The Other Lobe of The Brain

A Blog About Experiential Education, Social Media, and the Brain…

Experience comes with years      
 
Shalini Singh CC’13 and Jim Stellar
 
Shalini took a neuroscience-based large general education course that I co-taught last spring to about 240 students.  She sat in the middle about 3 rows back from the front.  Because she was attentive in class I asked her a brief question from the floor.  Because she [...]

Social Neuroeconomics – Over bidding         
 
Raphael Spiro QC 12 and Jim Stellar
 
Raph has been reading a bit of the literature on neuroecomomics, something we have written about before in this blog.  We’d like to propose that the same brain areas that are involved in making decisions about purchases made with money are also be involved [...]

We experience so that we may learn.
Jungyo Kim QC’13 and Jim Stellar
 
From my perspective (JS) the story begins when JK took a class I co-taught last spring (PSY282) and we connected over an idea for a new club she is starting to promote emotional, mental, and physical health, on the Queens College campus.  But [...]

Refining a long term passion in the academy
 
Michaela Tralli QC’12 and Jim Stellar
 
Michaela took a course I co-taught last spring.  We began to talk about how one finds one’s field and her field looks like it will be direct patient care in clinical psychology.  Often in this blog we write about how one discovers one’s [...]

Sensemaking – something one learns from experience
Luisa Melo NU’00 and Jim Stellar
Luisa was an undergraduate who worked on a senior honors project with me in behavioral neuroscience.  After graduation she worked in academic biochemistry research for years, pursued a Master’s in International Relations at the Fletcher School and has wound up in the Bentley University [...]

The Undergraduate Experiential Education of an MBA
 
Corinne Freeman D’Ambrosio NU 02 and Jim Stellar
 
Corinne was a major in Anthropology with an Education minor who went into business after graduation and just received her MBA degree (congratulations!).  She also was head of the College of Arts and Sciences Student Advisory Council when I was Dean of [...]

Bird Brains: A model for Expanding the Human Mind in College?
 
Shoshana Korman QC’12 and Jim Stellar
 
Shoshana works in the laboratory of Dr. Carolyn Pytte who comes out of the bird song neuroscience tradition.  Shoshana and I agreed to write this blog with two intertwined themes: Neuroscience of brain plasticity and her own experiences being an [...]

Flow
 
Eric Miller QC ‘12 and Jim Stellar
 
In his book “Drive,” on intrinsic motivation in the workplace, Daniel Pink mentions Mihayl Csikszentmihalyi and discusses the concept of “Flow.”  To begin with Csikszentmihalyi, he was born in Hungary in 1935 during the most volatile period of the 20th century; World War II was raging across Europe. Hungary [...]

Undergraduate research can happen to anyone
 
Maryam Waheed QC’11 and Jim Stellar
 
There is probably no student at Queens whose undergraduate research topic is closer to the area of neuroscience that I studied (dopamine brain basis of cocaine addiction) for more than 30 years than Maryam.  Maybe this is why we became friends as I did not [...]

Minority recruiting is experiential education for both
 
Govinda Davis NU’07 and Jim Stellar
 
Govinda was a student at Northeastern University who, at the end of my time there as Dean, was the head of a student organization of some years duration called LEAD (Linking Education and Diversity).  Over the years LEAD worked closely with the Admissions Office [...]

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