(in Polish) Social Neuroscience 2500-EN-F-218
The purpose of this course is to get intimate with the field of social
neuroscience. Social neuroscience is the scientific discipline at the
intersection of social-personality psychology and cognitive neuroscience. It
ultimately provides a means to use neuroscience methodologies to inform
social psychological theory and social processes to inform our understanding
of the brain. The structure of this course is designed to avoid the pitfalls of
social neuroscience and the criticism that the field is nothing more than a
modern phrenology movement. That is, the point of the course is not to
identify brain regions that are involved in tasks that evoke, for example,
prejudiced responses and assume these regions are important for prejudice.
Rather, we’re going to examine regions integral for social cognition and
cognition in general, seek to understand the basic functions said regions are
involved in, and use that information to inform our understanding of
prejudice. This is an underappreciated approach to the field but a wholly
necessary one. There will be overlap in this course but also an illusion of
randomness. But if a given region is integral for something like self-oriented
processing why would it not be involved in many different, seemingly
orthogonal tasks?
Type of course
Learning outcomes
After reading the assigned papers, participating in discussions and devoting
meaningful time to hypothesis generation, class presentations and the grant
proposal, by the time students leave this course they will be able to critically
think about both the social and cognitive neuroscience literatures. They will
understand both what the fields can and cannot offer. They will also be able
to generate hypotheses and study ideas that utilize neural function as a
means to inform their research questions of interest, particularly those that
rely on specific cognitive mechanisms like emotion, attention or memory.
Assessment criteria
Course Obligations
Weekly hypotheses:
Each student will be asked to compose five hypotheses specific to the two
questions “What the hell is this brain region doing?” and “How can we use
this information to inform our understanding of a given social process?” for
the assigned readings in a given week. A good hypothesis is one that
provides appropriate context for your ideas/thoughts (i.e., a brief summary or
overview of the literature that stimulated your idea), clearly outlines and
details the hypothesis, and then explains why exactly you think your
hypothesis is veridical (i.e., connects the literature with your question). That
is, outline what’s happened in past literature, what you think will happen in
the future based on this past, and why. You will be asked to share these
questions/comments in class each week so it behooves you to think of
something thought provoking and intellectually stimulating. Otherwise who
knows what your peers might think of you. Also, I will be grading your
hypotheses each week, which should provide even more motivation to
carefully read each article and generate meaningful, insightful hypotheses.
Each of your Question and comment contributions will be worth 5 points per
week for a total of 50 points or ~50% of your grade in the course. Hypotheses
will be due each class by noon.
Directing a given week’s discussion:
Each student will be expected to lead a given week’s discussion for their
group at some point during the semester. A successful leader will guide
group’s discussions and document and synthesize the group’s hypotheses and
thoughts. Obviously as class participation is integral to the success of the
course it is also considered mandatory.
Grant Proposal Style Paper
It is my hope that all the literature we discuss in the course will inspire you
and instill you with great research ideas. Being able to develop an innovative
study design and communicate that design in a clear and concise way is a
critical skill in your development as an academic. To help you develop that
skill, your requirement for the final paper is to compose an NSF-style grant
proposal on a topic within social neuroscience. Think about your own
research and how it might be adapted to fit into the field, and generate a
novel research idea. The paper should be 5 pages for undergraduate students
and 10-15 pages for graduate students (double spaced, Times New Roman
12-pt), and must contain the following sections:
Project Summary (1 page max). Provides 1) an overview of the proposal,
including an outline of the problem/question of interest and how the issue is
going to be addressed in your proposal. This should be about 2 paragraphs.
Also detail 2) the intellectual merit of the project, or what knowledge would
be gained if your project were to be funded. Finally, outline 3) the broader
impact of your proposal. In short, how would society benefit from your
project being funded? Being able to communicate your ideas and the
importance of your work in the most digestible, impactful and pithy way is
absolutely essential for your success as an academic and as a researcher with
a hankering for funding. The demonstration of your ability to do this happens
here (10 points).
Project Narrative. This is the meat of your proposal and consists of 3 primary
sections. 1) The narrative begins with a brief overview of the issue/problem
and your answer for it. 2) Then you provide a select background literature
review that provides an overview of past work and evidence for your crazy
ideas. You should select at least 5 research articles that inform your
hypotheses/motivations for the study (10 points). 3) Finally you discuss the
proposed research. Here you outline what exactly you plan to do, what
exactly you hypothesize and discuss any pilot studies you’ve conducted that
provide support for your hypotheses (note in a typical grant proposal you
HAVE to have pilot studies, but for the purposes of this paper you do not
have to have this information). This section should be very detailed, including
expected results (10 points).
References. In a normal NSF grant you’d proceed to outline your postdoc
mentoring plan, data management plan and whether you plan to have
children, how many and what are your current names for them. I’m not going
to ask you for any of that (unless you want to provide this info) so just
provide a complete list of references in APA format. This project is worth 30
points, i.e., ~30% of your grade.
Grant Proposal Presentation
Orally communicating your thoughts and ideas in a clear, pithy manner is
another absolute necessity for academics. As such, on the final day of class
you will be asked to give a 3 minute overview of your grant proposal to the
class. This will require PowerPoint slides, a lot of heart and a splash of humor.
This will be worth 10 points or ~10% of your grade in the course.
Class Participation and Attendance
As mentioned above, class participation and therefore attendance is integral
to the success of the course and thus is mandatory. Class
participation/attendance will be worth 10 points or ~10% of your grade in the
course.
Students will be allowed up to 4 hours of unexcused absences. A further 4
hours of absence is allowed only with formal excuse. Missing more than 8
hours results in not passing the course.
Additional information
Additional information (registration calendar, class conductors, localization and schedules of classes), might be available in the USOSweb system: