CMBC Fall 2026 Faculty Mixer
Please join us and get to know your interdisciplinary community. Meet your Emory colleagues from a variety of research interests & discover important connections and potential collaborators.
Open to all interested faculty. Please RSVP.
University Event Topic: Faculty. Special Event. Community. School: Emory College. Department / Organization: Center for Mind Brain and Culture. Series: Faculty Mixer. Building/Room: Psychology Building. Speaker/Presenter: Dietrich Stout, Director, CMBC
Robert Liu, Associate Director, CMBC. Event Open To: Faculty. Cost: Free. Registration / R.S.V.P. link: https://forms.gle/E5U41SzK8bX7vNaN9. Contact Name: Tamara Beck. Contact Email: emorycmbc@gmail.com.
Tuesday, October 20, 2026, 4:00 PM – 6:00 PM.
CMBC - PAIS 464.
CMBC LECTURE | Melissa Perreault "A diversity of perspectives for inclusive research: Bridging Indigenous and Western ways of knowing"
"A diversity of perspectives for inclusive research: Bridging Indigenous and Western ways of knowing"
It has been well established that a diversity of perspectives leads to greater innovation and scientific advancements. However, the integration of diverse perspectives can be daunting for some due to a lack of understanding, fear of punitive actions when errors are made, or simply the lack of desire to put in the work. The goal of this talk is to demonstrate the value of diverse perspectives in enhancing both breadth of knowledge and humility in research and clinical practices for brain health. Highlighting some common features of Indigenous epistemologies that are also significant components of Euro-Western science, some of the core features inherent in traditional ways of knowing, learning, teaching, exploring, and communicating in Indigenous cultures will be described. Artificial intelligence and neurotechnology, and the associated risks of colonial entrenchment, will also be discussed. As neuroscience…
University Event Topic: Lectures & Meetings. School: Emory College. Department / Organization: Center for Mind Brain and Culture. Series: CMBC Lectures | Frontiers in Neuroscience | AXON. Building/Room: Whitehead Biomedical Research Building. Speaker/Presenter: Melissa Perrault
Professor, Ontario Veterinary College, Department of Biological Sciences | University of Guelph, Canada. Event Open To: Emory Community. Cost: Free.
Friday, October 30, 2026, 12:00 PM – 1:00 PM.
CMBC LECTURE | Talia Dan-Cohen "The Limits of Complexity"
"The Limits of Complexity"
Over the past few decades, reduction and simplification have become conspicuous villains in certain corners of the humanities and humanistic social sciences. They have been attributed primary responsibility for failed modernist schemes, environmental degradation, and a vast array of social ills. Meanwhile, complexity—the term most often opposed to both reduction and simplification—has gained broad purchase as both a description of how things really are, and as an epistemic virtue. Since simplicity is bad and sometimes violent, complexity is ipso facto a good thing. In this talk, I examine some different sites and discourses in which complexity has played an important role over the past century. I show that the ubiquity of “complexity” has been underwritten by vastly different—and sometimes conflicting—projects. In so doing, I give a counterintuitive account of how “complexity” got to be everywhere.
University Event Topic: Lectures & Meetings. School: Emory College. Department / Organization: Center for Mind Brain and Culture. Series: CMBC Lectures. Building/Room: Psychology Building. Speaker/Presenter: Talia Dan-Cohen
Associate Professor of Sociocultural Anthropology
Associate Director of the Center for the Humanities
Department of Anthropology | Washington University in St. Louis. Event Open To: Emory Community. Cost: Free.
Friday, November 6, 2026, 4:00 PM – 5:00 PM.
CMBC LECTURE | Robert Wilson "The Role of Information and Randomization in Exploration and Exploitation"
"The Role of Information and Randomization in Exploration and Exploitation"
Many decisions involve a trade-off between exploring unknown options for information and exploiting known options for a more certain payoff. In this talk I will present evidence that people use two strategies to solve these explore-exploit dilemmas: directed exploration, driven by information, and random exploitation, driven by noise. These two strategies appear to rely on dissociable cognitive and neural processes, but I will show that they can arise from a single model based on mental simulation. This model accounts for the effects of uncertainty, time horizon, and the informativeness of feedback on directed and random exploitation as well as more recent findings suggesting that random exploitation is truly random. I will end with a discussion of our future work where we aim to study explore-exploit decisions in the real world.
University Event Topic: Lectures & Meetings. School: Emory College. Department / Organization: Center for Mind Brain and Culture. Series: CMBC Lectures. Building/Room: White Hall. Speaker/Presenter: Robert "Bob" Wilson
Associate Professor, School of Psychology | College of Sciences | Georgia Institute of Technology. Event Open To: Emory Community. Cost: Free.
Tuesday, November 10, 2026, 4:00 PM – 5:00 PM.
White Hall 112.
CMBC BOOK LAUNCH | Antonis Iliopoulos "Early Body Ornaments and the Origins of Our Semiotic Mind"
Early Body Ornaments and the Origins of Our Semiotic Mind
What can the origins of self-adornment tell us about the evolution of the human mind? Were humans making ornaments more than 70,000 years ago in order to express ideas and ideals that they already had, or was ornament-making a process that drove the evolution of symbolic concepts and aesthetic values in the first place? Instead of seeing artifacts as the epiphenomenal products of processes that take place strictly within the braincase, Iliopoulos argues that objects can play an active role in shaping human cognition and that they provide the scaffolding on which a mind like ours could evolve. In making this proposal, his book draws inspiration from various disciplines including archaeology, anthropology, philosophy, and semiotics. The framework that results from his interdisciplinary approach allows him to address both the nature and the emergence of our unique capacity to use material signs. Early body ornaments thus become a test case for how things…
University Event Topic: Lectures & Meetings. School: Emory College. Oxford College. Department / Organization: Center for Mind Brain and Culture. Series: CMBC Events. Speaker/Presenter: Antonis Iliopoulos
Visiting Assistant Professor, Department of Philosophy | Oxford College of Emory University
Panel Discussants:
Sandy Blakely, Classics | Emory University
Dietric Stout, Anthropology | Emory University
John Stuhr, Philosophy | Emory University. Event Open To: Emory Community. Cost: Free.
Thursday, November 12, 2026, 4:00 PM – 5:00 PM.