially central and, as gravitational foci, spatially lower. We investigated whether listeners, musicians and non-musicians, indeed associate tonal relationships with visuospatial dimensions, including spatial height, centrality, laterality, and size, and whether such mappings are consistent with tonal discourse. We examined explicit and implicit associations. In the explicit paradigm, participants heard a tonality-establishing prime followed by a probe tone and coupled each probe with a subjectively appropriate location on a two-dimensional grid (Exp. 1) or with one of 7 circles differing in size (Exp. 4). The implicit paradigm used a version of the Implicit Association Test to examine associations of tonal stability with vertical position (Exp. 2), lateral position (Exp. 3) and object size (Exp. 5). Tonal stability was indeed associated with perceived physical space: the spatial distances between the locations associated with different scale-degrees significantly correlated with the tonal stability differences between these scale degrees. However, inconsistently with the hypotheses implied by musical discourse, stable tones were associated with leftward and higher spatial positions, relative to unstable tones, rather than with central and lower spatial positions. We speculate that these mappings are influenced by emotion, embodying the “good is up” metaphor, and by the spatial structure of music keyboards. Taken together, results suggest that abstract syntactical relationships may consistently map onto concrete perceptual dimensions across modalities, demonstrating a new type of cross-modal correspondence and a hitherto under-researched connotative function of musical structure.

Lecture | Zohar Eitan | Space Oddity: Musical Syntax Is Mapped onto Visual Space

Chikako Ozawa de-Silva talks with Dietrich Stout about her research and upcoming book "The  Anatomy of Loneliness"

"Inside the Lab" | Chikako Ozawa de-Silva interviewed by Dietrich Stout

Stephanie Koziej talks with Dietrich Stout about her work and upcoming gallery show, "Tender Rhythms" Stephanie Koziej, PhD is an award-winning interdisciplinary researcher, artist, educator, curator and activist working on the intersection of the humanities, arts, science and technology. Specialized in theorizing intimate connections through interactive art installations, with the use of brain-computer-interface, sound and visuals. Looking for a new opportunity to continue my research and teach young artists the foundations of critical theory, to subvert problematic ideologies through their own artistic practice. (https://koziejstephanie.com/)

"Inside the Lab" | Stephanie Koziej interviewed by Dietrich Stout

Most of us crave new experiences and sensations. Whether it's our attraction to that new burger place or the latest gadget, newness tugs at us. But what about those who can't seem to get enough? They jump out of planes, climb skyscrapers, and will eat anything (even poisonous pufferfish)… Prompting others to ask 'what's wrong' with them. These are high sensation-seekers and they crave intense experiences, despite physical, or social risk. They don't have a death wish, but seemingly a need for an adrenaline rush, no matter what. In this talk, Dr. Carter explores the lifestyle, psychology, and neuroscience behind adrenaline junkies and daredevils. This tendency, or compulsion, has a role in our culture, but where is the line between healthy and unhealthy thrill-seeking and what can we all learn from thrill seekers? Intro Music: Small Acts of Devotion feat. Ashkay-Naresh

Lecture | Ken Carter | The Psychology of Thrill Seekers

Although most scientists nowadays would not argue that brains of males and females belong to two distinct types, the binary framework still dominates thinking about the relations between sex and the brain. I’ll describe challenges to the binary formulation of these relations and how this formulation has evolved in response to these challenges, with the latest version claiming that brains are typically male or female because brain structure can be used to predict the sex category (female/male) of the brain’s owner. I will also present several lines of evidence revealing that sex category explains only a small part of the variability in human brain structure, and a recent study challenging the masculinization hypothesis. I suggest to replace the binary framework with a new, non-binary, framework, according to which mosaic brains reside in a multi-dimensional space that cannot meaningfully be reduced to a male-female continuum or to a binary variable. This framework may also apply to sex-related variables and has implications for research. SEE ALSO:  Panel Discussion with Daphna Joel, Lise Eliot, moderated by Donna Maney and Katrina Karkazis. 

Lecture | Daphna Joel | Beyond the Binary: Rethinking Sex and the Brain"

According to Elliot Turiel, religious affiliation does not influence the distinction between so-called “moral" and “conventional” norms. By contrast, according to Jonathan Haidt, religious affiliation results in a broadened moral domain: As he puts it, “big gods have big moralities." This talk will present new data showing the limits of both Turiel's and Haidt’s views. The scope of the moral domain is neither fixed nor is simply broadened by religion. A more sophisticated understanding of the relation between religion and morality is thus called for. Intro Music: Small Acts of Devotion feat. Ashkay-Naresh

Lecture | Edouard Machery | Religion and the Scope of Morality

An emerging body of work in cognitive philosophy and computational neuroscience depicts human brains as prediction machines – multi-level networks that specialize in using generative models to both match and anticipate the evolving stream of sensory information. However, the relationship between these posited cascades of prediction and conscious human experience itself remains unclear. Recent work in computational psychiatry provides important clues. For example, it is thought that malfunctions in hierarchical inference can explain core patterns of alteration seen in autism and schizophrenia, and can shed new light on so-called ‘psychogenic’ symptoms - functional impairments without standard organic causes. Such accounts reveal the deep continuities between perception and hallucination and may help reveal common processing motifs underlying both typical and atypical forms of human experience.VIDEO LINK

Lecture | Andy Clark | Computational Psychiatry and the Construction of Human Experience

Benjamin Wilson talks with Dietrich Stout about his research and lab.  BIOBenjamin Wilson received his BSc in Psychology from the University of York, UK, in 2005, before completing an MSc in Evolutionary Psychology from the University of Liverpool, UK, in 2008. In 2014, he completed his PhD in Neuroscience at Newcastle University, using behavioral and neuroimaging approaches to directly compare artificial grammar learning in humans and macaque and marmoset monkeys. After a short postdoctoral position, he was awarded a Sir Henry Wellcome Research Fellowship to study the cognitive and neural systems supporting language-relevant processes in humans and monkeys. He joined Emory University in 2020, where his lab takes a comparative approach, studying humans and nonhuman primates to explore the evolution of cognition and communication, and the origins of human language.RESEARCH INTERESTSComparative cognition, cross-species neuroimaging, language evolution, communication, cooperation, implicit learning, statistical learning. RESEARCH AREASAs a comparative cognitive scientist, my research focuses on questions about what makes humans unique in the animal kingdom, and conversely, where might we have more in common with nonhuman primates than we might expect? I am particularly interested in the evolution of language, which is a human ability that appears remarkably different to forms of communication available to other nonhuman animals. However, my research asks whether some aspects of language may be supported by domain-general systems that might also exist in other species. My previous research has shown that some of the cognitive mechanisms and neural systems that support and underpin human linguistic abilities may be shared with closely related nonhuman animals.Research in the Wilson lab has a number of key goals. Firstly, we aim to identify core cognitive computations that support aspects of language learning and processing (using statistical learning, sequence processing, implicit learning and memory tasks). These can then be directly related to linguistic abilities in healthy populations of human adults and children, as well as clinical and subclinical populations (e.g., aphasia, dyslexia, etc.). The lab uses a range of experimental paradigms to test humans and nonhuman primates using the same behavioral methods (e.g., habituation/dishabituation paradigms, eye tracking, testing with touchscreen computers). These studies aim to help us understand which cognitive abilities might be evolutionarily conserved across species, and which might represent unique human specializations.Finally, we use neuroscientific approaches (including neuroimaging such as fMRI, DTI and EEG, and brain stimulation like TMS or TUS) to directly compare brain responses in humans and monkeys, to identify whether similar behaviors in these species are supported by the same or different neural systems. This work has the potential not only to provide insights about human evolution and the origins of language, but identifying evolutionarily conserved abilities is also critical to develop nonhuman primates as an animal model system in which to better understand these shared cognitive and neural systems. 

"Inside the Lab" | Benjamin Wilson interviewed by Dietrich Stout

Translation is often thought of as a transparent, objective act in which words from a source language are rendered into a target language, thereby carrying a message into new linguistic territory. Theorists, practitioners and lay readers argue tirelessly over the success or failure of various translations and their degree of (in-)fidelity. In this talk, I would like to begin from the premise that an instrumentalist view of translation will by default always evaluate target texts through a rhetoric of loss (Venuti). More useful is an a priori appreciation of translation as a creative, authorial act. To this end, I will explore connotation and subjectivity in literary translation, with several examples from contemporary Hispanophone literature.

Lunch | Lisa Dillman | Translation and Subjectivity

Groups adopt strikingly different attitudes and practices centered on how humans and other living beings relate to their environment. These bodies of traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) have been the focus of extensive research in ethnobiology. Understanding TEK is important both theoretically and for advancing political projects such as ecological conservation and cooperative resource management. However, attempts to integrate insights from TEK with scientific biological thought often misconstrue its content and function. Ethnobiology frequently represents TEK as a cultural module that can be cleanly separated from religious, symbolic, or mythic beliefs, rites and practices, and material culture. Drawing on case studies of Indigenous botanical and zoological TEK, I argue that knowledge of the natural world does not constitute a cultural domain that can be carved off and represented in isolation. This claim is bolstered by psychological studies of belief in ritual efficacy and causal explanations of natural phenomena. In everyday cognition, natural and “supernatural” ontologies are thoroughly entwined. I propose some heuristics for advancing piecemeal ontological coordination among Indigenous stakeholders, ethnobiologists, and conservationists. These heuristics aim at facilitating cooperation while preserving difference across systems of knowledge and value.CLICK HERE FOR LINKS TO RELATED PAPERS:  http://cmbc.emory.edu/events/lectures/index.html 

Lecture | Dan Weiskopf | The Myth of Natural Categories: Representing and Coordinating Ethnobiological Knowledge

ORIGINAL FORMAT VIDEO - SEE OUR YOUTUBE CHANNEL ( https://youtu.be/KfTYHlPUfvY ) Inside the Lab | Daniel Dilks (dilkslab) interviewed by Lynne Nygaard, Director CMBC.

"Inside the Lab" | Daniel Dilks interviewed by Lynne Nygaard

For millennia, sociocultural complexity increased (and occasionally decreased) gradually over many human generations, as people inherited traditional knowledge within kin-based local communities. In these settings, where knowledge was shared within populations and across generations, selection was probably the key driver in norms of human adaptive behavior. In the 21st century, however, knowledge is transmitted across populations and within generations — and evolutionary patterns may resemble random drift more than selection in increasingly many settings. To span these different scales and modes of cultural evolution, different representations are useful, including fitness landscapes and a heuristic representing the transparency of payoffs in social learning. Using examples from computational social science, I will discuss how cultural evolution may have profoundly changed from the ancient past to present-day.VIDEO LINK

Lecture | Alex Bentley | The Acceleration of Cultural Evolution

Working memory capacity and fluid intelligence are highly related as shown by labs around the world and in any populations.  My recent work demonstrates that individual differences in ability to control attention underlies this relationship.  Attention control is both a state and a trait variable. Measures of attention control are highly reliable and valid predictors of performance in multitasking and other complex cognitive tasks. In addition, environmental variables such as sleep deprivation and psychopathology lead to reduced capability to control attention which can, in turn, lead to reduced cognitive ability.VIDEO LINK

Lecture | Randy Engle | Ability to control attention: The secret sauce in the relationship between working knowledge and fluid intelligence.

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 realizing the potential for interdisciplinary synthesis, synergy, and innovation. It is our mission to support and foster discussion, scholarship, training, and collaboration across diverse disciplines to promote research at the intersection of mind, brain, and culture. What brain mechanisms underlie cognition, emotion, and intelligence and how did these abilities evolve? How do our core mental abilities shape the expression of culture and how is the mind and brain in turn shaped by social and cultural innovations? Such questions demand an interdisciplinary approach. Great progress has been made in understanding the neurophysiological basis of mental states; positioning this understanding in the broader context of human experience, culture, diversity, and evolution is an exciting challenge for the future. By bringing together scholars and researchers from diverse fields and across the college, university, area institutions, and beyond, the Center for Mind, Brain, and Culture (CMBC) seeks to build on and expand our current understanding to explore how a deeper appreciation of diversity, difference, context, and change can inform understanding of mind, brain, and behavior. In order to promote intellectual exchange and discussion across disciplines, the CMBC hosts diverse programming, including lectures by scholars conducting cutting-edge cross-disciplinary research, symposia and conferences on targeted innovative themes, lunch discussions to foster collaboration across fields, and public conversations to extend our reach to the greater Atlanta community. Through our CMBC Graduate Certificate Program, we are training the next generation of interdisciplinary scholars to continue this mission.

hubhopper

Center for Mind, Brain, and Culture

hubhopper