Science of the Mind March-April 2012

Course Title: Science of the Mind: Taking apart the mind and brain—then putting it back together (but better).  

Overarching Goal is To investigate:

Who are you?  What makes you who you are?  How can you use insights from psychology and neuroscience to learn to understand and use your brain and mind better? 

Guiding Questions:

1.  How does evolution by natural selection work? 

2.  How and why did the brain and mind evolve and what are they for?  How might this explain the psychology behind things like cooperation and sex? 

3. How does the brain work?  Is it one organ—a general problem solving and learning device, or is it made up of many distinct parts?  What does it look like, and how is it put together?

4.  What does recent research in psychology, neuroscience, and behavioral economics tell us about how decisions are made?  How are both emotion and reason important to making decisions? 

5.  What is “the will,” and is it really free?   How can it be conditioned, primed, and otherwise constrained?

6. What makes you who you are, and how might you rethink this given recent research on memories, visual perception, and patients with various brain injuries who end up doing things like being able to draw common objects, without being able to identify what they are?

7. How can we use meditation, self-awareness, and other forms of mental training to learn to drive the brain instead of having it drive us?   What does the (relatively) recent discovery of neuroplasticity have to do with this? 

8.  What are these claims based on? How is knowledge created and constructed in psychology and neuroscience?  Does science reveal the truth? 

 

 

Structure: 

 

  1. Two and a half weeks of class working together:  field trips, close readings, demonstrations, discussions
    1. Decision Making
    2. Constructing the Self
    3. Memory   
  2. One week independent work—read one chapter closely, present to the group, link to course essential questions.  Quiz on presentationn.
  3. Two Weeks: Journal article-independent research writing, art  Group putting together.

 

Assignments/Activities:

  • Keep a Ben Franklin Journal (based on Jonathan Haidt’s discussion of cognitive behavioral therapy).
  • Meditation
  • Close Readings: Joshua Greene, Richard Davidson, V.S. Ramachandran, Evolutionary Psychology text book.
  • Field Trip reflections/question generation
  • One short answer test. 
  • Psychology experiment demonstrations
  • Each student reads a chapter (Pinker, Gazzaniga, Davidson, Shacter, Haidt) and creates a short presentation on it.
  • Journal article research, art, layout