News & Events
Psychology Poster Session 2009
Join us in the McCoy studio December 10th from 1:00 to 3:00 for our poster session. This annual event highlights recent faculty-student research collaborations in the Psychology Department. Students will display posters of their research and be available to explain and discuss their projects. Many of the studies have been conducted by students in advanced research methods classes or senior seminars. If you are considering psychology as a major, or if you are just curious about the psychological science that goes on at Rhodes, this event is for you!
Psi Chi Tutoring Schedule
For Psych 150 and Psych 200 Students
Located in Briggs 312 (The Psi Chi Office)
7-9 PM Monday, Sept 28th
7-8 PM Wednesday, Sept 30th
6-7 PM Sunday, Oct 4th
7-8 PM Wednesday, Oct 7th
7-9PM Monday, Oct 12th
7-9PM Wednesday, Oct 14th
5-7PM Sunday, Oct 25th
7-8PM Wednesday, Oct 28th
7-8PM Wednesday, Nov 4th
7-8PM Wednesday, Nov 11th
5-7PM Sunday, Nov 15th
7-8PM Tuesday, Nov 17th
5-6PM Thursday, Nov 19th
5-7PM Sunday, Nov 22nd
7-9PM Monday, Nov 23rd
7-8PM Wednesday, Dec 2nd
7-8PM Monday, Dec 7th
5-8PM Thursday, Dec 10th
5-8PM Sunday, Dec 13th
** Please come prepared with notes, textbook, reviews, questions, etc! With any questions, please contact Sarah Finney (FINSE)
Homecoming Reception for Clough Hall
Saturday, October 24, 2009
1:00pm - 2:00pm
Clough Hall, Second Floor Lobby
All Alums and Students are welcome!
The Psychology Department is partnering with all of the other departments in Clough Hall (Art, History, Philosophy, and Religious Studies) for a pre-game reception. Following the big barbeque, stroll on over to the Clough Hall lobby for dessert and a pre-game beverage. Hope to see you there!
Dr. Lynn Sacco, Public Lecture
Not Talking About It: Diagnosing Incest in American History
Monday, November 2, 2009
Time: 7:00pm - 8:00pm
Dr. Lynn Sacco, Associate professor of Women’s Studies and Sexuality Studies at the Univ of Tennessee-Knoxville will be giving a public talk, "Not Talking About It: Diagnosing Incest in American History."
Her new book, "Unspeakable: Father-Daughter Incest in American History", was just published by the Johns Hopkins University Press.
Book blurb: “ The book uses sources from medicine, law, social reform, and popular culture to document both the occurrence of incest and the noisy silence around the subject. Focusing on discourses about the etiology of gonorrhea in girls, my book argues that as scientific breakthroughs in the 1890s improved doctors′ ability to detect the disease, their social biases diminished their ability to see the obvious evidence before them. When they discovered evidence that gonorrhea, a sexually transmitted disease, was "epidemic" among all classes of girls--not just girls from socially marginalized families--health care professionals and reformers revised their views about gonorrhea, not incest.”
Bernard J. Baars Public Lecture
Is Consciousness Computationally Functional?
Monday, November 9, 2009
4:00pm - 5:00pm
University of Memphis, Institute for Intelligent Systems (Room TBA)
365 Innovation Drive
Memphis, TN
Is Consciousness Computationally Functional?
Bernard J. Baars
The Neurosciences Institute
www.nsi.edu/users/baars
bbaars@nsi.edu
Consciousness is a major feature of mammalian nervous systems. Recent evidence indicates it may extend to birds and even cephalopods. Since biological adaptations are functional, or are sequelae of biofunctions, and since brains perform computations, it would seem that consciousness must have a biocomputational function.
Brains are not generic computational devices. They are based on biochemistry and eukaryotic cells, which impose narrow limits on such features as the peak rate of spike signaling, usually well below 200 Hz. While neurons are highly conserved among animals ranging from C elegans to primates, physical switches and channels can operate many orders of magnitude faster than neurons. Thus functionality in biological computation does not generalize to all possible computational systems.
I have argued that the very narrow, well-established capacity limits of conscious contents at any given moment arise from the distributed nature of knowledge and information processing in brains. Any conscious content requires the active or tacit “consent” of thousands of active cell assemblies at any given moment, any one of which could disrupt the current dominant coalition that controls non-automatic activities in the brain. It follows that a momentary conscious contents may drive the established organization of the brain to adapt to new conditions.
Baars, Bernard J. 2002. The conscious access hypothesis: Origins and recent evidence. Trends in Cognitive Science 6: 47–52.
Baars, Bernard J and Stan Franklin. 2003. How conscious experience and working memory interact. Trends in Cognitive Science 7: 166–172.
Baars, Bernard J. and Stan Franklin. 2007. An architectural model of conscious and unconscious brain functions: Global workspace theory and IDA. Neural Networks 20: 955-961.
Dr. Bernard J. Baars is former Senior Research Fellow in Theoretical Neurobiology at the Neurosciences Institute in San Diego (www.nsi.edu). He is interested in human language, the brain basis of consciousness, volition, and a variety of related topics. Baars pioneered a cognitive theory of consciousness called Global Workspace Theory, which is widely cited in philosophical and scientific sources. Together with William P. Banks, Baars has edited the journal Consciousness & Cognition for more than fifteen years. (From Academic Press/ Elsevier). He has written an introductory text for cognitive neuroscience, called Cognition, Brain & Consciousness: An Introduction to Cognitive Neuroscience. (Baars & Gage, Eds. San Diego, Calif.: Elsevier/Academic Press, 2007). Baars was founding President of the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness and has given presentations internationally. (See www.nsi.edu/users/baars and http://bernardbaars.pbwiki.com, and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Baars). He is an external member of the Cognitive Computing Research Group at the University of Memphis.
Dr. Susan Schantz, Public Lecture
Co-sponsored with the Environmental Sciences Program
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
4:30pm - 5:30pm
Barret Library 051, Rhodes College
Dr. Susan Schantz, Assoicate Professor of Veterinary Biosciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, will be giving a public lecture on the neurobehavioral effects of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), methyl mercury, dioxins and related compounds. The Psychology Department and the Neuroscience Program are joining forces with the Environmental Sciences Program to bring Dr. Schantz to campus.
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