VIDEO UPDATE PENDING - Available Monday 12/8/25

Deepu Murty | Associate Professor, Chair of the Committee for an Inclusive Community
Psychology | University of Oregon

"Understanding, Remembering, and Communicating Threatening Events"

Threat alters how we represent information. Under threat, individuals tend to prioritize central details at the expense of surrounding contextual information—a shift that reflects and drives changes in medial temporal lobe (MTL) and cortical network dynamics. This talk will explore how threat reshapes the neural architecture supporting event comprehension, which has downstream consequences on how this information is stored in long-term memory. Moreover, we will show how these shifts in brain networks change how threatening experiences are communicated to others. By examining the interplay between emotion, memory, and social dynamics, we highlight mechanisms through which threat can distort shared understanding and social transmission of information. These findings have broad implications for domains ranging from eyewitness testimony to psychotherapy, which both rely on the accurate communication of threatening events.

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NOTE:  The views and opinions expressed by the speaker do not necessarily reflect those held by the Center for Mind, Brain, and Culture or Emory University.

David Sloan Wilson | Professor Emeritus, Department of Anthropology / Biological Sciences Binghamton University | State University of New York 

"Mind, Brain and Culture from a Generalized Darwinian Perspective" 

Generalized Darwinism refers to any process combining the three ingredients of variation, selection, and replication (VSR). It is both old and new: Old, because all the insights associated with Darwinism during its first few decades were in ignorance of the proximate mechanisms of VSR. New, because with the advent of Mendelian genetics, the entire study of evolution became focused on genes, to the exclusion of other VSR processes. A return to generalized Darwinism didn’t commence until the closing decades of the 20th century and is now in full swing, with profound implications for our understanding of mind, brain, and culture.    

Link to ProSocial World website: https://www.prosocial.world/

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Apurva Ratan Murty | Assistant Professor, Psychology | Georgia Institute of Technology 

Jared Medina | Associate Professor, Psychology | Emory University 

"To Predict or To Explain" 

What is even the point of our science? Is it to build models that predict what brains and minds will do even if we don’t fully understand how, or is it to explain the inner workings of the mind and brain, even if our models fall short of accurate predictions or practical mental health benefits. 

In this debate-styled meeting, Jared Medina will argue for explanation as the soul of science. Without causal, interpretable, mechanistic accounts, we’re just playing with high-tech models and curve-fitting. For him the goal of our science is about generating understanding in human interpretable terms. 

On the opposing side, Apurva Ratan Murty will champion prediction as the only reliable test of scientific understanding. If your theory can’t predict new data, it has limited value. Models that generalize, however messy or uninterpretable, are the real engines of discovery and measure of progress. 

This brings us to the core of the conflict. Is prediction sufficient for explanation, or even preferable? Can we trust models we do not understand, or does demand for interpretability needlessly limit our predictive power? Should we be architects of models as tools to describe, anticipate, and control brain behavior, or storytellers who illuminate the architecture of the mind? 

Join us as we debate these foundational questions and consider what our field should value most and how these seemingly opposing frameworks co-exist.

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Gil Weinberg | Professor, School of Music and Founding Director of the Center for Music Technology | Georgia Institute of Technology 

"Embodied Creative Machines" 

Human creativity is directly linked to embodied interaction with the physical environment. At the Robotic Musicianship Group at Georgia Tech, we explore how embodiment effects and enhances both human and artificial creativity. The talk will present a wide range of robotic projects developed at Georgia Tech Center for Music Technology over the last 20 years, from robotic musicians that compose, improvise, and interact with humans in a variety of musical genres, through robotic dancers that respond to human movement, to prosthetic robotic arms that enable amputees to play musical instruments. 

Gil Weinberg is a professor and the founding director of Georgia Tech Center for Music Technology, where he leads the Robotic Musicianship group. His research focuses on developing artificial creativity and musical expression for robots and augmented humans. Among his projects are a marimba playing robotic musician called Shimon that uses machine learning for Jazz improvisation, and a prosthetic robotic arm for amputees that restores and enhances human drumming abilities. 

Weinberg presented his work worldwide in venues such as The Kennedy Center, The World Economic Forum, Ars Electronica, Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt Museum, SIGGRAPH, TED-Ed, DLD and others. His music was performed with Orchestras such as Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, the National Irish Symphony Orchestra, and the Scottish BBC Symphony while his research has been disseminated through numerous journal articles and patents. Dr. Weinberg received his MS and PhD degrees in Media Arts and Sciences from MIT and his BA from the interdisciplinary program for fostering excellence in Tel Aviv University. 

Gil Weinberg :: https://www.gilweinberg.com/

SEE BELOW FOR SOME OF THE VIDEOS PREVIEWED IN PRESENTATION. 
THE AGE OF AI :: https://youtu.be/UwsrzCVZAb8?si=9rfi3NSCwIe1n0NR&t=863 
SHIMON IN CONCERT :: https://youtu.be/zG8VWPL35qI?si=54IKr0E8ax26x9Jc 
BRAINWAVES / “FISH AND CHIPS” :: https://www.gilweinberg.com/brainwaves?pgid=m2acvhzk1-f5d71d01-9eb3-4cae-a336-1dbf7f335ade
EYEDRUM EXHIBITION :: https://www.gilweinberg.com/brainwaves?pgid=m2acvhzk1-c6092737-f02b-4a58-942b-42e685ea9595
NERVE BEATBUGS :: https://youtu.be/B7WlkVGH1fs?si=I2xWeoqUOWVCPBkc
HAILE :: https://youtu.be/OT2Lp00ib1Y?si=jPupqd-Qb9gCYuHE
THREE-ARMED DRUMMING :: https://youtu.be/fKryPingtww?si=U7SrChs-n-5ctTZW 
DRUMMING PROSTHETIC CONCERT @ KSU :: https://youtu.be/6xc2_p-q9tU?si=I7tnesxJyhQUpNAn 
JASON BARNES EMG PROSTHETIC ARM SHOWCASE :: https://youtu.be/4rakPJHH7KU?si=sUrBc2zlTiCYvhSy 
JASON BARNES - GUINESS WORLD RECORDS :: https://youtu.be/cVFcJ3TMrok?si=C104ssuxrU6Hn_SK 
WORLD’S FIRST BIONIC DRUMMER :: https://youtu.be/GKW7cg45EwY?si=1jBmN1ABFXiP-lxb 
SKYWALKER HAND :: https://youtu.be/8t8p43m1Iuw?si=SKhs2BTMX6qP-GXz 
GIL WEINBERG: LUKE SKYWALKER PROSTHESIS CONTROLS FINGERS AND PLAYS PIANO :: https://youtu.be/HjW1kIt5iQg?si=kHcuIHgsLnAWJvMy

 

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Héctor Álvarez | Theater Studies, Emory University 

"Dilating Time: Tempo as Contemplative Tool in Ota Shogo’s Poetics of Deceleration" 

This talk explores Ota Shogo's groundbreaking wordless play "The Water Station" as a paradigm of temporal expansion in contemporary theater, examining how extreme deceleration creates unique spaces for audience reflection and embodied awareness. Together we'll investigate how slowed theatrical time functions not merely as stylistic choice but as philosophical intervention—challenging our accelerated cultural rhythms and opening possibilities for deeper environmental and existential awareness. 

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Héctor Álvarez is an interdisciplinary artist and scholar working in performance, theater, film, and contemporary opera, who has recently joined the faculty at Emory in Theater Studies. This event marks the first in a planned series of dialogues between the Center for Mind, Brain, and Culture and the Keio University Centre for Contemplative Studies in Tokyo, Japan, an interdisciplinary group of contemplative scholars, cognitive scientists and artists.

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Shay Welch | Associate Professor of Philosophy | Spelman College 

"The Bio-Psycho-Social Affect Loop, HyperSensitivity, and Radical Embodied Cognition"

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Tara Callaghan |  Professor of Psychology, St. Francis Xavier University, Nova Scotia, Canada 

"Fostering Prosociality in Refugee Children: An Intervention with Rohingya Children" 

Prosocial behavior is a distinguishing characteristic of human nature. Although prosocial behaviors emerge early in development, contextual factors play an important role in how these behaviors are manifested over development. A large body of research focuses on the trajectory of prosocial development across diverse cultures and investigating contexts that foster it. Against this backdrop of developmental research endeavoring to understand and enhance the cooperative side of humanity, is the catastrophic impact of profoundly negative forces on social-emotional development for children forced to flee from violent conflict. Close to half a million Rohingya children, whose families were forced to flee genocide in Myanmar, now live in the largest refugee camp in the world. To examine the resilience of human prosociality in the face of extreme adversity, we documented initial levels of prosociality in Rohingya refugee children living in a mega-camp (Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh) and the extent to which those levels were improved following a multifaceted intervention designed to foster prosociality. The research was a partnership between Rohingya community members with lived experience, humanitarian practitioners, and developmental researchers. (Continued - for the full ABSTRACT follow this link: https://bit.ly/cmbclecturecallaghan ) 

00:00 Intro by Philippe Rochet, Professor of Psychology, Emory University 

03:52 Lecture 

46:38 Q&A Session 

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Alexandra (Sasha) Key | Professor, Marcus Autism Center, Emory University School of Medicine 
"Building a functional communication system: Does the baby have a say?" 

For a long time, language development has been framed mainly in the context of nature-nurture interactions. However, research in non-typical development suggests that another critical contributor should be considered. In this talk, I will present findings from neurophysiological studies in infants and children to demonstrate the importance of self-initiated active engagement with spoken communication for supporting more optimal developmental outcomes. Our data will demonstrate that choosing to engage with speech, an indication of social motivation, is an integral part of the previously established associations between the neural systems and the environmental factors contributing to individual differences in language development. Expanding the general conceptual approach to language to include nature-nurture-person will allow us to better understand the sources of variability in functional communication abilities across the full spectrum of developmental outcomes.

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Anna Ivanova | Assistant Professor, School of Psychology | Georgia Tech College of Sciences 
"Dissociating Language and Thought in Humans and in Machines" 

“What is the relationship between language and thought? This question has long intrigued researchers across scientific fields. In this talk, I will propose a framework for clarifying the language-thought relationship. I will introduce a distinction between formal competence—knowledge of linguistic rules and patterns—and functional competence—understanding and using language in the world. This distinction is grounded in human neuroscience, where a wealth of evidence indicates that formal competence relies on a set of specialized brain regions (“the language network”), whereas functional competence requires the use of multiple non-language-specific neural systems. I will then present a series of case studies illustrating how the formal/functional competence distinction can help (a) delineate the functional architecture of the human brain, providing a framework for studying complex cognitive behaviors, such as computer coding and legal reasoning; (b) understand the capabilities and limitations of today’s large language models, particularly in the realm of general world knowledge.”

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Leah Krubitzer | MacArthur Fellow   Professor of Psychology | University of California, Davis
"Combinatorial Creatures: Cortical Plasticity Within and Across Lifetimes" 

"The neocortex is one of the most distinctive structures of the mammalian brain, yet also one of the most varied in terms of both size and organization. Multiple processes have contributed to this variability including evolutionary mechanisms (i.e., changes in gene sequence) that alter the size, organization and connections of the neocortex, and activity dependent mechanisms that can also modify these same features over shorter time scales. Because the neocortex does not develop or evolve in a vacuum, when considering how different cortical phenotypes emerge within a species and across species over time, it is also important to consider alterations to the body, to behavior, and the environment in which an individual develops. Thus, changes to the neocortex can arise via different mechanisms, and over multiple time scales. Brains can change across large, evolutionary time scales of thousands to millions of years; across shorter time scales such as generations; and across the life of an individual – day-by-day, within hours, minutes and even on a time scale of a second. The combination of genetic and activity dependent mechanisms that create a given cortical phenotype allows the mammalian neocortex to rapidly and flexibly adjust to different body and environmental contexts, and in humans permits culture to impact brain construction during development."

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