C u lt u r e , b r a i n & D e v e l o p m e n t

at H a m p s h i r e C o l l e g e

The Culture, Brain, and Development Program (CBD), funded by the Foundation for Psychocultural
Research (FPR), formally links Hampshire’s Schools of Cognitive Science, Social Science, and
Natural Science in order to generate new cross-school courses and activities at the intersection
of neuroscience, anthropology, psychology, and related fields. It provides an arena in which
perspectives from a range of disciplines are brought to bear on questions such as “How does the
brain make it natural to acquire, use, and create culture?” “What can neuroscience tell us about
the nature of consciousness?” and “How does life experience influence the expression of genes?”
CBD offers interdisciplinary courses, sponsors seminars, lectures, and conferences, and provides
individual grants for original student and faculty research.
Admissions Office
Sample First-Year Course Sample Courses
Hampshire College
Exploring the Unconscious Mind At Hampshire
This course will investigate the unconscious mind and how it Animating the Brain
893 West Street
works. It will employ different approaches to the unconscious Apes & Language
The Biology & Sociology of Sports
Amherst, MA 01002 mind, primarily based on information-processing and
Biopower, Biopolitics & Bare Life
psychodynamic models of the mind. The course will investigate Cognitive Development
tel. 877.937.4267
unconscious processes in perception, attention, memory, Consciousness Considered
fax 413.559.5631 judgement, emotion, social behavior, intuition, and expertise. Consciousness Reconsidered
A major question the course will ask is how much of what Crafting a Story of the Self: Perspectives on
the mind does requires no conscious awareness and is, in the Development of Personality
Creating Families
fact, inaccessible to consciousness. The course will also survey
Critical Psychology
cross-cultural differences in conceptions of how the mind Evolutionary Biology
works. After examining the unconscious mind, the final part Exploring the Unconscious Mind
of the course will consider what the functions and purposes of Human Biological Variation
consciousness might be. Human Physiology
Introductory Topics in Culture, Brain
& Development: Emotion
Law, Identity & Bioscience
Student Project Titles Minds, Brains & Machines:
Facial Perceptual Narrowing in Infants the 50 Key Ideas
Producing Youth/Culture
Child Labor in the Carpet Industry in Nepal Science & Religion: the History &
Fragile X Syndrome: from Neuron to Cognition, an Interactive Philosophy of an Uneasy Relationship
and Educational Exhibition
Through the Consortium
Constructivist Physics-of-Energy Child Development (UMass)
Educational Attainment in Post-Apartheid South Africa Cognition & Instruction Design (SC)
Feminism & Knowledge (MHC)
Dialectical Variation in West Galway Hormones & Behavior (AC)
Autism Spectrum Disorder in Silicon Valley Language & Cognitive Development
(UMass)
Comparison Between Chinese and Korean Psychiatrists’ Mental Science & Gender (AC)
Health Practices Theory of Mind (SC)
Socioeconomic Status and Autism Spectrum Disorder
Slim to None: An Experimental Eating Disorder Education
Program

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Faculty profiles
Barbara Yngvesson, director of CBD, dean of the School of Social Science, professor of anthropology
Barbara Yngvesson received her B.A. from Barnard College and her Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley. Her current work,
which is funded by the National Science Foundation, focuses on issues of identity and belonging in intercountry adoption, and on the
hierarchies of nation, race, and class that are constituted in adoption practices. Her areas of teaching include the politics of law, family and
kinship, and cultural and political theory.

Neil Stillings, CBD steering committee, dean of the School of Cognitive Science, professor of psychology
Neil Stillings has taught at Hampshire since 1971. His Ph.D. is from Stanford and he holds a B.A. from Amherst College. He has been
the principal investigator for two major National Science Foundation-supported projects to study science learning in college students. His
interests include learning, visual and auditory perception, and the psychology of language. Music perception, cognition and culture, and the
psychology of science learning are current research interests.

Jane Couperous, CBD steering committee, assistant professor of developmental cognitive neuroscience
Jane W. Couperus received her B.A. in psychology and music from Wesleyan, an M.A. in applied developmental psychology from
Claremont Graduate University and a Ph.D. in child development with a minor in neuroscience from the Institute of Child Development
at the University of Minnesota. Her primary research interests are in the development of attention, learning, memory, and their
neurological substrates. Her research uses both behavioral and physiological techniques (primarily event-related potentials) to gain a better
understanding of the brain over the course of development.

Laura Sizer, CBD steering committee, assistant professor of philosophy

Laura Sizer holds a B.A. in philosophy from Boston University and a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Wisconsin Madison. She
specializes in the philosophy of mind and philosophy of psychology/cognitive science. Her research currently focuses on affect (emotions
and moods), but she is also interested in questions about consciousness, representation, music, and personal identity. Sizer also teaches
topics in applied ethics, the philosophy of language, philosophy of biology, and the relationship between science and religion.

Cynthia Gill, CBD steering committee, assistant professor of physiology

Cynthia Gill received her B.S. in biology from the University of North Carolina and her Ph.D. in neuroendocrinology from the University
of Virginia. Gill studies neural regulation and connectivity in response to hormonally-mediated environmental cues. Her interests span the
areas of human and comparative physiology, neuroscience, endocrinology, herpetology, conservation biology, and behavioral biology.

Facilities and resources

Hampshire is one of the few undergraduate institutions to be equipped with an event-related potential (ERP) lab, where the researcher can
present a subject with a stimulus and simultaneously record the subject’s brainwave activity. In this way, researchers can glean information
about the time, course, and to a lesser degree, the location, of brain activity correlated with sensory perceptual and cognitive stimulus
processing. The Foundation for Psychocultural Research (FPR) funding through CBD allows Division III students to conduct complex
individual experiments in this laboratory, and several students have presented their findings at professional conferences.

The CBD program offers a number of funding opportunities for students who meet the CBD concentration requirements and are
conducting a CBD project or research in their Division II or Division III work, or are presenting their work at an academic conference, or
design a CBD internship. Research grants are in the range of $300–$2,000, and can be used for necessary research-related costs, including
small equipment or software, materials, supplies, payments to research subjects, and some travel expenses for field study.

The CBD student group provides students with an opportunity to learn from each other and to make connections between topics they had
not previously considered thinking about. Weekly meetings are organized around formal talks by CBD students on the subject of their own
research. The CBD bulletin, written and published by students, profiles current studies in the program, and keeps the community updated
on CBD funded lectures and related events.

www.hampshire.edu