CACIOPPO TO DELIVER NUVEEN LECTURE, NOVEMBER 8, 2011
John T. Cacioppo, the Tiffany & Margaret Blake Distinguished Service Professor, Department of Psychology and Director, Center for Cognitive and Social Neuroscience at the University of Chicago
His Nuveen Lecture is entitled: "Invisible Forces Revealed Through Studies of Social Isolation"
Cacioppo's research focuses on the neural, hormonal, cellular, and genetic consequences of the superorganismal structures that define humans as a social species. He and his colleagues have used social isolation, real and perceived, as a lens to reveal the behavioral, neural, hormonal, cellular, and genetic effects of social connection. Evidence from human and nonhuman animal studies indicates that isolation heightens sensitivity to social threats (predator evasion) and motivates the renewal of social connections. The effects of perceived isolation in humans share much in common with the effects of experimental manipulations of isolation in nonhuman social species, including increased tonic sympathetic tonus and HPA activation; and decreased inflammatory control, immunity, sleep salubrity, and expression of genes regulating glucocorticoid responses. Together, these effects contribute to higher rates of morbidity and mortality.
Cacioppo is currently the President of the Society for Social Neuroscience, the Chair of Section J (Psychology) of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), a member of the Council of the Center for Scientific Review (CSR) of the National Institutes of Health; the Board on Behavioral, Cognitive, and Sensory Sciences of the National Research Council; the Board of the Federation of Associations in Behavioral and Brain Sciences Foundation; and the MacArthur Foundation Aging Society Network. His most recent books are (with L. Freberg) Psychology: The Science of the Mind (2012); (with J. Decety) The Oxford Handbook of Social Neuroscience (2011); (as Director of the Chicago Social Brain Network) Invisible Forces and Powerful Beliefs: Gravity, Gods, and Minds (2011); (with G. G. Berntson) Handbook of Neuroscience for the Behavioral Sciences (2009); and (with B. Patrick) Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection (2008).
Please see http://divinity.uchicago.edu/alumni/awards/nuveen/ for more information on the Nuveen Lecture series.
Cacioppo will deliver the Nuveen Lecture on Tuesday, November 8, at 4:00 p.m. in Swift Lecture Hall (1025 East 58th Street). This event is free and open to the public. For more information, or special needs assistance, please contact Terren Ilana Wein at terren@uchicago.edu or 773-702-8230.
