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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.

Picking up a spoon to stir your morning coffee seems uncomplicated enough, right? We simply see the object and move our hand until it is close enough to grab it. But how much harder does it become if the object gets smaller or farther away from us? Or what happens when we start using our non-dominant hand? Perhaps most of us could make an educated guess at how much harder it would make the task, but Paul Fitts took it one step further beyond just estimating.

Julia Litzky ’12 doesn’t sleep much, and that annoys her. “I used to be able to run off three hours a night freshman year,” she said, “but now I have to get  five or six.” In between finalizing her acceptance to Dartmouth’s M.D./Ph.D. program, volunteering at the Writing Center and crafting her own metal jewelry, it’s surprising she had time to sleep at all as her time at Hamilton wound down.