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Mind, Brain, and Behavior

The Mind, Brain, and Behavior (MBB) concentration seeks to understand how humans, animals, and robots are able to acquire, represent, and use knowledge.
The discipline combines the insights from several other fields, including neuroscience, computer science, psychology, linguistics, animal behavior, genetics, and philosophy, to work toward an understanding of the brain and the mind. The MBB concentration is a secondary field of study that requires a student to complete a major in a primary discipline.

MBB Program News

Associate Professor of Psychology Sarah Dunphy-Lelii on the Challenges and Weirdness of Watching Yourself on Zoom

“That slight asynchrony we like between ourselves and others is unpleasantly magnified by glitchy wifi,” writes Dunphy-Lelii in Scientific American. “Research shows that a response delay of as little as 1.2 seconds disrupts your feeling of connection with another person. You can’t read them, they can’t read you—are they laughing with you, or at you?”

Can You Forget Things on Purpose? Professor Justin Hulbert Weighs In

Justin Hulbert, assistant professor of psychology and director of Bard's Memory Dynamics Lab, comments in Gizmodo that “motivated forgetting can be a powerful tool used to shape one’s inward life and outward perspective. We in the Memory Dynamics Lab at Bard College continue to explore the mechanisms and consequences associated with various forms of forgetting.”

New Research Shows That Corals Not Only Eat Plastic, They Prefer It

Corals associate the smell of plastic with food, a new study finds—an example of what Bard biologist Bruce Robertson calls an evolutionary trap, which he defines as occurring “when the cues animals use to make decisions are no longer reliable.”