Monday, November 29, 2010

A new generation of women in science


Department faculty, staff and students joined the Girl Scouts of Central Indiana November 20 to teach young girls how to be "brain scientists." Psychological and Brain Science was featured on this year's patch for Brownie Math & Science Day. Special thanks to all of our volunteers for making this event a success.

Visit our Facebook gallery for photos of the event.

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Olaf Sporns to be featured on Big Ten Program

Seats for Olaf Sporns' talk on the Big Ten Network's "Beyond the Syllabus" taping for Nov. 19 are now full. Sporns will discuss recent discoveries about the way the human brain works.

Click here for more information.

Wednesday, October 27, 2010

How handwriting trains the brain

Research by Karin Harman James was recently featured in the Wall Street Journal. To read, visit http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704631504575531932754922518.html

Wednesday, June 9, 2010

Strangers influence our dating preferences

New research by department researchers Peter Todd and Skylar Place has been featured in several prominent media, including the following:


Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Graduate student summer research awards

Congratulations to the following graduate students who have received 2010 summer research awards:

  • Lile Jia: Gordon Kato Summer Fellowship
  • Katie Van Loo: Steinmetz Summer Research Award
  • Trista Chan: Richard D. Young Summer Research Award
  • Isaac Peterson: Richard D. Young Summer Research Award
  • Francisco Parada: McFall Summer Research Award
  • Michael Endres: Heller Summer Research Award

Monday, May 10, 2010

Congratulations, class of 2010!

We would like to congratulate our many graduates on completing their degrees in psychology and neuroscience, along with our many honors recipients and other awardees.

The following students were honored at the 2009-10 J.R. Kantor Undergraduate Honors Banquet.
  • Natsuki Atagi: Cheryl Burnham Buhler Award, Excellence in Honors Thesis Research Award. Natsuki was also chosen as one of the first undergraduate speakers at the 2010 commencement ceremony.
  • Sabrina Yufang Sun: J.R. Kantor Prize in Psychology
  • Jennifer Long: James Dinsmoor Excellence in Research Award
  • Nicole Beckage: Excellence in Research Award
  • Gabriela Rodriguez: Excellence in Research Award
  • Roxana Ortez: Excellence in Research Award
  • Ryan Stadnik: Excellence in Research Award and Robert Weiskopf Award
  • Ross VanDerKlok: Excellence in Research Award
  • Sarah Myers: Robert Weiskopf Award
  • Kaitlin King: Psi Chi Scholarship
Additionally, three students received scholarships from the College of Arts and Sciences:
  • Lukasz Cerbin: Tracy C. Owens, M.D., and Anna L. Sproull Owens Memorial Scholarship, Fernandus & Elizabeth J. Payne Scholarship
  • Christian Frye: Sally Kissinger Wilt Merit Scholarship
  • Laura Strodtman: Jeanice Bartling Lewis Memorial Scholarship

Friday, March 5, 2010

Building a vision of brain networks

An article on the Dana Foundation's Web site this week featured professor Olaf Sporns' brain mapping research.

Read more here: http://www.dana.org/news/features/detail.aspx?id=25690

Thursday, February 4, 2010

LexisNexis internship info session rescheduled

An internship information session, hosted by Dr. Rich Miller and Dr. David Pfenninger, will take place at 3 p.m. Monday, March 22, in the Gill Center Conference room (room 102 of the Multidisciplinary Science Building II, behind Psychology).

Dr. Rich Miller is part of the LexisNexis Applied Research Group, which includes expertise in computational linguistics, information retrieval and software development. His role in the group is monitoring technology areas encompassing analytics and visualization, rich media, personalization, mobile computing, user experience design and human-computer interaction. Miller has a degree in experimental psychology from Miami University.


In a special session for psychology and neuroscience majors, Miller will discuss internship opportunities at LexisNexis. Undergraduate and graduate students with experience in computer programming and research interests in natural language programming, text analytics should attend to hear more about this opportunity.


LexisNexis® is a leading global provider of business information solutions to in a variety of areas, including: legal, corporate, and government practices, law enforcement, accounting, and compliance assessment. A member of Reed Elsevier, LexisNexis helps customers in more than 100 countries and has 13,000 employees.


Dr. David Pfenninger will introduce Dr. Miller and provide his own insights about internship opportunities. Pfenninger serves on advisory councils for both the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences and the Department of Informatics and Computing. He graduated with a bachelor's degree in psychology from our department in 1983.


A clinical psychologist, Pfenninger also has founded two companies: Performance Assessment Network (www.panpowered.com), the largest Web-based testing company in the United States, and BubbleUp (www.bubbleup.com), a technology leader in the entertainment industry that makes extensive use of social networking techniques. In his roles as corporate CEO, entrepreneur and board of directors' member, Pfenninger has utilized internships as a solid way to get fresh thinking and talent into his firms.


To ensure you will have a spot in this session, please e-mail Jenny at porterjl@indiana.edu by 5 p.m. Tuesday, February 9.

Cognitive Science Movie Index

Indiana University is now hosting a cognitive science movie index. It includes a broad list of movies that showcase various themes in the cognitive science.

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Study finds complexity affects dieting success

Professor Peter Todd, along with other cognitive scientists at IU and the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin, recently compared the dieting behavior of women following two radically different diet plans. They found that the more complicated people thought the diet was, the sooner they were likely to drop it.

"For people on a more complex diet that involves keeping track of quantities and items eaten, their subjective impression of the difficulty of the diet can lead them to give up on it," Todd said.

Click here to read more.