Congratulations to CLBB Faculty, Harvard Law School Professor and former federal Judge Nancy Gertner, who was named the 2015 recipient of the New England First Amendment Coalition (NEFAC)’s Stephen Hamblett First Amendment Award. Judge Gertner advocated for courtroom transparency by expressing support for courtroom cameras and publicly speaking out about her own cases.

See the original press release on the NEFAC site:

February 5, 2015 | Katie Couric | Yahoo! Global News

CLBB Advisory Board member and President and Executive Director of Partners in Health Ophelia Dahl spoke with Katie Couric about the measles outbreak and ongoing vaccination debate in the US. Dahl’s father, author Roald Dahl, penned a letter in 1986 about the death of his oldest daughter, Olivia, who was stricken with measles before a vaccine against it was available. Both Dahl and her father called on the public to respect scientific consensus that the vaccines are safe. She stressed the importance of getting good information about science and data and said that even “a little bit of bad science is a dangerous thing.”

In an exclusive interview, Ophelia Dahl, daughter of Roald Dahl, sat down with Yahoo Global News Anchor Katie Couric to discuss the letter her father wrote that captured the world’s attention this week, the sister she never knew and the anti-vaccination debate that’s taken over the country.

Roald Dahl, the author of such beloved stories as “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” “James and the Giant Peach” and “Matilda,” lost his eldest daughter, Olivia, to measles in 1962, when she was just 7 years old.

Her death left the author heartbroken. “He traveled everywhere with a small silver photograph frame with a picture of her inside… Whenever he went on vacation, he took this with him and would put it up in the room wherever he was,” Ophelia recounted.

He penned a public letter in 1988 as a plea to parents and children to take advantage of the vaccine that came too late for his own daughter.

“He thought if he talked about his own personal experience, that would awaken the slumber he felt people were in,” said Ophelia.

At a time when a current measles outbreak is fueling nationwide fear, the letter has resonated with millions of people. Twenty-seven years after Roald Dahl wrote that “parents who now refuse to have their children immunized are putting the lives of those children at risk,” the number of parents choosing not to have their children vaccinated is growing, and the anti-vaccination debate continues.

Read the full article and watch video interview with Ophelia Dahl at Yahoo! Global News.

Congratulations to Steven Hyman, MD, who became President of the Society for Neuroscience, the world’s largest organization of brain and nervous system scientists and physicians, at the Society’s annual meeting, on November 19, 2014, in Washington, DC.

Steven E. Hyman is former provost and Distinguished Service Professor of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology at Harvard University. A 1980 graduate of Harvard Medical School, Hyman pursued basic neurobiological research, focusing on drug addiction and the molecular origins of mental illness. By 1994, he became the first faculty director of Harvard University’s Mind/Brain/Behavior Initiative, a multidisciplinary effort to study how nervous system disease relates to human behavior. Shortly thereafter, the director of the National Institutes of Health recruited Hyman to lead the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). But in 2001, Hyman left the NIMH to become the University’s provost, a position he held until 2011.

A faculty member of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute, and director of the Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research at the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, Hyman’s career has been a rare combination of neuroscience and academic leadership.

Dr. Hyman was elected President-elect last year, and will hold the role for 2014-2015. He took over from past President Carol Mason, and Hollis Cline was voted President-elect.

CLBB faculty Lisa Feldman Barrett was quoted in the science magazine Nautilus’ issue on Illusions. In light of the classic duck-rabbit illusion, Barrett posited that the brain is an “inference generating organ” which, in real life, fills in the details of ambiguous sensory input to generate understandings about the world. From the article:

When I put the question of whether we were living in a kind of metaphorical duck-rabbit world to Lisa Feldman Barrett, who heads the Interdisciplinary Affective Science Laboratory at Northeastern University, her answer was quick: “I don’t even think it’s necessarily metaphorical.” The structure of the brain, she notes, is such that there are many more intrinsic connections between neurons than there are connections that bring sensory information from the world. From that incomplete picture, she says, the brain is “filling in the details, making sense out of ambiguous sensory input.” The brain, she says, is an “inference generating organ.” She describes an increasingly well-supported working hypothesis called predictive coding, according to which perceptions are driven by your own brain and corrected by input from the world. There would otherwise simple be too much sensory input to take in. “It’s not efficient,” she says. “The brain has to find other ways to work.” So it constantly predicts. When “the sensory information that comes in does not match your prediction,” she says, “you either change your prediction—or you change the sensory information that you receive.”

Read the full piece from Nautilus, “How your brain decides without you,” by Tom Vanderbilt, published November 6, 2014.

Congratulations to Nancy Gertner, CLBB faculty, for a scholarship established in her name by Massachusetts Continuing Legal Education, Inc. From the press release:

“Massachusetts Continuing Legal Education, Inc. (MCLE) is pleased to announce the establishment of the Honorable Nancy Gertner Scholarship Fund to honor an outstanding member of the legal community whose life and work as a lawyer, jurist, and teacher exemplify the best of our profession’s rich legal heritage. MCLE is grateful to the committee of close friends and colleagues of Judge Gertner who joined together to help launch this scholarship fund in her honor: Continue reading »