CANCELLED - CMBC LECTURE / POSTPONED | Cynthia Moss, Psychological & Brain Sciences, Johns Hopkins University (lecture details forthcoming)
Co-sponsored with Frontiers in Neuroscience, POSTPONED.
University Event Topic: Lectures & Meetings. School: Emory College. Department / Organization: Center for Mind Brain and Culture. Series: CMBC Lectures / Frontiers in Neuroscience. Building/Room: Whitehead Bldg. Speaker/Presenter: Cynthia Moss
Psychological & Brain Science
Johns Hopkins University. Cost: Free.
Friday, March 20, 2026, 12:00 PM – 1:00 PM.
CMBC LECTURE | Ken Paller "Sleep-based Memory Reactivation and Opportunities for Better Benefits from Sleep"
Co-sponsored by Department of Psychology
"Sleep-based Memory Reactivation and Opportunities for Better Benefits from Sleep"
Sleep is critical not only for its restorative benefits but also for its contributions to memory function. Memory reactivation occurs covertly during sleep. Corresponding changes in the brain move memory consolidation forward, enhancing the likelihood of later remembering and stoking creativity. Our habits of overnight memory reactivation—and the specific memories we reactivate each night—influence our daytime psychological well-being. What transpires in our brains after we fall asleep may seem beyond volitional control. To the contrary, it can be strategically modified to seek various benefits. We have developed methods to modify sleep-based memory reactivation using sensory stimulation, and studies with these methods have uncovered various facets of this covert processing, including dreaming. We’ve also sought insights through studies of the well-documented methods of contemplative…
University Event Topic: Lectures & Meetings. School: Emory College. Department / Organization: Center for Mind Brain and Culture. Psychology Department. Series: CMBC Lectures. Building/Room: Atwood Chemistry Center. Speaker/Presenter: Ken Paller
Neuroscience
Northwestern University. Cost: Free.
Monday, March 23, 2026, 4:00 PM – 5:00 PM.
Atwood 360.
CMBC LECTURE | Chris Krupenye "The Social Minds of Humans and Other Apes"
Co-sponsored by Emory Departments of Anthropology and Psychology
"The Social Minds of Humans and Other Apes"Humans are defined in no small part by the complexity of our social lives, and the cognitive mechanisms we possess for making sense of our social worlds. These capacities support unique forms of communication, cooperation, and culture. But how did they evolve, and to what extent do they rely on language or other uniquely human representational machinery? To address these questions, I will explore the social lives of our closest relatives, chimpanzees and bonobos, and present a number of controlled experiments probing their cognition. These studies reveal that other apes gather a diversity of knowledge about their social worlds, and share with humans numerous capacities for tracking and predicting the behavior of their groupmates. These rich foundations of human social intelligence therefore can operate in the absence of language, and very likely evolved at least 6-9 million years ago in the ancestors…
University Event Topic: Lectures & Meetings. School: Emory College. Department / Organization: Center for Mind Brain and Culture. Psychology Department. Series: CMBC Lectures. Building/Room: White Hall. Speaker/Presenter: Chris Krupenye
Psychological & Brain Sciences
Johns Hopkins University. Cost: Free.
Thursday, March 26, 2026, 4:00 PM – 5:00 PM.
White Hall 205.
FILM SCREENING + DISCUSSION: Werner Herzog's "Theater of Thought"
Join Frontiers in Neuroscience and the Center for Mind, Brain, and Culture for a screening of Werner Herzog's "Theater of Thought" plus discussion afterwards.
Pizza, snacks, and drinks available.
University Event Topic: Special Event. School: Emory College. Department / Organization: Center for Mind Brain and Culture. Neuroscience and Behavioral Biology. Building/Room: Whitehead Bldg. Speaker/Presenter: . Cost: Free.
Friday, April 3, 2026, 12:00 PM – 2:30 PM.
Whitehead Auditorium.
CMBC LECTURE | Raphaël Julliard "The Creative Engine and the Sense of Rightness"
“The Creative Engine and the Sense of Rightness”My research operates at the intersection of anthropology, the psychology of creativity, and micro-phenomenology. It is driven by a central question: in the uncertainty of the creative act, how do creators know when it works?
While traditional approaches often rely on retrospective reconstruction, my work focuses on the "creative engine": the real-time feedback loop between Action (what the maker does) and Affect (how the emerging form acts back upon the maker). I posit that creativity is not a cognitive planning process, but a navigational skill steered by a pre-reflective affective criterion—a felt sense of fitness we conceptualize as "Rightness"—guiding the artist between the risks. To study this, I have moved from historical analysis to experimental ethnography, developing a novel methodology—The Researcher-As-Obstacle (RAO)—designed to investigate the creative mind in action. My goal is to establish a rigorous anthropology of this navigational competence,…
University Event Topic: Lectures & Meetings. School: Emory College. Department / Organization: Center for Mind Brain and Culture. Series: CMBC Lectures. Building/Room: Atwood Chemistry Center. Speaker/Presenter: Raphaël Julliard
Anthropology of the Creative Process | Laboratoire d’Anthropologie Sociale, Ehess, Paris, France. Event Open To: Emory Community. Cost: Free.
Friday, April 3, 2026, 4:00 PM – 5:00 PM.
PAIS 230.
CMBC WORKSHOP | "The Cognitive Science of Compassion" (details forthcoming)
Details forthcoming.
University Event Topic: Lectures & Meetings. A Year of Compassion. School: Emory College. Department / Organization: Center for Mind Brain and Culture. Series: CMBC Workshop. Building/Room: Psychology Building. Event Open To: Private Event. Cost: Free.
Saturday, May 16, 2026 – Sunday, May 17, 2026.
By Invitation Only.