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Hi, I'm Becca and I'm a Haverford psychology major. I have been juggling pediatric medicine (primary care or neurology), child psychology and elementary school education as possible career venues for many years. Neurobiology has implications within each of these domains, as does it's application to human behavior. In pursuing my pre-med and psychology aspirations, I have taken courses in cell biology, neuroanatomy, organic chemistry, and cognition. I hope that my experiences learning about the workings of the human body and mind from within many different scientific contexts will allow me to bring integrated and distinctly developed thoughts on neorobiology and behavior, especially where development is concerned. I have spent many summers and semesters working in various labs that study Autism from a range of viewpoints. I've been exposed to, and hope to bring to this class, neurological, genetic, cognitive and diagnostic perspectives on pervasive developmental disorders.

My questions are:

1. To what extent does language development follow a strict neurological pattern? To what extent is socialization a contributor? Does exposure to language from social contexts/the human environment affect the neural development of language centers (aside from atrophy of structures involved in differentiating between certain sounds after the critical period)?

2. What neurological structures are implicated in theory of mind? How does theory of mind dictate behavior from a neurobiology standpoint?

3. I'd like to talk about what sort of neurological research is out there about fight or flight response thresholds.