RuCCS Marquee Course Series: Making a Mind with a Brain

Course Information:

SP22: 16:830:637/638 (Psych) & 16:185:600:01 (Cog Sci)

Canvas: https://rutgers.instructure.com/courses/169967

Web: https://sites.rutgers.edu/jinjing-jenny-wang/courses/marquee-making-a-mind/

Time/Day: Wednesdays 2-5pm

ZOOM LINK (recordings may be available upon request)

Course Aims:

Where does our knowledge come from? What are the ontogenetic and phylogenetic origins of human thinking? In this course we will explore the origins of human knowledge using a comparative approach to behavioral neuroscience and developmental science.

These varied perspectives will bring a unique synergy to discussions on topics about where the mind comes from. This class has an open-door policy to any member of these communities and across graduate departments to join in on our class discussions once, twice or throughout the entire semester course activities.

*What is a Marquee Course? RuCCS Marquee courses are special graduate courses in which multiple faculty teach together in the same classroom at the same time to explore a shared area of expertise from diverse perspectives. These courses are intended to attract students from across the University and to be a highlight of the RuCCS experience for students and faculty alike. Unlike most team-taught courses, the defining feature of Marquee Courses is that multiple faculty are teaching simultaneously and interacting with each other and the students in the classroom. Therefore, this experience may not be the “typical” lecture-style format, but rather much more interactive and stimulating.

Instructors:

Prof. Kasia Bieszczad email

Prof. Jenny Wang email

Course Structure and Requirements:

The class will meet once a week for 3 hours ( intro + lecture + discussion). Readings will be assigned ahead of time for each class. The course will open with students writing an opinion paper on their definition of “mind” and whether or not “mind” can be attributed to humans and animals. This paper will be graded pass/fail and counts for 10% of final grade. Students will also submit his/her own questions each week before the class, and later submit reflection on the topic afterwards to answer the following: (1) Where are there similarities in the developmental psychology and behavioral neuroscience approaches? (2) What are the distinctions between the two fields? These weekly assignments will be graded pass/fail and count for 20% of the final grade. Two course sessions will consist of student presentations (20% of final grade). The course will close with students writing a reflection paper following a “News and Views” format, developed with ideas and evidence gained from his/her choice of classroom discussions. Grading rubric will be provided for the final paper, which will count for 50% of course grade.

*What is a Marquee Course? RuCCS Marquee courses are special graduate courses in which multiple faculty teach together in the same classroom at the same time to explore a shared area of expertise from diverse perspectives. These courses are intended to attract students from across the University and to be a highlight of the RuCCS experience for students and faculty alike. Unlike most team-taught courses, the defining feature of Marquee Courses is that multiple faculty are teaching simultaneously and interacting with each other and the students in the classroom. Therefore, this experience may not be the “typical” lecture-style format, but rather much more interactive and stimulating.

Schedule:

*subject to change and to Rutgers policies

1/19 What is a human mind? What is an animal mind? What properties do they share (if any)?

The Baby Lab. The New Yorker. 2006.

Striedter G. F. (2013). Bird brains and tool use: beyond instrumental conditioning. Brain, Behavior and Evolution, 82(1), 55–67. https://doi.org/10.1159/000352003

Striedter G. F. (2002). Brain homology and function: An uneasy alliance. Brain Research Bulletin, 57(3-4), 239–242. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0361-9230(01)00692-x

1/26 Nature vs. Nurture: Where does knowledge come from?

Samuels, R. (2004). Innateness in cognitive science. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 8(3), 136-141.

Wang, J., & Feigenson, L. (2019). Is empiricism innate? Preference for nurture over nature in people’s beliefs about the origins of human knowledge. Open Mind, 3, 89-100.

Thompson, R. F., & Kim, J. J. (1996). Memory systems in the brain and localization of a memory. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 93(24), 13438–13444. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.93.24.13438

Kóbor, A., Janacsek, K., Takács, Á., & Nemeth, D. (2017). Statistical learning leads to persistent memory: Evidence for one-year consolidation. Scientific Reports, 7(1), 760. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-00807-3

Asok, A., Leroy, F., Rayman, J. B., & Kandel, E. R. (2019). Molecular Mechanisms of the Memory Trace. Trends in neurosciences, 42(1), 14–22. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tins.2018.10.005

2/2 Presentations I – Debate

2/9 The Human Spark

Guest Speaker confirmed: Professor Arnold Glass, Professor of Psychology and Cognitive Science at Rutgers University, whose research aims to describe the procedures that the brain uses to encode and retrieve information.

Dunbar, R. I. M. (2014). The social brain: Psychological underpinnings and Implications for the structure of organizations. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 23(2), 109 – 114.

Tomasello, M., Carpenter, M., & Liszkowski, U. (2007). A new look at infant pointing. Child Development, 78(3), 705 – 722.

Glass, A. L. (2016). The evolution of cognition.

2/16 Seeing and hearing: How do we sense the world?

Guest Speaker confirmed: Professor Nina Kraus, Hugh S. Knowles Chair in audiology at Northwestern University, investigating the neural encoding of speech and music and its plasticity. https://communication.northwestern.edu/faculty/nina-kraus/

Kraus, N. (2021) Of Sound Mind: How our brain constructs a meaningful sonic world.

2/23 Learning and memory: Do we all start with a tabula rasa? (potentially also touch on: Sleep and dreaming: What is it good for?)

Rovee-Collier, C. K., Sullivan, M. W., Enright, M., Lucas, D., & Fagen, J. W. (1980). Reactivation of infant memory. Science, 208(4448), 1159-1161.

Marcus, G. F., Vijayan, S., Rao, S. B., & Vishton, P. M. (1999). Rule learning by seven-month-old infants. Science, 283(5398), 77-80.

Takesian, A. E., & Hensch, T. K. (2013). Balancing plasticity/stability across brain development. Progress in Brain Research, 207, 3–34. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-444-63327-9.00001-1

Seitz, A. R., Kim, D., & Watanabe, T. (2009). Rewards evoke learning of unconsciously processed visual stimuli in adult humans. Neuron, 61(5), 700–707. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2009.01.016 (see also Seitz, A. R., & Watanabe, T. (2009). The phenomenon of task-irrelevant perceptual learning. Vision Research, 49(21), 2604–2610. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.visres.2009.08.003)

Bernier, A., Carlson, S. M., Bordeleau, S., & Carrier, J. (2010). Relations between physiological and cognitive regulatory systems: Infant sleep regulation and subsequent executive functioning. Child development, 81(6), 1739-1752.

Walker, M. P., & Stickgold, R. (2006). Sleep, memory, and plasticity. Annu. Rev. Psychol., 57, 139-166.

McGaugh J. L. (2000). Memory–a century of consolidation. Science (New York, N.Y.), 287(5451), 248–251. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.287.5451.248

3/2 Space and quantity: Analog or digital?

Guest Speaker confirmed: Professor Randy Gallistel, Emeritus Professor of Psychology at Rutgers University. He is an expert in the cognitive processes of learning and memory, using animal models to carry out research on these topics. https://psych.rutgers.edu/faculty-profiles-a-contacts/96-charles-randy-gallistel

Gallistel, C. R. (2020). Where meanings arise and how: Building on Shannon’s foundations. Mind & Language, 35(3), 390-401.

Gallistel, C. R. (2020). The physical basis of memory. Cognition, 213(Aug), 104533, doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2020.104533

3/9 Language and music 1: How are they related?

Guest Speaker confirmed: Professor Aniruddh (Ani) Patel, Professor of Psychology at Tufts University. Dr. Patel’s work focuses on music cognition: the mental processes involved in making, perceiving, and responding to music. Areas of emphasis include music-language relations (the topic of his 2008 book, Music, Language, and the Brain, Oxford Univ. Press) rhythmic processing, and cross-species studies of music cognition. https://as.tufts.edu/psychology/people/faculty/aniruddh-patel

Patel A. D. (2011). Why would Musical Training Benefit the Neural Encoding of Speech? The OPERA Hypothesis. Frontiers in Psychology, 2, 142. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2011.00142

SPRING BREAK

3/23 Language and music 2: What do they tell us about cognition?

Guest speaker confirmed: Professor Elika Bergelson, Crandall Family Assistant Professor at Duke University. Dr. Bergelson’s work focuses on the interplay of processes during language acquisition. In particular, how word learning relates to other aspects of learning language (e.g. speech sound acquisition, grammar/morphology learning), and social/cognitive development more broadly (e.g. joint attention processes) in the first few years of life. https://dibs.duke.edu/people/elika-bergelson

Gleitman & Newport (1995). The invention of language by children: Environmental and biological influences on the acquisition of language.

Bergelson, E., & Aslin, R. N. (2017). Nature and origins of the lexicon in 6-mo-olds. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 114(49), 12916-12921.

Liu, J., Hilton, C. B., Bergelson, E., & Mehr, S. A. (2021). Language experience shapes music processing across 40 tonal, pitch-accented, and non-tonal languages. bioRxiv.

3/30 Mind and the brain: What happens when something goes wrong?

Guest Speaker Confirmed: Professor Barbara Landau, Dick and Lydia Todd Professor in the Department of Cognitive Science at Johns Hopkins University. Landau specializes in language learning, spatial representation and relationships between these foundational systems of human knowledge. https://cogsci.jhu.edu/directory/barbara-landau/

Landau, B., Gleitman, H., & Spelke, E. (1981). Spatial knowledge and geometric representation in a child blind from birth. Science, 213(4513), 1275-1278.

Newport, Landau, et al., Revisiting Lenneberg’s Hypotheses About Early Developmental Plasticity: Language Organization After Left-Hemisphere Perinatal Stroke (unpublished manuscript)

Lakusta, L., Dessalegn, B., & Landau, B. (2010). Impaired geometric reorientation caused by genetic defect. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 107(7), 2813-2817.

4/6 Perception vs. Cognition

Guest Speaker confirmed: Professor Ned Block, Silver Professor of Philosophy, Psychology and Neural Science at New York University. He works in philosophy of perception and foundations of neuroscience and cognitive science. https://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/philo/faculty/block/

https://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/philo/faculty/block/papers/Seeingas.pdf

4/13 Emotions: Where do feelings come from?

Guest Speaker confirmed: Professor Vanessa Lobue, Associate Professor of Psychology and Director of the Child Study Center at Rutgers University. Dr. LoBue studies humans’ behavioral responses to emotionally valenced stimuli—specifically to negative or threatening stimuli—and the mechanisms that guide the development of these behaviors. https://sasn.rutgers.edu/about-us/faculty-staff/vanessa-lobue

LoBue, V., & Adolph, K. E. (2019). Fear in infancy: Lessons from snakes, spiders, heights, and strangers. Developmental psychology, 55(9), 1889.

LoBue, V., Kim, E., & Delgado, M. (2019). Fear in development. In Handbook of emotional development (pp. 257-282). Springer, Cham.

4/20 Workshop – News and Views

4/27 Closing session addressing the distinctions/non-distinctions between humans and animals