In the same way that microscopes and telescopes have allowed scientists to explore the mysteries of cells and the cosmos more deeply, a new research instrument based in the College of Human Ecology promises to reveal many of the hidden factors driving human behavior. The device, a powerful 3-tesla MRI machine, is enabling new areas of research at the confluence of the social, biological, and physical sciences.

By allowing the college’s behavioral scientists to peer inside working brains, the technology will help them to generate new insights into the development and function of the brain—a massively complex organ that researchers are only beginning to decode. Cornell scientists, by linking the biological mechanisms of the brain to behavior, are making important discoveries related to Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative diseases, risk-taking and decision-making, and overall cognitive health and development. Read more

Tamar Kushnir, the Evalyn Edwards Milman Assistant Professor of Human Development, is quoted in this story about how babies think.

In the past few decades we've learned that babies' brains are structurally quite different from those of adults and they also function in a way that makes them better than adults at learning new things. In other words, babies seem to be specially designed for exploration and finding out how things work. They're little scientists…at least, that is, until those exploratory habits get replaced over time by less flexible thinking styles. Read more

Another story on the research by Gary Evans and colleagues highlights the potential negative impact of stress and poverty experienced during childhood has on the ability to regulate emotions in adulthood.

The research showed that children who grew up poor were more likely to experience emotional regulation problems later on in adulthood, and also had differences in activity in the amygdala and prefrontal cortex, suggesting that the stress-burden of growing up poor may be an underlying mechanism that accounts for the relationship between poverty as a child and how well your brain works as an adult. Read more

From Yahoo Health, September 16, 2013

Human memory is notoriously unreliable, especially when it comes to details. Scientists have found that prompting an eyewitness to remember more can generate details that are outright false but that feel just as correct to the witness as actual memories.

In day-to-day life, this isn’t a bug; it’s a feature. We can’t possibly remember every tiny detail we see, but our memories would feel incomplete if there were big swaths of gray running through them. So the brain fills in the details as best it can, borrowing from other memories and the imagination in order to build what feels like a complete picture. Read more

From Psychology Today, September 18, 2013

A recent review article by Cornell University Professor Ritch Savin-Williams and his graduate student Zhana Vragalova described four main research findings about those who describe themselves as mostly heterosexual: 1) they have a distinct pattern of attractions and are more likely than exclusively heterosexuals to have some same-sex behavior; 2) They are well represented in the population; 3) Their “mostly heterosexual” orientation was relatively stable over time; and 4) This label was subjectively meaningful to those who adopted it. Read more

From The New York Times, September 18, 2013

When it comes to taking care of aging mothers, biology is destiny. Or, to be more precise, biology plus geography equals destiny. Or, to quote The Shirelles circa 1961, if you’re the daughter who lives closest when your mother needs help: “Baby, it’s you.” We’ve known for a long time that despite decades of social change, elder care remains largely a female task. Most studies find that women account for about two-thirds of caregivers. We know it can be a very tough job. But there’s a lot about how certain women wind up becoming caregivers that we don’t know. “There’s all this research on the effects of caregiving on people and virtually nothing about who is the one who winds up doing it,” said Karl Pillemer, a gerontologist at Cornell University. “Why does Jane become the caregiver when Billy and Betty don’t?” Read more

From the Bronfenbrenner Center for Translational Research

To understand adolescent behavior, it is helpful to look at what is happening in the adolescent brain – and this is a story that begins much earlier in life. In the developing human brain, there is a massive early overgrowth in the number of connections or synapses between neurons (thus allowing a high degree of malleability in the brains of the very young). This early overabundance of synapses is countered by two major bouts of synaptic pruning, the first of which occurs in early childhood (around age three) and the second of which occurs during adolescence. Pruning drives a 50 to 55% decrease in the number of synapses across the entire cortex between late childhood and early adulthood. This cortical thinning is a marker of brain maturation and is associated with more adult-like cognitive abilities.  Read more

Those of us in the field of human development are excited by President Obama's decision in April to commit $100 million in the coming year's federal budget to a new proposal to map the activity of every neuron in the human brain, shedding new light on the brain's role in decision-making, memory, physical health, and other areas.

Read the full story by Charles Brainerd, in the Human Ecology Magazine

By Daniel Aloi
Reprinted from Cornell Chronicle, June 11, 2013

President David Skorton delivers the State of the University Address in Bailey Hall during Reunion June 8.

President David Skorton focused on Cornell’s accomplished faculty and the strategic priority of faculty renewal in his State of the University Address to an audience of alumni and friends June 8 in Bailey Hall during Reunion Weekend 2013.

“So many of you have warm memories of your professors at Cornell … who awakened an interest in you, ignited a spark, provided a foundation of knowledge, opened doors, guided you,” he said. “You remember the faculty members who taught you and mentored you and helped set you on your life’s path – and who, in many cases, have cheered you on and offered continuing counsel over the years.

“Since its founding … the faculty at Cornell have been the heart of the university, and they continue to make Cornell the acclaimed and heavily sought-after institution it is today,” he continued.

“Cornell faculty today are at the top of their game,” Skorton said. “But like all of us, they are getting older.”

Last fall, more than 43 percent of the faculty was over age 55 and more than 13 percent was 65 to 74. “Over the next decade, we expect to have to recruit up to a third of our faculty and our superb staff,” Skorton said. “That presents us with a once-in-a-generation opportunity to maintain strength across all areas of this university while building leadership in selected areas of strategic importance – and we are seizing the moment.”

Cornell has hired about 150 new faculty members in Ithaca and around 170 at Weill Cornell Medical College in the last two years alone, Skorton said.

Three deans were among senior faculty recruits this year, including Gretchen Ritter ’83, attending her 30th reunion, who will helm the College of Arts and Sciences beginning Aug. 1.

“They are joined by talented, even younger faculty, many of them hired as part of the $50 million Faculty Renewal Sesquicentennial Challenge,” which has raised more than $40 million towards it goal, Skorton continued.

He singled out several new sesquicentennial and faculty fellows, all assistant professors, including Eilyan Bitar of electrical and computer engineering, whose research includes “the integration of renewable energy resources like wind and solar into the power grid”; Elena Belogolovsky of human resource studies in the ILR School; Julio Giordano, an animal science and dairy cattle management researcher in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences; Ishion Hutchinson, English, who led MFA poetry seminars this spring; and Nathan Spreng of human development in the College of Human Ecology, who directs the Laboratory of Brain and Cognition.

Other notable recruits Skorton highlighted were Deborah Estrin, the first professor at the Cornell NYC Tech campus and a professor of public health at Weill Cornell Medical College; cancer researcher Dr. Lewis Cantley, Ph.D. ’75, who will direct the newly established Cancer Center at Weill Cornell and NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital; Dr. Augustine Choi, one of Wired magazine’s “50 People Who Will Change the World” in 2012, joining Weill Cornell in August as chair of the Department of Medicine and physician-in-chief at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell.

“In this final push to Cornell’s sesquicentennial, faculty renewal remains our first priority, along with accessibility of a Cornell education,” Skorton said.

He quoted the late Cornell psychology professor Harry Levin, Arts and Sciences dean from 1974 to ’78: “‘Our aim is to get the best faculty and to turn them loose. They must be totally independent, responsible only to the quality of their teaching and their scholarship. All we ask of them is that they be geniuses.’”

“You can be proud that Cornell has reached a new high point,” Skorton concluded. “Never in our history have we been stronger or better positioned to meet the needs of our students and the challenges of the world.”