November 27, 2023
Behavioral neuroscientist Peter Balsam to present 'The Brain is a Time Machine'
Peter Balsam, from Barnard College and Columbia University, will present a talk titled "The Brain is a Time Machine" from 3:30-4:30 p.m. Wednesday, Nov 29, in the Leadership Studies Building's Town Hall.
Balsam will be hosted by K-State's NIH-funded COBRE Center for Cognitive and Neurobiological Approaches to Plasticity, or CNAP, as part of the center's colloquium series. This series is designed for specialists and non-specialists alike and invites leading experts to cover topics related to neural plasticity — the changing brain. The K-State community is invited to join us to expand their knowledge of neuroplasticity and brain function.
Balsam summarizes his upcoming talk as follows: All thought and behavior is organized in time. Everything from picking up a glass of water to anticipating meeting a friend to the daily rhythms of eating and sleeping rely on timed signals from the body and brain that convey information about the right time for a particular action. The brain has a mechanism for organizing the temporal structure of our actions and physiology on scales ranging from milliseconds to days. Like the air we breathe, time is often not in our awareness, but it is the infrastructure for all our everyday functions. When these mechanisms become disordered and cannot be properly used to guide behavior, it can contribute to the symptoms of psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia, mood disorders and substance abuse. Our recent work has focused on how the dopamine system guides the anticipation that underlies motivated action, and this work is used to illustrate how basic research can suggest new treatment strategies.