Courses
Brain Imaging of Social Cognition (PY791-2E / PY420-2E)
Navigating the social world involves perceiving and understanding interpersonal cues, such as facial expressions, gaze, gestures, and many other verbal and non-verbal signals. How do we understand the minds of others? How do we infer the beliefs and desires that underlie our own and others’ behavior? How does the way we think about ourselves inform the way we think about others, and vice versa? In this course we will attempt to answer these questions mainly from a neuroscience perspective. We will examine neuroimaging studies of a range of topics, such as the Social Brain, Theory of Mind, Moral Reasoning, Face Processing, Mirror Neurons, and disorders of social cognition.
The Cognitive Neuroscience of Autism (PY320-2C)
Autism is a disorder that affects every facet of human functioning. Its multidimensional manifestation is enigmatic to researchers as well as to affected families. This course will examine the scientific research that has illuminated the nature of autism, focusing on its cognitive and biological aspects. We will examine different perspectives of thinking and various biological underpinnings of brain function, to converge on the most recent scientific consensus on the biological and psychological characterization of autism. There will be a special focus on structural and functional brain imaging studies of autism.
