Though the term ‘schizophrenia’ is only around a hundred years old, the illness goes back thousands of years. Despite a wealth of research on the subject, there is still much about it that we don’t know. In this talk, I will discuss some of the contributions brain imaging research has made to attempts to understand the disorder.

“Know thyself!” exhorted the ancient Greeks, but it turns out that accurate self-understanding is difficult to gain, particularly when it comes to evaluating our knowledge and expertise.

David Dunning, Professor of Psychology at the University of Michigan and Faculty Affiliate of the Research Center for Group Dynamics at the Institute of Social Research, discusses recent research showing common biases people display when judging their skill and know-how, and the costs (and occasional benefits) of those biases. He describes best practices to potentially avoid them. It all boils down to following this old, wise admonishment: When arguing with a fool, just make sure that the other person is not likewise engaged.

Professor Dunning taught for several years at Cornell University, where he is Professor Emeritus. An author, co-author, or co-editor of nearly 150 journal articles, book chapters, commentaries, and reviews, he has served as president of the Society of Experimental Social Psychology and the Society for the Study of Motivation. He received the 2016 Award for Lifetime Achievement from the International Society for Self and Identity.

His work has been funded by the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, and the Templeton Foundation, as well as featured in more popular outlets as diverse as the New York Times, This American Life, and Doonesbury. This talk is part of the "Exploring the Mind" series and is cosponsored by the University of Michigan Department of Psychology.

This talk addresses common myths of bilingual children’s language and literacy acquisition along with implications of bilingualism on cognitive and brain development. It also covers best strategies for learning languages for both children and adults.

The rise in global migration has resulted in ever-growing numbers of bilingual and multilingual speakers as well as a growing number of bilingual children.

We marvel at the ease with which young children master new languages. We also fear that learning more than one language may delay children’s language acquisition. Parents, teachers, and clinicians often ask: Are bilingual infants delayed in learning to speak? Are bilingual children delayed in learning to read? Do bilinguals confuse their two languages?

Ioulia Kovelman, Ph.D. is currently Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University of Michigan and Research Assistant Professor at the U-M Center for Human Growth and Development. Dr. Kovelman’s research interests are in language and reading development in monolingual and bilingual infants, children, and adults. At CHGD, she is co-director of the Brain Imaging Laboratory and conducts research on bilingual language and reading acquisition

This event was part of the "Exploring the Mind" series and was cosponsored by the University of Michigan Department of Psychology.

The light sources of the future will be LED bulbs. They are efficient, last a long time, and some can even change colors on the fly. But why are they so expensive? Come learn about what LEDs are, why they are so important, and some of the ways we’re trying to make LED lighting affordable for everyone.

About Andrew: Andrew is a first-year in the Applied Physics program at the University of Michigan. He studies the many materials that we use to interact with light, and is interested in ways these materials become inefficient when we push them to extremes. He does all of his research using supercomputers, so instead of wearing a lab coat and glasses, he sit in front of a big computer monitor all day. When he’s not doing that, you’ll most likely find him wearing spandex (on a bike), playing board games, or ogling books at Literati.

The U-M Center for the History of Medicine and AADL are pleased to host Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David Oshinsky, Ph.D., as he discusses his new book, Bellevue: Three Centuries of Medicine and Mayhem at America's Most Storied Hospital, a riveting history of New York's iconic public hospital that charts the turbulent rise of American medicine.

Bellevue Hospital, on New York City's East Side, occupies a colorful and horrifying place in the public imagination: a den of mangled crime victims, vicious psychopaths, assorted derelicts, lunatics, and exotic-disease sufferers. In its two and a half centuries of service, there was hardly an epidemic or social catastrophe—or groundbreaking scientific advance—that did not touch Bellevue.

Oshinsky chronicles the history of America's oldest hospital and in so doing also charts the rise of New York to the nation's preeminent city, the path of American medicine from butchery and quackery to a professional and scientific endeavor, and the growth of a civic institution.

With its diverse, ailing, and unprotesting patient population, the hospital was a natural laboratory for the nation's first clinical research. It treated tens of thousands of Civil War soldiers, launched the first civilian ambulance corps and the first nursing school for women, pioneered medical photography and psychiatric treatment, and spurred New York City to establish the country's first official Board of Health.

The latter decades of the twentieth century brought rampant crime, drug addiction, and homelessness to the nation's struggling cities—problems that called a public hospital's very survival into question. It took the AIDS crisis to cement Bellevue's enduring place as New York's ultimate safety net, the iconic hospital of last resort. Lively, page-turning, and fascinating, Bellevue is essential American history.

David Oshinsky, Ph.D is a professor in the NYU Department of History and director of the Division of Medical Humanities at the NYU School of Medicine. In 2005, he won the Pulitzer Prize in History for Polio: An American Story. His articles and reviews appear regularly in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.

Much of military science is necessarily preoccupied with the study of violence, the development of strategy, of weapons and armaments, of warfare. But not all the battles of war involve drone technology and Bradley Personnel Vehicle. On a daily basis, soldiers also fight more esoteric battles against less considered adversaries—for example, exhaustion, shock, panic, disease, extreme heat, cataclysmic noise, gastrointestinal distress, and assorted waterfowl.

In Grunt: The Curious Science of Humans at War, America’s favorite science writer, Mary Roach explores those aspects of war that no one makes movies about—not the killing but the keeping alive.

"Grunt" salutes the scientists and surgeons running along in the wake of combat, lab coats flapping, and celebrates the courage of people like Navy flight surgeon Angus Rupert, who flew blindfolded and upside down to test a vibrating suit designed to help pilots fly by feel should they become blinded or disoriented, and Captain Herschel Flowers of the Army Medical Research Laboratory, who injected himself with cobra venom to test the possibility of building immunity.

With her characteristic sense of humor, her indefatigable enthusiasm, and her sharp eye for telling detail, Roach, as always, proves to be the ideal tour guide. When it comes to military history, not all heroes carry guns, and not all heroism happens in a burst of cinematic glory. In "Grunt," the heroes engage in dizzying flights of unorthodox thinking. They experiment with flame-resistant textiles, zippers, earplugs, shark repellent, and erectile tissue. If necessary, they lob chickens at airplanes.

Mary Roach is the New York Times best-selling author of Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife, Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex, Packing For Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void, and Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal. She lives in Oakland, California.

Fluid intelligence is often defined as the ability to reason about and solve novel problems. What are some factors that influence this ability? Can it be enhanced?

In this talk, Dr. John Jonides, Edward E. Smith Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience, reviews wide-ranging research that examines the effects of exercise, drugs, cognitive training, and brain stimulation as possible interventions to enhance cognitive abilities, including intelligence.

This program was part of the Fall "Exploring the Mind" series cosponsored by The University of Michigan Department of Psychology.

As we learn motor skills we use two memory systems. These systems are separate and can compete with each other. My talk will go over some evidence of this interaction within the brain.

About Lorraine: Lorraine is a PhD candidate in the School of Kinesiology at the University of Michigan. She obtained a Bachelor’s degree in Biology and a Master’s degree in Genetics from the University of Western Brittany (Universit de Bretagne Occidentale. She now works on understanding how learning new motor skills affects brain networks.

Pop quiz, hot shot! Bring your sexual health A game and we’ll see what you really know about sex. Be the first to answer correctly and win a sexy prize.

About Beth: Beth is the founder of S3 Safe Sex Store and has a Master’s of Public Health specializing in sexual health awareness and prevention of STDs and unintended pregnancies. She has been educating about and promoting sexual health to normalize sex for over 20 years.

Obsessions are “sticky” thoughts, images or impulses that occur over and over again and feel uncontrollable. Compulsions are repetitive behaviors or rituals that someone uses to get rid of the obsessions. Together they make up obsessive compulsive disorder, or OCD. Hear about OCD and exposure and response prevention (ERP), an evidence-based treatment for the mental health disorder that affects approximately 3.3 million people in the United States.

About Sara: Sara is a clinical social worker in the department of outpatient psychiatry at the University of Michigan Health System. She has a Bachelor’s degree in psychology from Michigan State University (Go Green! Sorry, Ann Arbor) and a Master’s in Social Work from the University of Michigan. She completed her internship and fellowship at the University of Michigan Child and Adolescent Outpatient Psychiatry clinic, where she is now a staff social worker. She provides psychotherapy for children of all ages and their families. Besides OCD, her clinical interests include anxiety disorders, autism spectrum disorder, depression, and trauma/grief. She was born and raised in Southeast Michigan and lives with her partner, Alex. Together they have two beautiful (furry) “children” — Phoebe the dog and Bu the cat, whom she talks about constantly.