Chen Yu

This lecture course is designed to provide students with an understanding of the process of braindevelopment from embryogenesis through adulthood with emphasis on the role of the environment in directing this process. Initial lectures will focus on the origins of the central nervous system, including topics such as the organization of the brain, neurogenesis, cellular differentiation, migration and targeting of neurons, synapse formation and refinement of the nervous system. In the second half of the course, lectures will focus on the infant brain and the role of experiences during infancy in modifying brain function. Topics will also include recent advances in our understanding of the role of gene-environment interactions and epigenetic programming and shaping brain development. Finally, the adaptive vs. maladaptive outcomes of environmental modifications to the nervous system will be discussed. Throughout the course, students will be guided through examples of how changes in the developing nervous system lead to behavioral patterns both in infancy and adulthood.

Seminars in Developmental Psychology. Three lecture hours a week for one semester. May be repeated for credit when the topics vary. Prerequisite: Graduate standing and consent of instructor.

Seminars in Developmental Psychology. Three lecture hours a week for one semester. May be repeated for credit when the topics vary. Prerequisite: Graduate standing and consent of instructor.

"Natural Human Behavior in the Real World"

The field of psychological research has been largely influenced by the successful methods of experimental psychology in the 20th century. Many psychology findings have been obtained from simplified and controlled lab situations. However, it has become clear that many of those laboratory findings only hold true in the deprived laboratory conditions but cannot be generalized and replicated in the real world. The goal of this course is to train students in a number of fundamental skills that they will use to conduct psychological research “in the wild” to examine and understand human behavior in complex real-world environments. With a hands-on training approach, students will learn how to design experiments that will be conducted in the real world, how to use mobile sensing technology to collect behavioral data, and how to discover behavioral patterns by analyzing fine-grained data. Students will conduct a behavioral study with the aim to provide research evidence to overcome the challenges that the real world poses, such as the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on campus life. Potential research ideas include, for example, pedestrian visual attention to maintain social distancing, student attention assessment during on-line versus in-person instruction, and effectiveness of in-vivo versus simulation training.