Floating Brains
Please find our guests for this series by alphabetic order by surname
Per Borghammer
Prof. Per Borghammer is a Professor of Nuclear Medicine and Neuroscience at the Aaarhus University Hospital in Denmark. Per uses complex nuclear medicine to safely study the progression of neurological diseases and how the metabolism of our brains and bodies change while people are suffering from conditions like Parkinson’s. While it may sound counter-intuitive to study a sick patient with a radioactive material Per’s work uses minuscule amounts of the isotype which have no effect on the patient’s health but let scientists study how different chemicals are being used by the body in different locations. In his episode, we talk about how dopamine degeneration can begin in the neurons used by the intestines to coordinate digestion and through the connections between the intestines and the brain the loss of dopamine-producing cells continues
Alan Jern
Dr. Alan Jern teaches psychology, including new courses in social and computational psychology. He is a cognitive scientist and uses computational models and behavioural experiments to study how people think and reason. Dr. Jern’s research interests include how people think about other people, how people learn and use concepts, and how people revise their beliefs after seeing new evidence. Check out his personal web page.
Meltem Yucel
Meltem Yucel is a sixth-year Developmental Psychology Ph.D. candidate at the University of Virginia working with Dr. Amrisha Vaish. She is also a fellow of the International Max Planck Research School on the Life Course (LIFE Academy), Student Affiliate at the Center for the Science of Moral Understanding, and Research Affiliate Intern at the Cornell University’s Early Childhood Cognition Lab.
Meltem is primarily interested in the development of social cognition and morality, specifically focusing on how and when children become moral beings. Using behavioural, eye-tracking, pupillometry, and network analysis methods, her research investigates how children and adults understand and enforce norms, and the role of affect in moral decision-making (Yucel, Hepach, & Vaish, 2020; Yucel & Vaish, 2018).