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Interdisciplinary Brain Research Gets Major Support from Kavli Foundation
The Kavli Foundation and its university partners have announced the commitment of more than $100 million in new funds to enable interdisciplinary research on the brain and brain-related disorders, including as traumatic brain injury (TBI), Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease. The majority of the funds will establish three new Kavli neuroscience institutes at Johns Hopkins University (JHU), The Rockefeller University, and the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF).
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Streets with no game
Aeon: In 2007, the Whole Foods supermarket chain built one of their largest stores on New York City’s storied Lower East Side, occupying an entire block of East Houston Street from the Bowery to Chrystie Street. For the well-off, the abundant availability of high-quality organic foods was a welcome addition, but for the majority of locals, many of whom had roots going back generations to New York’s immigrant beginnings, the scale of the new store, selling wares that few of them could easily afford, was a symbolic affront to the traditions of this part of the city. ... Behavioural effects of city street design have been reported before.
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When Cops Choose Empathy
The New Yorker: About four years ago, in a city park in western Washington State, Joe Winters encountered a woman in the throes of a psychotic episode. As he sat down next to her, she told him that she had purchased the bench that they now shared and that it was her home. “I didn’t buy the hallucinations, but I tried to validate the feelings underneath them,” Winters told me. His strategy resembled Rogerian psychotherapy—unconditionally accepting a patient’s experience, even when it is untethered from reality. But Winters is not a roving psychologist; he is a deputy in the King County Sheriff’s Office.
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Researchers have discovered a surprisingly simple way to get kids to eat more veggies
The Washington Post: It seems like an age-old problem — kids not eating their vegetables — and it is. Little ones, more interested in macaroni and cheese than sautéed spinach, are still leaving the latter largely untouched. The proof is both anecdotal — what parent hasn't tussled with this? — and borne out in data. Nine out of 10 children, after all, still don't eat enough vegetables, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). ... Researchers at Texas A&M University, looking for patterns in food consumption among elementary school children, found an interesting quirk about when and why kids choose to eat their vegetables.
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New Research From Psychological Science
Read about the latest research published in Psychological Science: Iconic Gestures Facilitate Discourse Comprehension in Individuals With Superior Immediate Memory for Body Configurations Ying Choon Wu and Seana Coulson Iconic gestures are those that depict an aspect of the object or action to which they are referring. The researchers hypothesized that sensitivity to the meaning of these types of gestures is linked to differences in kinesthetic working memory (KWM). The researchers assessed participants' KWM span and had them watch short video clips in which a person's gestures were congruent or incongruent with the accompanying audio track.
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Society for Research in Child Development Policy Fellowships for 2016–2017
SRCD is seeking applications for upcoming Policy Fellowships for 2016–2017. There are two types of Fellowships: Congressional and Executive Branch. Both provide Fellows with exciting opportunities to come to Washington, DC and use their research skills in child development outside of the academic setting to inform public policy. Fellows work as resident scholars within their federal agency or Congressional office placements. Fellowships are full-time immersion experiences and run from September 1st through August 31st.
