Every culture in the world has some form of music, but why did music evolve, and what function does it serve? In this course, we will explore the cognitive and neural processes that underlie music perception and production to ask the following questions: Does music have universal features that cross cultures? How does music convey emotion? What do infants know about music? Is music specifically human? And finally, what are the parallels between music and language?

This course is an introduction to and survey of the biological bases of behavior, including physiological, biochemical, and neurophysiological determinants of sensation, motor control, sleep, eating and drinking, learning and memory, language, and mental disorders.

Examines the development, causal mechanisms, evolutionary history, and function of the behavior of animals. Topics include sensory capacities, predator evasion, reproduction, parental care, social behavior, and learning.

Why can't psychologists agree on basic assumptions? Why is so much of the field still controversial after more than a century? This seminar gives advanced psychology and neuroscience students a broad conceptual and historical overview of their discipline through an analysis of its enduring disputes. We will analyze primary source materials (both historical and contemporary) on several sides of major controversies such as: Are there racial differences in intelligence? Is madness rooted in faulty biology? Do women's brains differ from men's? Is violence innate or learned?

This seminar will take a largely clinical perspective on the mental health problems of depression and anxiety. We will examine the traditional definitions of these diagnoses from the DSM and raise questions about the nature of diagnosis and the way diagnoses change over time. We will look at how differently depression and anxiety are understood and treated given differences in gender, race, culture and age. Finally, the course will touch on past and present treatment of depression and anxiety.

Adoption has become a common way to create families in the United States and many other countries. The experience of adoptees, birth parents, and adoptive families raise many questions about family relationships, identities, and community membership. In this course we will look how adoption has been studied, with a particular focus on the experiences of adoptees and their adoptive parents. Students will develop research questions, consider different methods and related ethical issues, and analyze survey and interview data.

Students will work in teams to code videotaped observations of romantic conflict discussions. Students will learn to code emotion expressions,conflict engagement and resolution strategies, attachment behaviors, and relationship quality at both the dyadic and individual levels. Students will also write their own coding scales to apply to these observations. Issues of coding bias, construct validity, and intercoder reliability will be addressed.

In the role of a participant-observer, each student studies intensively the social and personality development of the children in one classroom at the Gorse Children's Center at Stonybrook. Students learn how to articulate developmental changes and individual differences by analyzing detailed observations. Topics include social cognition, peer relationships, social skills, concepts of friendship, emotional development, identity formation, self-esteem, and the social and cultural context of development.

This course presents an overview of laboratory methods in cognitive psychology, including: research design, methodology, data analysis, and statistical inference. We will explore these issues through the lens of human communication; specifically, speech. Students will design and complete a research project in which they record and analyze speech to explore questions about how meaning is expressed through spoken language.

This seminar is designed to promote communication of research activities among students in the department and to encourage students to share knowledge and resources in the solution of problems encountered in all stages of research. Graduate students and students engaged in independent research (Psychology/Neuroscience and Behavior 395) are encouraged to participate.