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JCC Conversations | Dr. Richard Solomon and Rebecca Newman
Often called “The fun doctor,” Rick Solomon M.D., Medical Director at Ann Arbor Center for Development and Behavioral Pediatrics, will be one of the guests on Conversations! where he will answer questions and discuss the latest advances in autism. Dr. Solomon is a developmental pedriatician. His widely admired PLAY Project Autism Intervention Model helps young children improve their language, development, and autism severity and his book, “Autism: The Potential Within”, details the intervention. He will be joined by Rebecca Newman who will describe her life as someone with autism.
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JCC Conversations | Ethan Kross – Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and What to Do About It
Chuck Newman interviews Award-Winning Psychologist Ethan Kross who released his First Book, Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It
Ethan Kross, psychologist, professor, and author shares his research on how the conversations people have with themselves impacts their health, performance, decisions and relationships and shape their lives and give them the power to change themselves. He describes groundbreaking behavioral and brain research with colorful real-world examples.
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JCC Conversations | Dr. Susan Weiss
Learn everything you should know about coronaviruses, including vaccinations, mutations, antiviral treatments and what we should be doing to protect ourselves from future pandemics.
Dr. Susan Weiss is considered “The Mother of Coronaviruses” and is co-director of Penn’s new Center of Research for Coronaviruses and Other Emerging Pathogens.
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Martin Bandyke Under Covers for June 2022: Martin interviews Scott A. Small, author of Forgetting: The Benefits of Not Remembering.
Dr. Scott Small has dedicated his career to understanding why memory forsakes us. As director of the Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center at Columbia University, he focuses largely on patients who experience pathological forgetting, and it is in contrast to their suffering that normal forgetting, which we experience every day, appears in sharp relief.
Until recently, most everyone—memory scientists included—believed that forgetting served no purpose. But new research in psychology, neurobiology, medicine, and computer science tells a different story. Forgetting is not a failure of our minds. It’s not even a benign glitch. It is, in fact, good for us—and, alongside memory, it is a required function for our minds to work best.
Forgetting benefits our cognitive and creative abilities, emotional well-being, and even our personal and societal health. As frustrating as a typical lapse can be, it’s precisely what opens up our minds to making better decisions, experiencing joy and relationships, and flourishing artistically.
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Nerd Nite #68 - The Brain "Wants" What The Brain Wants
Over the course of evolution our brains have become excellent at detecting rewards (e.g. food or a potential mate) in our environment and in turn generating motivation to obtain that reward. While this system was originally necessary for survival, it can easily become maladaptive in a world where access to rewards (such as high-calorie food, drugs and alcohol, gambling) are present in abundance. Unfortunately, this reward detection system can become hypersentitive in some individuals, in turn causing excessive desire and craving each time they come across a reward cue in their world. This talk addresses how and why this reward system can become dysregulated in some individuals. Answering these questions will help scientists discover new treatment options for individuals living with addiction or psychiatric disorder.
About Erin Naffziger:
Erin is a PhD Candidate in Biopsychology at the University of Michigan studying how the brain creates the psychological processes: desire and craving. She wants to know how motivation is generated in the brain and how it may become dysregulated in mental illnesses. When she’s not playing with rats or using lasers to activate the brain, she enjoys true crime podcasts and hanging out with her elderly cat.
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Exploring the Mind | 7 Ways Children's Storytelling Skills Impact Literacy Development
Join Assistant Professor Nicole Gardner-Neblett of the University of Michigan for her presentation on the importance of storytelling in the development of literacy skills, and learn some strategies for supporting young children as storytellers.
Did you know that by the time a child is two or three years old they can tell a simple story? These early storytelling skills can help children develop a strong foundation for building later reading and writing skills. Research suggests that opportunities to practice telling stories helps children develop stronger language skills and a better understanding of how stories are structured. This presentation reviews seven ways that young children's storytelling skills can impact their literacy development.
Nicole Gardner-Neblett, Ph.D., is a developmental psychologist whose work focuses on the individual and contextual factors that promote children’s language and literacy development. She adopts a strengths-based approach to understanding children’s development and identifying effective practices to transform the early learning experiences of young children. In particular, Dr. Gardner-Neblett’s work examines the oral narrative, or storytelling, skills of African American children and the implications for literacy development and educational practice.
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Author Event | William D. Lopez: Separated: Family and Community in the Aftermath of an Immigration Raid
In Separated: Family and Community in the Aftermath of an Immigration Raid, local author William D. Lopez examines the lasting damage done by this daylong act of collaborative immigration enforcement in Washtenaw County, Michigan.
Exploring the chaos of enforcement through the lens of community health, Lopez discusses deportation's rippling negative effects on families, communities, and individuals. Focusing on those left behind, Lopez reveals their efforts to cope with trauma, avoid homelessness, handle worsening health, and keep their families together as they attempt to deal with a deportation machine that is militarized, traumatic and implicitly racist.
This event was part of the 2020 Washtenaw Reads. For more information about Washtenaw Reads and previous years' reads, visit wread.org.
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Legacies Project Oral History: William Hampton
William Hampton was born in 1948 in Tyler, Texas, and his grandmother was the midwife. He remembers attending church revival picnics, the Texas Rose Festival, and the Juneteenth parade in his hometown. While attending college in Arlington, Texas, he was active in the Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity. He went on to launch a Section 8 subsidized housing program in Arlington and in Ann Arbor, where he worked in the community development office. Mr. Hampton has been president of the Ann Arbor chapter of the NAACP since 2005.
William Hampton was interviewed by students from Skyline High School in Ann Arbor in 2015-16 as part of the Legacies Project.
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Legacies Project Oral History: Victoria Loomis
Victoria Suane Milton was born in 1933 and grew up in River Rouge, Michigan. Her mother was of French creole background from New Orleans. In 1938 her father, Samuel B. Milton, founded one of Michigan’s first Black-owned hospitals, Sidney A. Sumby Memorial Hospital. He was also the first Black Wayne County coroner. After getting her BA in social work from the University of Michigan in the 1950s, Victoria returned to work at Sumby Memorial Hospital in purchasing and housekeeping. She and her husband John Loomis had six children, including a set of triplets. She passed away in 2021.
Victoria Loomis was interviewed in partnership with the Museum of African American History of Detroit and Y Arts Detroit in 2009-2010 as part of the Legacies Project.
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Legacies Project Oral History: David Northcross
David Northcross was born in 1937 and grew up in north central Detroit. His grandfather David C. Northcross Sr. established the first Black-owned hospital in Detroit, Mercy General Hospital, in 1917. His grandmother, father, and aunt also worked at the hospital. Interested in pursuing a different path, David Northcross graduated from Michigan State University and joined the Marine Corps. He was one of three or four other Black officers at Camp Pendleton in California. After a few years, he and his wife Shirley moved back to Detroit and Northcross started his lifelong career as a financial advisor with Merrill Lynch.
David Northcross was interviewed in partnership with the Museum of African American History of Detroit and Y Arts Detroit in 2010 as part of the Legacies Project.