Social-Emotional Memory in the Developin

Course Description Why do some emotional memories feel so powerful and enduring? How do our earliest social experiences shape the way we interpret and respond to the world around us—often in ways we don’t even realize? This seminar explores the neuroscience of social-emotional memory, diving into how the brain constructs, refines, and applies interpersonal-affective "attachment" schemas across development. We’ll examine why certain social-emotional patterns become ingrained, how the developing brain balances past experiences with new learning, and what happens when these processes go awry. Along the way, we’ll unpack cutting-edge research on memory, prediction, and social connection, asking: How do our brains extract emotional meaning from our earliest relationships, and how might these mechanisms impact emotional behavior across development? There is no cohesive body of knowledge on this topic, so students will be taking the methods and results from one area (e.g., neural underpinnings of schema acquisition) and applying those ideas to content and theory from another area (e.g., amygdala-dependent memory development)- the goal is to generate new hypotheses and ideas through this integration across of cognitive and developmental neuroscience subfields.