Understanding how young children recognize emotions in music
Research from psychologists in the School of Arts & Sciences shows that children ages 3 to 5 can identify emotions in music, but that kids who show fewer signs of empathy or guilt demonstrate poorer emotion recognition. “We’re excited to continue to use music as a paradigm both to understand underlying mechanisms and as a treatment target,” Rebecca Waller says.
Rethinking extreme environments, from human spaceflight to heat in Philadelphia
Anthropology professor Mallika Sarma of the School of Arts & Sciences is challenging what we think of as an extreme environment—beyond settings like low temperature or high altitude—and who gets studied.
A public-facing, interdisciplinary, and student-centered approach to philosophy
Philosophy professor Jennifer Morton’s experiences growing up in Peru during the politically turbulent 1980s and ’90s and as a first-generation college student shaped her research interests.
Disaster simulation trains nursing students in mass casualty incident response
The School of Nursing—in collaboration with Penn Medicine, the School of Social Policy & Practice, and the Division of Public Safety—held a disaster simulation, with graduate nursing students responding to volunteer actors injured in a mock explosion.
One of six field trips in Sally Willig’s Regional Field Ecology class took students to Natural Lands’ Mariton Wildlife Sanctuary.
(Image: Chi-Hyun Kim)
A hands-on education of Pennsylvania and New Jersey ecology
Sally Willig has been teaching Regional Field Ecology at Penn since 1999, educating students about plants, soils, and more at sites such as Ringing Rocks County Park and the Pine Barrens.
A new understanding of brain activity when we ‘read the minds’ of others
Penn psychologists Anna Jenkins and Dilara Berkay show the role of uncertainty in engagement of the dorsal medial prefrontal cortex. Their findings pave the way for a broader understanding of autism and social anxiety.
Tackling brain conditions, says psychology professor Nicole Rust, requires thinking about the brain not as a domino chain but as a complex dynamical system with feedback loops.
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‘Elusive Cures: Why Neuroscience Hasn’t Solved Brain Disorders—and How We Can Change That’
The first book from psychology professor Nicole Rust of the School of Arts & Sciences dives into why research on conditions like Alzheimer’s and depression hasn’t translated more effectively into better treatments.
Who, What, Why: Xiao Schutte Ke on Tibetan pastoralists and citizen science
Schutte Ke, a sixth-year linguistic anthropology doctoral candidate in the School of Arts & Sciences, explains the importance of Indigenous citizen scientists in understanding a crucial ecosystem of nomadic livestock herders on the mountainous region of the Tibetan Plateau.
A team of researchers from the Computational Social Science Lab at the University of Pennsylvania find that cable news has increasingly diverged from broadcast news in the topics covered and language used.
Penn Vet and Penn Medicine researchers have modified mRNA vaccines to include the cytokine IL-12 and improve T-cell responses which could improve the body’s ability to fight infections.
