Dr. Marcie Penner gives Keynote at Cortona Week in Tuscany

King’s Associate Professor of Psychology, Dr. Marcie Penner-Wilger, gave an invited keynote at Cortona Week, a transdisciplinary conference held in Tuscany (Sept. 5 – 12). The theme of this year’s Cortona Week was reproducibility. Cortona Week is a transdisciplinary seminar that takes place annually in September. It is organized by ETH Zurich, in cooperation with the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK). Since 1985, approximately 100 Master or PhD students, and some 30 professors gather in Cortona, Tuscany in Italy for a full week of discourse towards “Science and Wholeness of Life” through the exchange of ideas and fostering intercultural competence. A special yearly title focuses on the contributions of well-selected, distinguished speakers and workshop leaders from the natural sciences, humanities, arts and politics, as well as from religion and spirituality. The topic of Cortona Week 2015 was “REPRODUCIBILITY”.

In her talk, titled “Neural Reuse: Evidence and Implications for Reproducibility in Cognitive Neuroscience”, Dr. Penner-Wilger presented recent evidence about the impact of evolutionary and developmental mechanisms on the functional organization of the brain, which lead to differences both between individuals, and within individuals over the course of development. She discussed implications of these findings for reproducibility in cognitive neuroscience and provided examples and novel methodologies drawn from her expertise in numerical cognition. 

Marcie Penner-Wilger heads the Cognitive Science and Numeracy Lab (http://penner-wilger.kingsfaculty.ca) and is the Director of the Centre for Multidisciplinary Applied Research at King’s. She teaches courses including Research Methods in Psychology, Cognitive Psychology, and Applications of Psychological Science.