Dec. 2: Daniel Pine, "Creating a Developmental Clinical Neuroscience: Lessons from Pediatric Anxiety"

Creating a Developmental Clinical Neuroscience: Lessons from Pediatric Anxiety

Daniel S. Pine, MD
Chief, Section on Development and Affective Neuroscience National Institute of Mental Health

Daniel Pine is one of the world’s leading experts on emotional disorders in youth. This expertise is reflected in more than 300 peer-reviewed papers—including major contributions to understanding the epidemiology, diagnosis, biology, and treatment of anxiety and mood disorders in children and adolescents. His lab is engaged in a series of pioneering studies addressing questions about the neural systems involved in fear and threat processes in ways that are relevant to the risk, development, and treatment of anxiety disorders. Among his many honors he was recently elected to the prestigious Institute of Medicine in the National Academy of Sciences. In his talk at IHD (noon on December 2) Pine will address a series of issues about the emerging field of developmental clinical neuroscience, using his work on pediatric anxiety disorders as an example.

Monday, December 2, 12:00-1:30pm in 3105 Tolman Hall

November 25: Ndola Prata, "Adolescent reproductive health in sub-Saharan Africa: collaborative strategies to improve health outcomes"

Please join us Monday November 25th, 12:00-1:30pm in 3105 Tolman Hall for a special presentation by Ndola Prata providing a global perspective on high-impact issues in adolescence. This talk is part of our emerging UC Center for the Developing Adolescent (within IHD).
The UC Center on the Developing Adolescent is an interdisciplinary research and policy center founded on the belief that adolescence represents a maturational period of great vulnerabilities and opportunities—with enormous long-term impact on health, education, well-being, and economic success. The mission of our Center is twofold. First, to use integrative, interdisciplinary approaches to advance understanding of the unique opportunities for early intervention, prevention, and health promotion during this crucial period of adolescent brain development; and second, to pursue innovative approaches to help translate this rapidly emerging knowledge into policies that improve the lives of youth (locally and globally).

This presentation by Dr. Prata will describe a global perspective focusing on opportunities (and vulnerabilities) for adolescents in sub-Saharan Africa (see details below).

Adolescent reproductive health in sub-Saharan Africa: collaborative strategies to improve health outcomes

Ndola Prata, MD, MSc: is the Director of the Bixby Center for Population, Health & Sustainability. A physician and medical demographer originally from Angola, Dr Prata is an Associate Professor in Residence in Maternal and Child Health and holds the Fred H. Bixby Endowed Chair in Population and Family Planning in the School of Public Health at the University of California, Berkeley.

It is estimated that more than a third of the total population in sub-Saharan Africa is aged 10-24. Ten countries with the youngest population in the world are found in SSA—one of these is Ethiopia. Adolescents and young adults in the region are the most vulnerable groups and present the poorest reproductive health indicators. The Bixby Center at UCB has been working collaboratively in the region addressing some of the key challenges and opportunities in adolescent reproductive health policies and programs. Examples of collaborative strategies in Nigeria, Angola and Ethiopia highlight the Centers’ involvement in designing interventions for adolescents aimed at improving individual reproductive health outcomes tied to structural and social factors, as well as providing evidence for policy change.

Monday, Nov. 18: Mahesh Srinivasan, "The role of children's cognitive biases in the structure of the lexicon: Cross-linguistic evidence from polysemy"

Please join us for a presentation by Professor Mahesh Srinivasan, Department of Psychology, University of California, Berkeley.

The role of children's cognitive biases in the structure of the lexicon: Cross-linguistic evidence from polysemy

Abstract: Many words in English shift in meaning according to systematic patterns. For example, words can label animals and their meat (e.g., chicken, lamb, and fish), or artists and their produced works (e.g., Picasso, Tolstoy, Mozart). These patterns are also generative, in the sense that they can be extended to new words: e.g., a name for a new animal can label its meat, as in “The dax was tasty.” In this talk, I’ll explore what factors might account for the structure of polysemy. Drawing on findings from children’s acquisition of polysemous words, and especially from a new cross-linguistic survey of polysemy, I will suggest that different languages may develop broadly similar patterns of polysemy, because these patterns have been adapted over time to be easily learnable for children, given their cognitive biases. This possible fit between the structure of polysemy and children’s conceptual structure suggests that polysemy may act to speed the process of building a lexicon: by picking up on patterns, children may spontaneously infer new meanings for words.

Monday, November 18, 12:00-1:30pm in 3105 Tolman Hall