CANCELLED & POSTPONED: Jordan Grafman (Kessler Foundation Research Center)
“Human beliefs about the appropriateness of social behaviour span religious, moral, political, and legal domains. The human prefrontal cortex and anterior temporal lobes appear to play key roles in the development and mediation of such beliefs based on evidence acquired from patients with brain damage and healthy volunteers using cognitive science methods and functional neuroimaging. In my presentation, I will review selected findings from my laboratory that implicate the underlying cognitive processes and neural sectors that support key aspects of human beliefs. It is likely that these beliefs constrain and organize human social behavior so we can cooperate within small and large social groups. Our findings also suggest that human foresight permeates complex explicit human beliefs allowing people to understand the consequences of current behavior on later outcomes contributing to the adaptively successful management of impulsive and environmentally provoked behaviors.”
All are welcome!
Dr. Jordan Grafman received his B.A. degree from Sonoma State University in California and his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1981. Immediately following his graduation, Dr. Grafman entered the US Air Force and became the Neuropsychology Chief on the Vietnam Head Injury Study, a multidisciplinary study conducted at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C. In 1986, he joined the NINDS as a Senior Staff Fellow in the Clinical Neuropsychology Section. In 1989, Dr. Grafman became Chief of the Cognitive Neuroscience Section in the NINDS. In January of 2011 Dr. Grafman joined the Kessler Foundation Research Center as the Director of the Traumatic Brain Injury Research Laboratory. He is an elected fellow of the American Psychological Association and has received the Defense Meritorious Service Award, the National Institutes of Health Award of Merit, and most recently the NIH Director’s Award for his work on Traumatic Brain Injury. Dr. Grafman’s Laboratory is attempting to identify the nature of representational knowledge stored in the human prefrontal cortex including social and executive functions, the types of cognitive neuroplasticity that occur during learning and recovery from brain damage, the relationship between genetic predisposition and outcomes after traumatic brain injury.
Jordan Grafman, Ph.D., Director, Traumatic Brain Injury Research Laboratory, Kessler Foundation Research Center, 1199 Pleasant Valley Way, West Orange, New Jersey 07052
