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Rebecca Rees ’16 and Andrew Fletcher ’17 have been awarded Coccia Foundation Scholarships for study abroad in Italy this summer. The Coccia Foundation was established in 1994 by Cavaliere Joseph Coccia, Jr. and his wife Elda as an organization dedicated to the preservation and celebration of Italian culture, especially among younger generations at the college level.

Danny Lustberg ’14, and Douglas Weldon, the Stone Professor of Psychology, presented a poster at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in Washington, D.C., on Nov. 19. Meghan Hind, a student at Harvard University was a coauthor of the presentation.

Bellevue Hospital Center, which was founded on March 31, 1736, is the oldest public hospital in the United States, and has always been focused on individualized care for the patient. Charlotte Beers ’16, a neuroscience major, is experiencing this quality care first-hand as a research associate at the Manhattan-based care facility.

Scrutinizing the pages of Where’s Waldo?, searching for that pesky beanie and striped shirt, your brain is working hard to spot the elusive traveler. This summer, four students are examining various components of visual attention with Assistant Professor of Psychology Alexandra List. Katie Callahan ’15, Christi Westlin ’15 and Alex Mitko ’16 are each working on one of the three elements of the study, “Visual Attention: Failures, Dynamics and Interaction with Auditory Attention,” and Hannah Zucker ’15 is doing an interdisciplinary project.

According to the American Heart Association’s 2014 heart disease and stroke statistics, stroke is responsible for one out of every 19 deaths in the United States.1 Although stroke is a leading cause of serious long-term disability, Amy Wright ’15 has learned “that strokes can be preventable and manageable, to an extent.”

For her Levitt Summer Research Fellowship Grant, Sarah Izzo ’15 is working on a project with Professor of Philosophy Rick Werner titled “Brains on the Stand: The Implications of Emerging Neuroscience Research on our Judicial System.” Izzo is examining new neuroscience research on topics like decision-making and free will as well as associated technological advances (such as improved precision in lie detection). 

Sarah Mehrotra, a candidate for May graduation from Hamilton, has been awarded a Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship (ETA) to Malaysia. A neuroscience major at Hamilton, she studied abroad at Charles University in the Czech Republic in 2013.

Nine Hamilton seniors have been selected to receive the Class of 1979 Student Travel Award. The award, established by the alumni of Hamilton's Class of 1979, offers financial assistance to Hamilton students who wish to pursue extensive research projects in different parts of the world.

“Got milk?” For a group of Hamilton student researchers, the well-known slogan might be modified to “Got calcium?” The most abundant metal in our bodies and a valuable component of milk, calcium serves functions well beyond building strong teeth and bones. Hamilton research students, working with Douglas Weldon, the Stone Professor of Psychology, are examining how our mental processes depend on calcium.  The compound performs lesser known, but essential, roles in blood clotting, chemical signaling and action potential firing.

Everyone uses language on a daily basis, but few question exactly how we understand what another person is saying.  Interpreting gestures and sounds seems natural to us, yet there is a much deeper and more scientific explanation to it all.