BRATTLEBORO — Dartmouth professor Paul Whalen will consider the importance of facial expressions and how the brain reads them in a talk at Brooks Memorial Library in Brattleboro on Nov. 4 at 7 p.m.
His talk, “Face to Face with the Emotional Brain,” is part of the Vermont Humanities Council's First Wednesdays lecture series and is free and open to the public.
Whether one is sitting around the caveman's fire or the conference table, no signal is more important to humans' interpreting interactions and predicting behavior than the smile. Whalen will explore how the brain processes facial expressions and how that helps us understand our emotional lives.
Dr. Whalen is professor of psychological and brain sciences at Dartmouth College. He earned his Ph.D. at the University of Vermont and subsequently was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard Medical School, where he learned functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).
He now teaches and runs a brain imaging laboratory that focuses on the study of emotion and emotional disorders. He co-edited the book The Human Amygdala, and his work has been featured in The New York Times.
The Vermont Humanities Council's First Wednesdays series is held on the first Wednesday of every month from October through May in nine communities statewide, featuring speakers of national and regional renown.
Talks in Brattleboro are held at Brooks Memorial Library unless otherwise noted.
Upcoming talks in Brattleboro include “The Buildings of Vermont” with Middlebury College professor Glen Andres on Dec. 2; “Vincent Van Gogh: What Influenced Him and His Influence on Art” with art historian Carol Berry on Jan. 6; and “The History of Health Care in the U.S.” with Dartmouth professor Allen Koop on Feb. 3.