CBD Fall Forum 2009
Tuesdays from 12:15 - 1:50 pm
Haines Hall, Room 352
Instructor: Clark Barrett
ANTHROM293-1 / APPLINGM232-1 / EDUCM285-1 / NEUROSCM293-1 / PSYCHM248-1
Course Website
The CBD Fall Forum meets every other week during the fall quarter. The forum is dedicated to presentations of research ideas by CBD trainees and postdocs, and for us to all have a chance to hear about each others' latest research and ideas. All faculty are encouraged to attend, and should plan on attending presentations by their trainees.
The first meeting will be held Tuesday, September 29, and will be a short organizational meeting.
Lunch will be served.
October 6, 2009
Elizabeth Reynolds Losin
The Neural Architecture of Cultural Imitative Learning
Imitation is extremely common, emerges early in development and is the means by which we learn critical skills and information such as culturally-appropriate behavior, social norms, and language. Imitative learning is biased towards certain individuals including those who are self-similar, and this similarity-bias is thought to increase the adaptive value of learned information. Little is known about how such imitative learning biases are instantiated in the brain. Two neural systems that may underlie the similarity bias in imitative learning are the mirror neuron system (MNS), which contains regions that are active both when individuals execute and observe action, and the medial fronto-parietal system (mFPS), which consists of brain regions often active during self-referential tasks. In the current study we use fMRI to investigate brain regions active when a group of 19 European Americans observe and imitate individuals of their own or another ethnicity and gender performing novel hand actions. We find that higher-order motor regions involved in imitative behavior, including the MNS, are more active when individuals imitate actors of a different ethnicity compared to their own. Conversely, a higher-order visual region related to self-imagery is more active when participants imitate their own compared to another ethnicity. Finally, a region of the brain involved in processing reward is more active when individuals imitate their own compared to the opposite gender, regardless of ethnicity. These findings may help explain the neural underpinnings of the self-similarity bias in imitative learning and ultimately may inform behavioral modeling strategies used in contexts such as education, behavioral therapy and rehabilitation.
October 20, 2009
Katie Hale
Title TBA
Kristen Gillespie
Title TBA
November 3, 2009
Heejung Park
Title TBA
David DeLiema
Title TBA
November 17, 2009
Joey Fung
Title TBA
December 1, 2009
David Frederick
Title TBA
