2006 LECTURE SERIES

Autism: Cognitive style not deficit?

Dr. Francesca Happé
King's College London
Wednesday, January 25, 2006

Autism is diagnosed by social-communicative impairments, but is characterized by striking skills that pose a puzzle to deficit theories. Why do people with autism so often have perfect pitch, remember exact information, and spot tiny details others miss? Dr. Happé's studies suggest that autism comprises a different, not deficient, cognitive style; a tendency to see parts, rather than wholes.

Read transcript

Watching the brain at work:
Imaging the formation and retrieval of memories

Dr. Michael D. Rugg
University of California, Irvine
Tuesday, March 21, 2006

The past few years have seen extraordinary progress in methods for detecting and localizing brain activity in healthy, behaving humans. These new imaging methods can be used to study how memories are initially formed and how they are later retrieved. Dr. Rugg will describe brain networks that support these critical memory functions, how these networks change with age, and what this tells us about why memory becomes more fallible as we grow older.

Read transcript