[Mitworld] John M. Barry on H1N1 Flu, Paul Phillips on Dopamine and Learning

[MIT World]

MIT World Newsletter

Volume 9, Number 10 |  October 22, 2009

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Reflections on the Current H1N1 Flu
October 5, 2009

John M. Barry brings unsettling news from the frontlines of H1N1 research: this novel influenza 
virus is very hard to pin down. In spite of international scientific scrutiny, H1N1 continues 
to baffle and elude, worrying health officials defending against the pandemic, and challenging 
some ideas about influenza in general. Says Barry, “A lot of things we thought we knew, the virus 
demonstrates we knew wrong.”

http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/715

Speaker:
John M. Barry
Author, The Great Influenza and Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America


Event Host:
Center for Engineering Systems Fundamentals

"My attitude is, I travel a lot, the virus is going to find me."
-John M. Barry

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Monitoring Dopamine Release During Reward Learning 
May 7, 2009

In the process of learning, we “sometimes make more deliberative choices, and sometimes make more 
visceral ones,” says Paul Phillips. These are “semantic terms we intuitively know,” and scientists 
have become well-versed in creating tasks for animals and humans that demonstrate how these 
different kinds of learning (analytical- reflective vs. impulsive -reflexive) play out. 
Phillips has been trying to track dopamine release (a neurotransmitter linked to learning) 
in such divergent learning processes.


http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/709

Speaker:
Paul E. M. Phillips
Assistant Professor, Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences

Department of Pharmacology

Graduate Program in Neurobiology & Behavior

Graduate Program in Cellular & Molecular Biology

Center for Drug Addiction Research

Univers


Event Host:
McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT

"We’re interested in looking at neuroadaptation that happens over days or months, that comes about 
either through experience, in the case of learning, or pathology, in the case of disease."
-Paul E. M. Phillips

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In The Pipeline:

America's Leadership on Clean Energy

Presented By:
The Office of the President of MIT

Speaker:
President Barack Obama
President of the United States

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Contact MIT World

Massachusetts Institute of Technology 77 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02139-4307
mit.world at mit.edu | http://mitworld.mit.edu

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