Adopt an expert

With few textbooks to read, emotions seminar goes straight to the source

UW-Madison students enrolled in a graduate-level psychology seminar on the neuroscience of emotion don’t have final exams and research papers to worry about as the semester winds down, but they still may be a bit jittery. This week their knowledge will be tested in a different, more memorable way.

They’ll be coming face-to-face with seven giants in the field, who will be gathering in town for an international symposium. Motivated by two days of in-person meetings with scientists with whom many would relish working someday, the dozen students will assuredly be prepared.

“We’ve been completely immersed in studying the work of these researchers,” says doctoral student Christine Larson. She’s found the seminar, which focuses on a different aspect of emotion each year, so rewarding she’s taken it three times.

For 12 weeks the students have been internalizing journal articles written by the scientists. During the seminar each student has presented an analysis and lead an in-depth discussion on the work of one expert. At the symposium, to be attended by some 300 people, they’ll be in charge of moderating discussions and posing questions following presentations by their “adopted” experts.

“We think this is a pretty unique way to teach,” says Richard J. Davidson, UW Madison Vilas Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry, who came up with the idea to align the seminar with the annual Wisconsin Symposium on Emotion he’s organized since 1995. “It’s a wonderful way to expose students to the research of scholars who are leaders in an exploding new field for which there are very few textbooks.” Davidson, also director of the UW–Madison Center for Behavioral Science Research, first organized the annual symposium to highlight the research of a critical mass of federally-funded UW–Madison psychology and psychiatry faculty who study various aspects of emotions. The symposium series has expanded to include the world’s top emotion researchers. “This approach really has taught me to think very carefully about one body of work,” says Larson of the seminar. “You can really understand a person’s theory studying it this way.”

With input from the experts, she and her seminar mates will each be responsible for writing reviews of their chosen research areas and suggesting new ways to approach the concepts. The chapters will be part of a bound volume published after the symposium.

And although students may be somewhat apprehensive at the prospect of meeting the gurus in the field, they needn’t be, says Larson. “Everyone I’ve met in the past has been exceptionally friendly and helpful,” she says.

Symposium presenters this year include: Jocelyne Bachevalier, University of Texas School of Medicine; Raymond Dolan, University College of London; Robert Post, National Institute of Mental Health; and Trevor Robbins, University of Cambridge; and Davidson, Ned Kalin, Hedberg Professor and of Psychiatry and Psychology, and Ann Kelley, professor of psychiatry from UW–Madison.