Human exceptionalism incurs another blow. In work published today in Science Advances, my laboratory demonstrates the Bystander Effect in rats: rats are less likely to help in the presence of rats who are not helping – confederate rats or as my students love to say, confederats. On the other hand, in the presence of naive rats, who could potentially help, […]
The Bystander Effect, included in every introductory psychology textbook and course, refers to the consistent finding that individuals are less likely to help in the presence of others than when they are alone. The more bystanders present, the less likely an individual is to help. This is commonly attributed to a diffusion of responsibility, meaning that an individual in a […]
I recently read Michael Lewis’s The Undoing Project, a book about the friendship and work of Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman. And ever since I have been thinking about one idea of Tversky’s as reported by Lewis: “The secret to doing good research is always to be a little underemployed. You waste years by not being able to waste hours.” Now […]
Have you ever found yourself at the grocery store, facing six choices of rice where you wish there were one? Okay, well, obviously I am talking about myself. I can stand in front of four choices of rice or yogurt or ice cream, or whatever the need of the moment is, for minutes, stuck in indecision. Brand A is definitely […]
Last weekend, I was taking a walk with my spouse, Gisèle. As we passed our neighbor’s house, a large, attractively tawny dog ran towards us barking. But the dog did not come all the way to us, stopping several yards from the street. Gisèle told me the dog had been trained with a so-called invisible fence in which moving past a line triggers […]
Last Friday, I had a delightful visit from Diana Keat, a MOOC student and Facebook friend, and her husband Eddie. It was great fun to meet Diana and Eddie. I am hoping to see them again soon if I can manage to get to their home town of Philadelphia to see the Greg Dunn exhibit at the Franklin Institute. One of […]
I’ll be talking about the movie Concussion on WTTW, channel 11 here in Chicagoland. I look forward to talking with Phil Ponce on my second stint on Chicago Tonight (on my first visit, I talked about our work with rats and helping behavior). To anticipate talking about concussions (more so than about the movie), I thought I’d get into the spirit and give […]
This week, neurobiology bumped up into current events and it all played out in the context of teaching. I taught a module on Neural Communication to my second year Pritzker Medical School students. One of the topics that I covered is how neurons understand the message that is sent their way, a lecture that centers on post-synaptic receptors and the drugs […]
The Tim Hunt comments from last week set off a firestorm of ridicule, indignation and despair. In the wake of this depressing reminder of the challenges ahead for women and men in science, I was thrilled to learn that Martin Chalfie, winner of a Nobel Prize for Chemistry, was coming to give a talk. From long ago interactions, I knew Dr […]
I was devastated when my friend and colleague, Sheharyar Hasnain, emailed me to tell me that Sabeen Mahmud had been assassinated in Karachi as she and her mother were going home from her bookstore/café/salon. As of the latest updates, Sabeen’s mother is in critical condition. I am an unlikely person – an Americam Jew – to be touched personally by the […]
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