“What’s lost or gained if we actually concede that humans are machines, and what is lost or gained if we concede that machines can become human?”

Roll these questions around in your mind for a minute, and you’ll get a sense of what makes �ֲ���ý’ approach to teaching neuroscience distinctive. As exemplified in a recent talk by Nancy Koven, John E. Kelsey Professor of Neuroscience, it’s an approach that considers not just the science of neuroscience, but the cultural context into which that science and its subjects are inextricably woven.

The �ֲ���ý neuroscience program, perhaps uniquely, points “specifically to the value of humanistic inquiry to help students evaluate the context in which neuroscience operates,” Koven said in the Oct. 25 talk that celebrated her appointment as the inaugural Kelsey Professor.

Nancy Koven delivers her address, “Stories of Neuroscience,” celebrating her appointment as the John E. Kelsey Professor of Neuroscience on Oct. 25. (Rene Roy for �ֲ���ý College)

Titled “Stories of Neuroscience,” Koven’s address was the centerpiece of a crowded and festive gathering that, as President Clayton Spencer indicated in her welcome, had every reason to rock. “The celebration of a professorship is always one of the most significant moments in the life of a college,” she said, “and today’s celebration is particularly rich because it is multi-generational in multiple ways.”

First, the new professorship honors John Kelsey, who came to �ֲ���ý in 1979, taught and conducted research for 34 years, and, in Spencer’s words, became “a distinguished and beloved member of the �ֲ���ý faculty who had an outsized impact on the life of the college and the lives of many, many students.”

Kelsey, who was on hand for the occasion (and lent a hand too, helping to set out extra seats as the room filled up), played a definitive role in establishing �ֲ���ý’ Program in Neuroscience, which Koven chairs.

In Koven, Spencer continued, the Kelsey Professorship honors “a current faculty member who upholds these traditions of commitment and generosity in every aspect of her work — teaching, research, and service.”

Sally Kelsey and her husband, Professor Emeritus of Psychology John Kelsey — namesake of the new �ֲ���ý professorship— chat with another table prior to Nancy Koven’s address on Oct. 25. (Rene Roy for �ֲ���ý College)

And the professorship itself, announced last spring, was the gift of a family “with long ties over many decades to �ֲ���ý”: the Bonneys, represented at Koven’s talk by members of three generations, including the couple who endowed the Kelsey professorship, trustee chair Michael J. Bonney ’80 and Alison Grott Bonney ’80.

Using his introduction to offer a primer on Kelsey, Koven, and the neuroscience program itself, Dean of the Faculty Malcolm Hill summarized the program as “one which today provides students with a deep understanding of the relationship between the nervous system and behavior, but also the historical, political, and ethical context in which neuroscience operates.

“This is important in our liberal arts context here at �ֲ���ý.”

A �ֲ���ý professor since 2006, Koven is a clinical neuropsychologist who studies connections between brain regions and cognitive and emotional functions. Her address did uphold its title with a couple of stories, including one about an early lesson about tribal hierarchies in the medical establishment.

The audience fills the Keck Classroom in Pettengill Hall for Nancy Koven’s talk, “Stories of Neuroscience” on Oct. 25, 2018. (Rene Roy for �ֲ���ý College)

But the heart of the talk was a sampler of student work at the intersection of neuroscience and what Koven called humanistic inquiry — a means of enriching a discipline, she explained, that can otherwise be reductive to a fault, treat brains as disembodied phenomena, and fail to see its own reflection in its conclusions.

“In essence,” she said, “we simplify the complexity of a person into variables that we care most about, hope that we’re capturing the essentials, average those essentials with those from other stripped-down people, hope that the resulting data that’s really no one is really everyone, and then tip-toe quietly around this question of what to do with all those juicy leftovers.”

With science fiction common to both, a first-year seminar and an upper-level seminar that Koven created provided examples of the humanistic approach in action.

Offered in 2016, the FYS engaged new “students from the get-go with lines of humanistic inquiry,” she explained. Last winter’s upper-level course, “Embodied Cognition, Technoculture, and Future of Identity,” provided a “culturally critical lens” for students already well-versed in neuroscience.

John E. Kelsey Professor of Neuroscience Nancy Kelsey meets with neuroscience major Adelae Durand ’19 of Cumberland, R.I., in Koven’s lab on Oct. 11, 2018. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Why science-fi? It’s a genre that “prompt[s] a realization for the reader that the here-and-now of our world does not have to be the way it is,” and ideally liberates readers to ask challenging questions. Another commonality between the courses is that Koven asks her students in both to undertake creative work in a variety of media.

“What mental phenomena might we police?”

In the FYS, for instance, “I asked students to conceptualize a piece of future neurotechnology, and to think about commercialization by marketing this fictitious concept in the format of a Victorian-era ad,” she said.

In both courses, she assigned students to find two real examples of “body technologies that have implications for cognition, emotion, sensation, perception, or movement” — with one example being something sanctioned by medical neuroscience, and the other representing “body hacking,” where people install technology into their bodies independent of the medical establishment.

The body-hacking example was a “third ear” — an ear-shaped growth on an that is equipped with a microphone and wifi to enable, “basically, a global sharing of a person’s immediate soundscape.” Its medically approved counterpoint was a deep-brain stimulator, implanted in people with conditions such as epilepsy, that both monitors brain activity and applies an electrical pulse as needed to avert possible seizures.

Michael Bonney ’80, chair of the �ֲ���ý Board of Trustees, in conversation prior to Nancy Koven’s address Oct. 25 celebrating her appointment as Kelsey Professor of Neuroscience. Bonney and his wife, Alison Grott Bonney ’80, endowed the Kelsey chair. (Rene Roy for �ֲ���ý College)

“What I deeply appreciate” about that example, Koven said, was a question that it raised for the student who submitted it, Claire MacKay ’20: “While this device addresses troubling symptoms of a disease, it is nonetheless a vehicle by which to impose electrical norms in the brain. What mental phenomena might we police?” That was one of many provocative student queries that Koven shared and that, in and of themselves, were one of the most engaging aspects of the talk.

An outstanding example of student creative work came from the upper-level course and Koven’s challenge to create a so-called body-shopping catalog for consumers in a future “in which the body is an optional mode of existence and is, as such, deliberately constructed and customized.”

Julie Stitt Self ’18 and Lindsey Beauregard ’18 rose to the challenge by creating a faux Amazon.com site that took themes from the course and set them in a commercial context. With one of their imaginary products, the customer can be re-embodied in literature: “Feel like you always have your head stuck in a book? Try your whole body. Swap out your meat bag and become a body of literature instead.”

“It opens the door for people, now bodies of information, to be uploaded into digital beings.”

The site came complete with Amazon verisimilitude in the form of apparatus such as customer reviews. “Generally love this product,” said one review. “Not only can I keep immaculate records of my memories, but I can also write myself into a new fantasy whenever I choose.”

Koven introduces her audience to a theme that has emerged from her students’ work: the relentless thinning of the wall between human and machine. (Rene Roy for �ֲ���ý College)

That project speaks to one of the broader themes that emerged from the student work: the relentless thinning of the wall between human and machine, and a mind-bending projection of that trend. Digitalization, Koven said, “reinforces the idea that bodies can be read as information, opening the door for human beings to be rendered in code.

“For excited futurists, it opens the door for people, now bodies of information, to be uploaded into digital beings. A wide-scale leaving-behind of what some see as a perennial problem of the body would constitute a digital diaspora. Digital uploading also invites the idea of digital downloading, and it promises immortality either way,” as the body-shopping notion suggests.

Still, the prospect of a digital diaspora “is fraught territory,” Koven noted, especially among those who have worked so hard to defend their identities here in the realm of flesh and blood. She said, “Looking forward can sometimes seem like a dereliction of duty to the past and to the present.”

But not when it comes to teaching and learning neuroscience at �ֲ���ý. Koven concluded that “a vital part of undergraduate neuroscience is to look at brains — yes, absolutely to look at brains — but to also look at how we look at brains, and to contemplate the kind of cultural icon the brain has become.

“I think humanistic lines of inquiry help up do this kind of work, and I’m delighted to be part of a developing �ֲ���ý neuroscience story that recognizes this.”

From left, John Kelsey, Nancy Koven, Michael Bonney ’80, and Alison Grott Bonney ’80 pose for a photo after Koven’s talk. The Bonneys’ gift endowed the new neuroscience professorship held by Koven and named in honor of Kelsey, a member of the psychology faculty for 34 years. (Rene Roy for �ֲ���ý College)

A member of the �ֲ���ý faculty since 2006, Nancy Koven is the inaugural holder of the John E. Kelsey Professorship in Neuroscience.

Endowed by Michael J. Bonney ’80 and Alison Grott Bonney ’80, this new professorship honors Professor Emeritus of Psychology John Kelsey and his foundational contributions to the Program in Neuroscience during his 37 years on the faculty, and it recognizes a faculty member who exemplifies the supportive, innovative, and learning-by-doing approach to neuroscience teaching and research at �ֲ���ý.

Nancy Koven explains what the appointment means to her:

The generosity of the Bonney family seemingly knows no bounds! They already have had such a powerfully transformative impact on the entire �ֲ���ý community — past, present, and future — and, as if that were not inspiring enough, they have named this new professorship in honor of one of the most transformative professors to ever teach at �ֲ���ý: John Kelsey.

I am delighted to see John recognized in this way, and I’m humbled to be the first holder of the Kelsey Professorship.

During an end-of-year “follies” reception for neuroscience faculty and their seniors, John E. Kelsey Professor of Neuroscience Nancy Koven (right) and neuroscience colleague Laura Ligouri (left) react as Lindsey Beauregard ’18 of Hollis, N.H., offers an alternative career idea for Koven. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

When I first stepped foot onto the �ֲ���ý campus over a decade ago, I was surprised by an uncanny sense of having returned rather than having just arrived.

Professor Emeritus of Psychology John Kelsey was a �ֲ���ý teacher and researcher for 37 years.

John and colleagues in the Department of Psychology welcomed me like family, and the overall rapport among �ֲ���ý faculty and staff, the rich integration of campus and community, and the close working relationships between faculty and students were, and still are, vital to that sense of belonging.

Over this past decade, the Program in Neuroscience has grown in size and expanded in exciting, new interdisciplinary directions, but the foundational ideal that John Kelsey put into place — that there is considerable joy in communal learning, creative exploration, and hard work — remains vibrant.

About Nancy Koven

John E. Kelsey Professor of Neuroscience Nancy Koven, who chairs the Program in Neuroscience, teaches core and advanced courses as well as a First-Year Seminar on the intersection of neuroscience and literature. Koven’s research in neuropsychiatry examines brain structure and function in the context of adult mental health, focusing on the complex interplay between the roles of cognition and emotion in human behavior.

A past recipient of the Kroepsch Award for Excellence in Teaching, she routinely includes student collaborators in her research, which has been funded through grants from the National Institutes of Health and the Maine Institute for Human Genetics and Health.

If you’re a student in Professor of Psychology John Kelsey’s neuroscience laboratory, you might get a chance to co-author a research article. And if you’re Kelsey, your students might inspire you to explore a new area of neuroscience. “My research is done with my students and through my students,” says Kelsey.

Over the years, around 50 of your students have published research with you. How do students get their names on a paper?

They have to contribute in some fundamental way to the ideas. If you hire undergraduates as techs, where they’re mostly doing the nuts and bolts, it’s tricky deciding if they’ve made a sufficient contribution to warrant authorship. But since most of my work is done around the senior thesis, ideas usually originate jointly. The students and I bounce ideas off each other and reformulate them. It’s a real give-and-take, so they have ownership of the ideas before they even start.

Using a rat model, much of your and your students’ research focuses on behavior around opiate addiction.

For a long time, the theory was that an addict was motivated by the aversive effects of withdrawal, what we call negative reinforcement: You take the drug to get rid of an aversive state. Later researchers, particularly Roy Wise, argued that positive reinforcement is critical: You take the drug because you like it. My and others’ work in the 1990s suggested that both reward and withdrawal are important.

Do the research topics change year to year in your lab?

In science, you usually make a find and then build on it. I tend to jump around. The first research we did on Parkinson’s disease was on NMDA receptors, special kinds of glutamate receptors that are heavily involved in learning. Then we switched to adenosine — completely unrelated, in some sense. This year we’ve switched to opiates and cannabinoids! I think a lot of it is me. I get bored; let’s jump around.

How do students react to this approach?

I think students like to delve into something new each year instead of feeling that they’re merely following up on Joe’s result on NMDA receptors.

What do you do to attract students to neuroscience or psychology?

One skill that I have, and I don’t have many, is recognizing good students early on and getting them interested. If I hear that so-and-so is good but hasn’t taken one of my classes, I’ll twist their arm a bit.

What if a student has divergent interests?

Katy Reedy ’06 was interested in psychology and creative writing. I encouraged her, and she majored in psych and after graduation did research with my former student, Bill Carlezon ’86, director of the Behavioral Genetics Laboratory at Harvard’s McLean Hospital. She’s now in graduate school…in English! I do feel a little guilt — maybe if I hadn’t been so pushy about neuroscience she would’ve stayed in English at �ֲ���ý.

On the other hand, my thesis student Lisa Genova ’92 got her Ph.D. in neuroscience and just wrote a novel, Still Alice, about a fictional Harvard professor who develops Alzheimer’s. It was recently bought by Simon & Schuster.

What’s it like having a cadre of alums out there who’ve been through your lab?

When I go to the Society for Neuroscience and see 12 or 15 alums there, it’s terrific. At a place like �ֲ���ý, you wonder, “What’s my legacy?” Research will be the legacy for some �ֲ���ý faculty, and I publish regularly but it’s not earth-shattering. Research won’t be my legacy, as much as I would like it to be. It will be the alumni I’ve taught.

What qualities do you seek when the psychology department hires a new member?

A lot has to do with work ethic. We take this job and the students seriously, and we like and respect each other. We don’t socialize as a department; we don’t often meet that way. We basically do our job and we know everyone else is doing their job. So we have absolutely implicit trust in each other.

When you arrived in 1979, who modeled that ethic for you?

Bob Moyer and Drake Bradley would get up at 4 a.m. to get in here. Bob would go home eventually but Drake would be here all night. It was pretty clear those two had nothing in their lives but �ֲ���ý! Dick Wagner was the chair. He hired well and was such a good mediator; he got people to work together. And, he did the administrative stuff so we didn’t have to futz with it. He protected us.

Were Drake and Bob here all hours for their students or their own research?

It was mostly student-driven, but that’s how we do our research. Research, teaching, and helping students are so commingled we can’t differentiate among them.

In the �ֲ���ý contingent were Rachel Austin, assistant professor of chemistry; three associate professors from the biology department, Pamela Baker, Lee Abrahamsen and Nancy Kleckner; and John Kelsey, professor of psychology. �ֲ���ý was one of 29 colleges and universities to send a team to the institute, which took place at Santa Clara University, Santa Clara, Calif.

The SENCER Summer Institute was designed to support a national reform effort broadening the relevance of undergraduate science education. “The overall idea was that learning can be improved by connecting the teaching of science to current global issues, particularly those which are complex and largely unsolved,” says Pamela Baker.

“Many of the issues we face as citizens have a science or technology dimension,” Baker continues. “While not everyone can be an expert on everything, learning to be a critical thinker and knowing how scientfic knowledge is produced can help people contribute to these debates and decisions.”

Participants in the SENCER institute proposed courses that teach rigorous science content through problems that require scientific knowledge and expertise.

SENCER is planned as a five-year national dissemination project that will promote reform through faculty development, a focus on local systemic change and improved assessment strategies. The project is supported with a grant from the National Science Foundation and has three goals: 1) to improve science education, especially for students who will never major in a scientific field; 2) to connect science education reform to more robust and relevant general education programs; and 3) to stimulate informed civic engagement with scientific questions on the part of today’s students.

Divorcing scientific facts from the social context and the research methodology of the era in which they were discovered “makes it very difficult for people to apply those facts in the real world,” says Baker. “Making an effort to tie science education to real-life issues not only motivates students to learn the facts, but helps them learn to apply the scientific thinking process to issues they encounter in the future.”

She added, “It was gratifying to see that �ֲ���ý is quite far ahead of many places in doing this kind of teaching.”

The Association of American Colleges and Universities is the leading national association devoted to advancing and strengthening liberal learning for all students, regardless of academic specialization or intended career. Founded in 1915, AAC&U has more than 700 accredited public and private colleges and universities of every type and size.