Notre Dame researchers to tackle autism, preeclampsia and more through new funding
Each year, grants from the Discovery Fund are awarded to researchers who propose novel technologies and diagnostics that can improve human and environmental health.
Notre Dame’s Department of Psychology offers graduate programs in clinical; cognition, brain and behavior; developmental; and quantitative psychology. In addition we have joint doctoral programs with Computer Science and Engineering and with the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, and an undergraduate major that emphasizes hands-on research.
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Efficient Cognition: The Evolution of Representational Decision Making
Much human behavior is stimulus-free. While plants and many non-human animals respond reflexively to their present environment, our own actions are mediated by our ability to represent how the world has been and how it could be, and how we might alter it to achieve our goals. Philosophers who have explored the evolutionary pressures giving rise to representational cognition, such as Godfrey-Smith (1996) and Sterelny (2003), have emphasized the role played by environmental complexity. Armin Schulz suggests that an important part of this evolutionary story has been overlooked. He argues that representationally mediated behavior is adaptive because it is more cognitively efficient than reflex-driven behavior, under certain conditions.…
Notre Dame-led team unlocks key information on the development of the brain
The brain, one of the largest and most complex organs in the human body, is about the size of a grapefruit. Yet it contains more than 100 billion nerves and numerous folds and creases. It is the “folds” of the brain, called gyri and sulci, that were the focus of a University of Notre Dame-led study recently published in Physical Review Letters…
