| The Surprising Power of the Aging Brain' Adrienne A Moore, 2007/05/24 11:38:41 It took Barbara Hustedt Crook an awfully long time to get around to writing her first musical. She started last year, shortly before her 60th birthday. Her friend and collaborator, Robert Strozier, waited even longer; he's 65. It's not that they didn't have the creative chops for the job. The two have spent their careers writing and editing in New York City, and Crook has a background in performing, singing and piano. But creating a musical always felt just out of reach--until now. "Somehow I have a confidence I didn't have before," says Crook. "I find that my brain makes leaps it didn't make so easily. I can hear my inner voice and trust instincts and hunches in ways I didn't used to."<more> |
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| First music, then video, now brain atlas Joshua H Smith, 2006/01/17 14:24:13 This is your brain on an iPod -- color-coded, described and with a voice pronouncing the names of its features. It's all part of SylviusVG, an interactive audio-visual guide to brain and spinal cord anatomy. Sylvius is the brainchild of Duke neurobiology professors S. Mark Williams, who with Leonard White and programmer and interface designer Andrew Mace created it. It's one of their latest products of a suite of computerized guides to the human nervous system used in between 40 and 50 percent of the nation's medical schools, Williams said. <more> |
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| Monkey Math Machinery is Like Humans' Joshua H Smith, 2005/12/15 15:46:57 Monkeys have a semantic perception of numbers that is like humans\u2019 and which is independent of language, Duke University cognitive neuroscientists have discovered. They said their findings demonstrate that the neural mechanism underlying numerical perception is evolutionarily primitive.<more> |
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| Older brains 'rise to the challenge' Joshua H Smith, 2005/12/15 15:28:56 When the going gets tough, older adults' brains get going, according to new research by a University of Michigan professor studying how key regions of the brain click on when needed. Several regions in the brain, especially in the frontal cortex, are involved in helping people meet the demands of a constantly changing environment. While earlier research focused on older adults' failures to activate these regions, the new U-M research found that older adults can activate these regions in response to a challenging task, and may also bring additional brain regions online to help their performance. <more> |
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| Monkeys Understand Numbers Across Senses Joshua H Smith, 2005/12/15 12:26:53 Assistant Professor Elizabeth Brannon and graduate student Kerry Jordan have found that monkeys understand numbers across the senses suggesting that numerical perception is an abstract concept even in monkeys. These findings were reported in the June 7th issue of Current Biology. <more> |
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| Studies Between the Lines Joshua H Smith, 2005/12/15 12:23:01 He wanted to be a developmental psychologist, and for his dissertation he developed a system of monitoring infant eye movements. One day a colleague mentioned that his system could be useful in analyzing autistic children. The insight opened a door in Pelphrey’s career and, ever since, he’s been heading in a different direction, at the intersection of psychology, cognitive neuroscience and imaging. <more> |
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| Welcome new Assistant Professor Kevin Pelphrey Joshua H Smith, 2005/12/15 12:09:10 We welcome Dr Kevin Pelphrey, who joins the faculty of the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences. Dr. Pelphrey comes to Duke from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill where he was an Assistant Professor in Psychiatry. His research interests include: Cognitive Developmental Neuroscience, Autism, Social Perception, Social Cognition, Face Perception. One of Dr. Pelphrey's studies (Pelphrey, Singerman, Allison, & McCarthy, 2003) examines the brain region that are involved with social perception using virtual characters that look towards or away from a target. <more> |
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| Welcome to another MAD (Memory at Duke ) scientist Ryn Nasser, 2005/08/31 15:08:06 Dr. Patricia Bauer joins the faculty of the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences. Dr. Bauer comes to Duke from the Institute of Child Development, University of Minnesota (since 1989), where she was the Rodney S. Wallace Professor for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning. Her research program is in developmental cognitive science, with particular emphasis on memory. She is especially concerned with development in infancy and early childhood, and with relations between functional changes and neuro-developmental changes. <more> |
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| Welcome new Assistant Professor Steve Mitroff Ryn Nasser, 2005/08/31 15:07:08 The Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences and the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience welcome new Assistant Professor, Dr. Steve Mitroff. Dr. Mitroff received his Ph.D. from Harvard University and did postdoctoral training at Yale University in the Department of Psychology. His research examines the nature of persisting object representations and draws on both adult visual perception and infant cognition work. Questions that have been of interest include how does the visual system keep track of visual information as representing the same objects over time and motion, how are we able to detect that something has changed from one view of the world to the next, and what role does conscious awareness play in visual processing. |
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| Kudos to Kevin LaBar Ryn Nasser, 2005/08/31 15:06:39 Dr. Kevin LaBar received the 2005 Young Investigator Award from the Society for Cognitive Neuroscience to recognize his outstanding research on brain mechanisms of emotional memory. He joins our colleague, Dr. Roberto Cabeza who won this award in 2003. Duke University is the only institution to have 2 award winners on its Faculty. |
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