Posts Tagged School of Arts and Sciences

A series of studies with infants 5 to 7 months old has shown that the portion of babies’ brains responsible for visual processing responds not just to the presence of visual stimuli, but also to the mere expectation of visual stimuli.

Our brains track moving objects by applying one of the algorithms your phone’s GPS uses, according to researchers at the University of Rochester. This same algorithm also explains why we are fooled by several motion-related optical illusions, including the sudden “break” of baseball’s well known “curveball illusion.”

Children living in low-income households who endure family instability and emotionally distant caregivers are at risk of having impaired cognitive abilities according to new research from Rochester’s Mt. Hope Family Center.

Each year, seniors in the College are invited to nominate a high school teacher for consideration for the Singer Family Prize. The four award winners receive a plaque and $3,000, as well as $2,500 for their school.

Narayana Kocherlakota, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis and a leading scholar of monetary and financial economics, has been appointed as the inaugural Lionel W. McKenzie Professor of Economics. His appointment is effective January 1, 2016.

As social creatures, we tend to mimic each other’s posture, laughter, and other behaviors, including how we speak. Now a new study from brain and cognitive sciences researchers shows that people with similar views tend to more closely mirror, or align, each other’s speech patterns. In addition, people who are better at compromising align more closely.

Thirty-three scientists, inventors, and entrepreneurs will have three minutes each to present their innovative idea in a rapid-fire competition to win a spot at the prestigious Falling Walls Lab Finale in Berlin.

The institute will serve as a center for performance programs on the River Campus, aiming to further inspire students with or without prior training or experience to explore a variety of aesthetic art forms and opportunities. The institute will strengthen the relationships among the College, the Eastman School of Music, and the Memorial Art Gallery.

Dean of Arts & Sciences Gloria Culver has announced the creation of a Humanities Center, which will support multidisciplinary engagement around literature, history, the arts, and philosophies of cultures past and present. Culver and interim director of the new center Joan Shelley Rubin have chosen “Humanities at the Crossroads: Charting Our Future” as the center’s theme for its first year. Faculty and students will organize research projects, seminars and symposia around the theme.

Gloria Culver has been appointed dean of the School of Arts & Sciences, effective immediately. Culver has been serving as interim dean since July 1, 2014.