Undergraduates, graduate students and faculty of the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences report that their department is currently thriving on a large bounty of research dollars -- the most in its history and in an amount greater than any other Dartmouth academic department.
While exact figures were unavailable from the Department yesterday, the main sources of this funding are reportedly U.S. government organizations such as the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health. Funding goes to pay research subjects as well as procure new equipment for the department.
"I'm not sure that's [been] the goal, but I would say we've had a lot of success," Professor Howard Hughes, Chair of the Department of Psychology and Brain Sciences (PBS), said of the department's strong financial backing..
In terms of the research itself, the summer months have been a productive time for various research teams within the recently built Moore Hall, and a variety of state-of-the-art research has garnered national attention.
The department can be roughly divided into cognitive neuroscience, social psychology and behavioral neuroscience sectors, said one undergraduate researcher.
In the social psychology group, one study that has gathered national attention tracks the influence of smoking in movies on the smoking habits of the adolescents who watch them. Fifth-year graduate student Jennifer Tickle spearheads the project.
Using survey response data from thousands of high school students in Vermont and New Hampshire, Tickle cross-referenced the mentioned movies with data about how much smoking occurs in each movie. In general, teenagers who watched more Hollywood movies were more likely to smoke, Tickle said. Additionally, "Teenagers who have a favorite star who smokes ... are more likely to smoke [themselves]," she said.
Since the subjects of the research were under age 18, the project was cleared by the Internal Review Board of Dartmouth College and other regulatory units.
Meanwhile, Megan Steven '02 attaches electrodes to rats in the basement of Moore Hall in the behavioral neuroscience zone of PBS.
Working with "long-evan" rats, she has examined how rats use "head direction" cells to navigate mazes without use of their eyes, she said.
Inspired to pursue this line of research by an ailing uncle who is unable to navigate spatially, Steven said she hoped her research will someday lead to mechanical replacements for people without functioning cells in that area of the brain.
"We are really lucky at Dartmouth to have one of the best programs in neuroscience," Steven said. "To be able to build these electrodes myself, and ... implant them in rat brains -- students at other schools don't have this opportunity."
Steven and Hughes both said that they feel the combination of serious research and undergraduate instruction has been fruitful and harmonious.
"We have teachers who are incredible researchers but also really good professors," Steven said.
"I think it's synergistic," Hughes said of the relationship between research that attracts grant dollars and undergraduate academic work. "There is no natural tension between [them]," he said.
On the top floor of Moore Hall, researchers in the Cognitive Neuroscience area explore how people behave and react to stimuli.
Jeff Cooney '02 is involved in an experiment with split-brain patients, a topic he described as the "lateralization of function" between the two sides of the brain. A male test subject who lives in the Hanover vicinity comes to Moore Hall several times a week to undergo experiments that challenge his brain, the hemispheres of which were surgically separated years ago.
According to Cooney, this research clarifies how the two hemispheres communicate with each other -- all by observing the difficulties of the test subject whose brain is separated into two seemingly independent halves. If shown two objects in the subject's peripheral vision, he would only say he saw one of them, while his hand might write the identity of the other object, Cooney explained.
A key part of the cognitive science research -- and centerpiece of Moore Hall -- is the College's functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanner, a piece of equipment that required a great deal of magnetic shielding and is said to have partly spurred the construction of Moore Hall.
"It's just unheard of -- the access [of undergraduates] to MRI advanced technology," PBS Professor Todd Heatherton said.
Hughes emphasized that the cross-listing of psychology department classes with the cognitive science and other departments is a symbol of the department's wide-ranging and multidisciplinary nature. Including "everything from social interactions and how people view other people -- social stigma -- to how the brain enables metal process including learning and memory and developing methods for studying ... psychology covers a lot of ground," Hughes said.
