PBS welcomes Sabrina Flagg as our new Graduate Programs Administrative Assistant. She will provide guidance to prospective and current graduate students in a broad variety of ways, ensuring their program needs are addressed. Flagg will serve as an assistant to the Graduate Programs Director, Michael Constantino, overseeing the workflow and operation of the program. Some of her duties include supporting graduate student admissions, processing scholarship and travel grant applications, and counseling students on program requirements. She will work with graduate students to secure research and teaching assistantships, and tuition waivers. Registering for graduate program courses and off-line/independent studies will also be covered by Flagg. She will keep program policies up-to-date, also providing information to students on fellowships, internships, grants, and post-doctoral openings.

Researchers including Luke Remage-Healey, psychological and brain sciences, and Jeffrey Podos, biology, report the discovery of sensorimotor “bridge” neurons involved in the imitative bird song learning of the swamp sparrow. The authors explain how these bridge neurons, “simultaneously and selectively represent two critical learning-related schemas: the bird’s own song, and the specific tutor model from which that song was copied. Furthermore, the prevalence and response properties of bridge neurons correlate with learning ability – males that copied tutor songs more accurately had more bridge neurons. Our results are consistent with the hypothesis that accurate imitative learning depends on a successful bridge, within single cortical neurons, between the representation of learning models and their sensorimotor copies.”

David Reinhard, Ph.D. has joined the Psychology of Peace and Violence Program in the fall of 2017 as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation awarded to Bernhard Leidner.

​Caren Rotello, Professor and Department Chair of the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, has been elected a Fellow of the Society of Experimental Psychologists (SEP).  Founded in 1904, SEP is described as "the oldest and most prestigious honorary society in psychology." SEP admits only a handful of leading experimental psychologists in North America as members each year. With a current membership of 220 individuals, they represent about 5-10% of practicing experimental psychologists. Members have expertise in several areas including experimental, cognitive, perceptual, behavioral, developmental, and social psychology, and neuroscience.