This track is available:
Why do we think and act the way we do? In other words, how do we explain our behavior? The mechanisms of behavior and experience require an understanding of the brain from top down (anatomical) and bottom up (individual cells: neurons). In the BCYC Immersion Psychology Track, students will explore brain mechanisms from a variety of perspectives. Students will perform dissections of mouse and sheep brains, while learning about differences in regional processing of sensory and motor information. Modeling a neuron, students will learn how electrical and chemical signals form the basis of neural communication. Discussions on the basics of neuronal firing will expand into modern neuroscience and the fields of optogenetics and neural stimulation, which are seeking to unravel behavior circuit-by-circuit. After building an understanding of normal brain function, we will explore the brain from the perspective of disorder and damage. Students seeking a deeper understanding of the brain and behavior will get to experience and learn a great deal from this Neuroscience-focused track.
Track Instructor
Professor, Psychological Sciences
Dr. Hans Stadthagen-Gonzalez earned an MSc in Research Methods (2002) and a PhD in Experimental Psychology (2005) from The University of Bristol, in England. Upon graduation he worked as a post-doctoral fellow at Bristol and then at Bangor University, in Wales. From 2012 to 2022 he was at The University of Southern Mississippi, most recently as a tenured associate professor in psychology. In 2019 he earned a Graduate Certificate in Applied Behavior Analysis from Ball State University. He joined Benedictine College in the fall of 2022. Dr. Stadthagen-Gonzalez’s main area of research is in the psychology of language, including work on bilingualism, language and emotion, word recognition, and categorization of meanings. More recently he has also started conducting research on the topic of financial infidelity. He teaches General Psychology, Cognitive Psychology, Biopsychology, and Research & Statistics in Psychology.