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Mind Controlled

Sunday, May 31, 2015
3:30 pm - 5:00 pm

How much control do we have over our impulses and behavior? How much do environmental factors affect our actions? And when do children begin to develop a sense of free will? This program hosted an eye-opening discussion on implicit bias, impulse control, and free will that covered everything from new fMRI research on how brain chemistry and behavior are affected by environmental factors, to current studies of children and when they develop biases.

The World Science Festival’s annual salon series offers in-depth conversations with leading scientists, extending the discussion of the Festival’s premier public programs to graduate students, postdocs, faculty, and well-informed members of the general public.

 This program is part of the Big Ideas Series, made possible with support from the John Templeton Foundation.

Photograph: Jon Smith

Moderator

Emily SenayPhysician Journalist

Emily Senay is a physician, medical and public health educator, broadcast journalist, and author. She is an assistant professor of Medicine in the Department of Preventive Medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and a clinician in the World Trade Center Health Program in New York City.

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Participants

Heather BerlinNeuroscientist

Heather Berlin is a cognitive neuroscientist, assistant professor of Psychiatry at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and Visiting Scholar at the New York Psychoanalytic Society and Institute.

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Yarrow DunhamPsychologist

Yarrow Dunham is an assistant professor of psychology and a faculty member in the Cognitive Science Program at Yale. He is also the director of Yale’s Social Cognitive Development Lab. He received his B.A. in philosophy and English literature from UC Santa Barbara and his doctorate in developmental psychology from Harvard University.

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Tamar KushnirDevelopmental Psychologist

Tamar Kushnir is an associate professor at Cornell University and the director of the Early Childhood Cognition Laboratory. Her research examines the origins of causal and social knowledge in early childhood, and how children acquire this knowledge through play, observation, and social interaction.

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