Tag Archives: Adam Anderson

FEATURES


New HD faculty explore the power of identity and positive youth development

Human Development has added two new faculty members this year, Misha Inniss-Thompson and Adam Hoffman. Click here to read more.


Connecting communities with brain science

The Bronfenbrenner Center for Translational Research (BCTR) is launching a new project – the Community Neuroscience Initiative, (CNI) headed by four Human Development faculty, Anthony Burrow, Marlen Gonzalez, Eve De Rosa, and Adam Anderson. All have been engaged in STEM outreach and engagement and envision CNI as a way to build connections between neuroscience research, STEM education, and community empowerment. Click here to read more.


The risk of silence and the underreporting of concussions

Peter Ajayi

Concussion injuries among high school and college athletes have become a central concern in youth sports. Prompt self-reporting of a concussion immediately improves brain recovery and is necessary to reduce second-impact syndrome, rapid swelling of the brain after a person receives a second concussion before symptoms of the first concussion have subsided. Unfortunately, repetitive head injuries in adolescents and young adults are often underreported. Peter Ajayi, HD’19, David Garavito, JD/PhD ’21, and Valerie Reyna, professor of human development, are the first to detail an association between socioeconomic status (SES) and concussion reporting intentions among adolescents and young adults. Click here to read more.


HD students achieve during the COVID-19 pandemic

Despite the restrictions on campus to prevent the spread of COVID-19, graduate and undergraduate students in Human Development persisted and excelled in their research and outreach activities. Click here to read more.


Anthony Burrow

The Bronfenbrenner Center for Translational Research (BCTR) is launching a new project – the Community Neuroscience Initiative, (CNI) headed by four Human Development faculty, Anthony Burrow, Marlen Gonzalez, Eve De Rosa, and Adam Anderson. All have been engaged in STEM outreach and engagement and envision CNI as a way to build connections between neuroscience research, STEM education, and community empowerment. They are excited by community partnerships with scientists that lead to the inception of a project, in contrast to research that typically begins within the university and then involves a community.

Marlen Gonzalez, assistant professor of human development, received a 2021 Cornell Center for Social Sciences fellowship for her project, “The Neuroecology of Space Use, Belonging and Underrepresented Minority experience in Higher Education.” Although most colleges have offices for diversity and inclusion and have used

Marlen Gonzalez

strategies to create a "sense of belonging" to improve racial disparities in graduation rates, they lack ways to implement neurological moderators. Dr. Gonzalez proposes a neuroecological model to facilitate students’ context-based memory and enhance connectivity between memory and motivational neural systems. This approach would study, for example, the ways in which the social and physical interactions of students in a college environment could impact the neurochemistry of the brain involved in memory and motivation. Dr. Gonzalez wants science about the brain easily understood by all people, not just scientists, and this knowledge can empower communities.

Adam Anderson and Eve De Rosa

Eve De Rosa, Adam Anderson, and Anthony Burrow co-founded and co-direct, "The Brain Days Program." Dr. De Rosa has been a leader in the CHE community as Dean of Students and a Pathways to Social Justice fellow. She made headlines as the first woman, person of color, and professor from the College of Human Ecology (CHE) to be elected to Cornell's Dean of Faculty. She and Dr. Anderson co-direct the Affect and Cognition Lab (ACLAB). Dr. Burrow directs the BCTR and the Program for Research on Youth Development and Engagement (PRYDE).

As part of The Brain Days Program, once a month, a team of undergraduates travels from Cornell to the Syracuse Academy of Sciences charter school to deliver hands-on, interactive lessons to elementary students on topics such as parts of the brain, the way neurons in the brain connect to each other, and how the brain is involved in emotions and self-control. At the same time, the Cornell students work with Syracuse Academy of Sciences high school student interns who assist with the lessons. The lab has been collecting scientific data on the program, to assess, for example, whether the children enjoy the lessons, and if their academic performance is influenced by the Brain Days program.

 

 

HD TODAY e-NEWS: Insights from Human Development's Research & Outreach

HD TODAY e-NEWS is a quarterly digest of cutting-edge research from the Department of Human Development, College of Human Ecology, Cornell University. Explore the HD Today e-NEWS website at http://hdtoday.human.cornell.edu/ and discover a wide range of resources:


HD TODAY e-NEWS: Insights from Human Development's Research & Outreach

HD TODAY e-NEWS is a quarterly digest of cutting-edge research from the Department of Human Development, College of Human Ecology, Cornell University. Explore the HD Today e-NEWS website at http://hdtoday.human.cornell.edu/ and discover a wide range of resources:

SPRING 2019 ISSUE

Stephen Ceci is elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences

Stephen Ceci, the Helen L. Carr Professor of Developmental Psychology in the College of Human Ecology is elected fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Ceci’s research focuses on understanding real-world problems and settings. His work spans studies of intellectual development; children and the law; and women in science.


Imaging shows distinct pattern for tastes in the brain's taste center

Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and a new method of statistical analysis, Adam Anderson and colleagues have discovered that sweet, sour, salty, and bitter tastes are represented in distinct areas of the taste center in the human brain.


An interview with Valerie Reyna by CCE News

Dr. Valerie Reyna is Lois and Melvin Tukman Professor and has been Department Extension Leader for the Human Development department of the Cornell University College of Human Ecology since 2005. She also directs the Human Neuroscience Institute and co-directs the Center for Behavioral Economics and Decision Research.


The Integrative Neuroscience Salon - where science is a team sport

Dr. Marlen Gonzalez founded the Integrative Neuroscience Salon to create an inclusive community of "neuroscientifically curious" scientists from disparate disciplines, including human development, psychology, communications, engineering, neurobiology, computer science and law to meet and discuss neuroscience research through presentations and papers.


Anthony Burrow explains how 4-H can foster identity and purpose

Anthony Burrow, Professor in the Department of Human Development and co-director of the Bronfenbrenner Center for Translational Research’s Program for Research on Youth Development and Engagement (PRYDE), was interviewed for the podcast "Extension Out Loud." He discusses how exploring identity and sense of purpose helps young people get more out of programs such as 4-H.


Advancing science communication through Fuzzy-Trace Theory

Watch Valerie Reyna's talk at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine's (NASEM) Colloquium on Advancing the Science and Practice of Science Communication: Misinformation About Science in the Public Sphere held in Irvine, CA on April 3-4, 2019 and co-sponsored by Rita Allen Foundation, Science Sandbox, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and The KAVLI Foundation.


 

FEATURES

Stephen Ceci is elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences

Stephen Ceci, the Helen L. Carr Professor of Developmental Psychology in the College of Human Ecology is elected fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Ceci’s research focuses on understanding real-world problems and settings. His work spans studies of intellectual development; children and the law; and women in science.


Imaging shows distinct pattern for tastes in the brain's taste center

Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and a new method of statistical analysis, Adam Anderson and colleagues have discovered that sweet, sour, salty, and bitter tastes are represented in distinct areas of the taste center in the human brain.


An interview with Valerie Reyna by CCE News

Dr. Valerie Reyna is Lois and Melvin Tukman Professor and has been Department Extension Leader for the Human Development department of the Cornell University College of Human Ecology since 2005. She also directs the Human Neuroscience Institute and co-directs the Center for Behavioral Economics and Decision Research.


The Integrative Neuroscience Salon - where science is a team sport

Dr. Marlen Gonzalez founded the Integrative Neuroscience Salon to create an inclusive community of "neuroscientifically curious" scientists from disparate disciplines, including human development, psychology, communications, engineering, neurobiology, computer science and law to meet and discuss neuroscience research through presentations and papers.


MULTIMEDIA

Anthony Burrow explains how 4-H can foster identity and purpose

Anthony Burrow, Professor in the Department of Human Development and co-director of the Bronfenbrenner Center for Translational Research’s Program for Research on Youth Development and Engagement (PRYDE), was interviewed for the podcast "Extension Out Loud." He discusses how exploring identity and sense of purpose helps young people get more out of programs such as 4-H.


Advancing science communication through Fuzzy-Trace Theory

Watch Valerie Reyna's talk at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine's (NASEM) Colloquium on Advancing the Science and Practice of Science Communication: Misinformation About Science in the Public Sphere held in Irvine, CA on April 3-4, 2019 and co-sponsored by Rita Allen Foundation, Science Sandbox, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and The KAVLI Foundation.


 

Cornell Chronicle, March 19, 2019

by Stephen D'Angelo

Researchers long ago mapped sight, hearing and other human sensory systems in the brain. But for taste, which could be considered our most pleasurable sense, precisely where the “gustatory” cortex is and how it works has been a mystery.

Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and a new method of statistical analysis, researchers have discovered the taste center in the human brain by uncovering which parts of the brain distinguish different types of tastes.

Adam Anderson

“We have known that tastes activate the human brain for some time, but not where primary taste types such as sweet, sour, salty and bitter are distinguished,” said Adam Anderson, professor of human development in the College of Human Ecology and senior author of the study, “Distinct Representations of Basic Taste Qualities in the Human Gustatory Cortex,” published March 5 in Nature Communications.

“By using some new techniques that analyze fine-grained activity patterns, we found a specific portion of the insular cortex – an older cortex in the brain hidden behind the neocortex – represents distinct tastes,” Anderson said.

The insular cortex, which separates the frontal and temporal lobes, has long been thought to be the primary sensory area for taste. It also plays a role in other important functions, including visceral and emotional experience.

“The insular cortex represents experiences from inside our bodies,” Anderson said. “So taste is a bit like perceiving our own bodies, which is very different from other external senses such as sight, touch, hearing or smell.”

Previous work has shown a nearby insular region processes information originating from inside the body – from the heart and lungs, for example. In this way, distinct tastes and their associated pleasures may reflect the needs of our body. Taste not only reflects what is on our tongue but also our body’s need for specific nutrients, Anderson said.

The researchers found evidence that could be considered the “sweet” spot in the insula – a specific area where a large ensemble of neurons respond to sweetness stimulation on the tongue.

“While we identified a potential ‘sweet’ spot, its precise location differed across people and this same spot responded to other tastes, but with distinct patterns of activity,” Anderson said. “To know what people are tasting, we have to take into account not only where in the insula is stimulated, but also how.”

Compared with previous animal studies that show distinct activation clusters of basic tastes in the brain, the new study’s results reveal a more complex taste map in the human brain, Anderson said, where the same insular region represents multiple tastes.

“One of the difficulties in prior work on the connection between the brain and taste specifically is that tastes come with strong associated hedonic responses, like sweet tastes good and bitter bad,” he said. “So we have not known if these taste regions are really dedicated to taste, but rather hedonics or palatability of taste. Our research also identified patterns distinguishing liking from disliking in the insula that were distinct from those representing taste quality.”

By comparing different compounds that result in similar taste quality, like the sweetness of glucose versus sucralose, the study also demonstrated that the insula represents taste quality, i.e., “sweet” and not just specific chemicals.

“That we have found a specific region in the insular that distinguishes primary tastes from each other as well as from subjective liking and disliking has provided strong evidence of where and how taste is represented in the human brain,” he said. “While we have long known the cortical areas for our external senses, we now have strong evidence for human gustatory cortex.”

Contributing to the study were Junichi Chikazoe, former postdoctoral researcher in Anderson’s Affect and Cognition Lab; and researchers from Columbia University and the University of Colorado. Funding was provided by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science and the Takeda Science Foundation.

Stephen D’Angelo is assistant director of communications in the College of Human Ecology.

FEATURES

Charles Brainerd to receive G. Stanley Hall Award

Charles Brainerd, professor of human development and human neuroscience, will receive the American Psychological Association’s G. Stanley Hall award for distinguished contributions to developmental science at the APA’s August 2019 meeting in San Francisco.


Assisted-living is better when family and staff communicate

Karl Pillemer, the Hazel E. Reed Professor in Human Development and senior associate dean for research and outreach in the College of Human Ecology, has developed the Partners in Caregiving in Assisted Living Program (PICAL)  to reduce staff-family conflict in assisted living facilities.


Institute for the Social Sciences grant awarded to bethany ojalheto

The Institute for the Social Sciences (ISS) grants awards to faculty to develop new research or seek external funding. bethany ojalehto received funding for her project, "Cognitive Drivers of Environmental Decision Making: Mobilizing Indigenous Ecocentric Conceptual Perspectives in Diverse Contexts."


Our brains are wired to earn money, but not save it

Adam Anderson and Eve De Rosa recently studied why it is hard for people to save money. They found that when people were given the choice, over 90% of the time they chose earning money to saving it. They discuss how our brains may be hard-wired for earning and that saving requires more conscious effort.


Teens old for their grade more likely to enroll in college

Felix Thoemmes uses math models to better understand why high school students who are old for their grade are more likely to enroll in college than students who are young. The article discusses how the age at which one starts school has implications for each student as well as for the class as a whole.


MULTIMEDIA

Robert Sternberg and the Triangular Theory of Love

Robert Sternberg was interviewed on October 9, 2018 for the podcastWhat Makes Us Human?from Cornell University's College of Arts & Sciences. This is the podcast's third season, "What Do We Know About Love?" and Dr. Sternberg discusses his "Triangular Theory of Love."


 

Reprinted from cnbc.com, "Why you'll still have a hard time saving money, even if you get a raise" by Darla Mercado.

Adam Anderson and Eve De Rosa

If you were hoping a raise would help you pad your emergency fund, prepare to be disappointed.

That's because your brain has learned to prioritize earning more money over saving it, according to a recent study from a team of neuroscientists at Cornell University.

"There's this implicit blame that people aren't working hard enough and that the lack of savings is a reflection of work ethic," said Adam K. Anderson, associate professor at Cornell University's College of Human Ecology and co-author of the report. "But the data suggest that while people work a lot and work hard, saving is a problem," he said. Indeed, roughly 55 million people have nothing saved for an emergency, according to Bankrate.com. That's no surprise considering that wage growth has been tepid. Further, workers are grappling with an array of competing priorities, including repaying their student loans and saving for retirement.

Here's how your brain is also keeping you from putting money away.

Monetary reward

The neuroscientists studied 78 men with a mean age of 21 and were told to associate one color with "earning," which would have them gain 30 cents, and another color with "saving," avoiding the loss of 30 cents. Participants were given a timing perception task, which would measure how quickly they responded to the colors and chose to either save or earn. In one experiment, nearly 90 percent of the participants earned more than they saved. Three out of four also reported that they saw the color associated with earning on the screen first, when in reality they were seeing the color that corresponded with saving. "You're performing the same job, and you're earning or saving for an equal amount of work," said Anderson of Cornell. "But at the end of that, it seemed easier to perform the task associated with earning," he said. "They responded more quickly and made more money."

Changing your mentality

The scientists surmised that the preference for earning money over saving is a learned behavior. "It's rational from the brain's perspective: You must earn before you can save," said Anderson. "It could partly be cultural," he said. "We brag about work ethic and earnings, but we don't talk about coming up with a cool savings plan." In order to change up your behavior, practice being mindful of squirreling away cash.

1. Acknowledge the problem: It's no secret that a variety of priorities and expenses are competing for your hard-earned dollars, but be aware that merely making more money won't necessarily solve your problems. That's especially the case if you're blowing your raise instead of pocketing it. "For the majority of people, if you make more money, the savings won't match it," said Anderson.

2. Make the choice to save: Having a slice of your paycheck automatically go toward an emergency savings account can help you build your cash reserves without thinking about it. But if you want to change your mentality on saving versus earning, you should also make the active choice to put away a dollar a day, said Eve De Rosa, associate professor at Cornell University's College of Human Ecology, and co-author of the report. "Saving a dollar a day isn't going to accumulate into a fantastic abundance of savings, but this daily practice of attending to saving makes you mindful," said De Rosa.

3. Think ahead: We prioritize the present and attach less importance to the future, which may factor into why people prefer to earn instead of save. "It helps to think about the future us and what we can do for that person," said Anderson. "You can imagine that people default to 'I should earn more,' but the idea is that you want to save for that person in the future," he said.

FEATURES

The Rhythms of Sign Language

Daniel Casasanto, a new member of the HD faculty, heads an NSF investigation of brain areas activated by hand movements when communicating through ASL.


Range of good feelings key to healthy aging

In a new study led by Anthony Ong, people who experienced the widest range of positive emotions had the lowest levels of inflammation throughout their bodies.


NYC-based research finds interaction with kids is key

Marianella Casasola is working with Head Start Centers and day schools in New York City to promote development of spatial skills and language acquisition in preschoolers.


Seeing eye expressions help us read the mental state of others

New research by Adam Anderson reveals why the eyes offer a window into the soul.


STUDENTS IN THE NEWS

Simulation workshops teach youth about concussion risks

Students in Valerie Reyna's Laboratory for Rational Decision Making welcome the Ithaca Youth Bureau's College Discovery Program for workshops on neuroscience and concussion risks.


The vegetarian identity - it's not just eating vegetables

Daniel Rosenfeld '18 and his adviser Anthony Burrow, have developed a new way of thinking about what it is to be a vegetarian.


2017 CCE Summer Intern Elizabeth David: Child development in an outdoor classroom

Elizabeth Cavic '18 was a 2017 College of Human Ecology CCE Summer Intern working on the project "Enhancing Children’s Play and Parent’s Knowledge in Suffolk County" under the direction of Dr. Marianella Casasola. Read about her internship experience.


MULTIMEDIA

NPR's Science Friday discusses risky decisions and the teenage brain

 


 

The Cornell Chronicle, April 13, 2017.

By Stephen D'Angelo

Adam Anderson

New research by Adam Anderson, professor of human development at Cornell’s College of Human Ecology, reveals why the eyes offer a window into the soul.

According to the recent study, published in Psychological Science Feb. 1, Anderson found that we interpret a person’s emotions by analyzing the expression in their eyes – a process that began as a universal reaction to environmental stimuli and evolved to communicate our deepest emotions.

For example, people in the study consistently associated narrowed eyes – which enhance our visual discrimination by blocking light and sharpening focus – with emotions related to discrimination, such as disgust and suspicion. In contrast, people linked open eyes – which expand our field of vision – with emotions related to sensitivity, like fear and awe.

“When looking at the face, the eyes dominate emotional communication,” Anderson said. “The eyes are windows to the soul likely because they are first conduits for sight. Emotional expressive changes around the eye influence how we see, and in turn, this communicates to others how we think and feel.”

This work builds on Anderson’s research from 2013, which demonstrated that human facial expressions, such as raising one’s eyebrows, arose from universal, adaptive reactions to one’s environment and did not originally signal social communication.

Both studies support Charles Darwin’s 19th-century theories on the evolution of emotion, which hypothesized that our expressions originated for sensory function rather than social communication.

“What our work is beginning to unravel,” said Anderson, “are the details of what Darwin theorized: why certain expressions look the way they do, how that helps the person perceive the world, and how others use those expressions to read our innermost emotions and intentions.”

Anderson and his co-author, Daniel H. Lee, professor of psychology and neuroscience at the University of Colorado, Boulder, created models of six expressions – sadness, disgust, anger, joy, fear and surprise – using photos of faces in widely used databases. Study participants were shown a pair of eyes demonstrating one of the six expressions and one of 50 words describing a specific mental state, such as discriminating, curious, bored, etc. Participants then rated the extent to which the word described the eye expression. Each participant completed 600 trials.

Participants consistently matched the eye expressions with the corresponding basic emotion, accurately discerning all six basic emotions from the eyes alone.

Anderson then analyzed how these perceptions of mental states related to specific eye features. Those features included the openness of the eye, the distance from the eyebrow to the eye, the slope and curve of the eyebrow, and wrinkles around the nose, the temple and below the eye.

The study found that the openness of the eye was most closely related to our ability to read others’ mental states based on their eye expressions. Narrow-eyed expressions reflected mental states related to enhanced visual discrimination, such as suspicion and disapproval, while open-eyed expressions related to visual sensitivity, such as curiosity. Other features around the eye also communicated whether a mental state is positive or negative.

Further, he ran more studies comparing how well study participants could read emotions from the eye region to how well they could read emotions in other areas of the face, such as the nose or mouth. Those studies found the eyes offered more robust indications of emotions.

This study, said Anderson, was the next step in Darwin’s theory, asking how expressions for sensory function ended up being used for communication function of complex mental states.

“The eyes evolved over 500 million years ago for the purposes of sight but now are essential for interpersonal insight,” Anderson said.