Brown University

In a ribbon-cutting ceremony, speakers talked about the efforts that led to the center’s establishment and its essential role at Brown.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Brown University’s First-Generation College and Low-Income Student Center celebrated its official opening on Sept. 16 with a ribbon-cutting ceremony and reception in its new, dedicated space in the University’s Sciences Library.

In joining students, faculty and staff from Brown at the opening ceremony, Brown President Christina Paxson said the center will serve as a vital resource for students who are the first in their family to attend college or come from a low-income background — and acknowledged the essential role that Brown students played in the creation of the center, the first of its kind in the country.

“Students here have a lot to be proud of. Not just for what you are doing on this campus, but for what you are doing around the country. It’s really remarkable,” she said.

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In a new study, researchers report they were able to train unknowing volunteers to develop a mild but significant preference or dislike for faces that they had previously regarded neutrally.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Volunteers who started an experiment feeling neutral about certain faces they saw ended up unknowingly adopting the feelings that scientists induced via an MRI feedback technique, according to newly published research.

The study in PLOS Biology therefore suggests that there is a single region of the brain where both positive and negative feelings for faces take shape and provides the second demonstration this year that the MRI technique can be used to train a mental process in an unknowing subject. This spring, the team used the same method to associate the perception of color with the context of a pattern so strongly that volunteers saw the color when cued by the pattern, even if the color wasn’t really there.

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A unique new study of young adults finds that negative experiences on Facebook may increase the risk of depressive symptoms, suggesting that online social interactions have important consequences for mental health.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — In the first study of its kind, public health researchers show that young adults who reported having negative experiences on Facebook — including bullying, meanness, misunderstandings or unwanted contacts — were at significantly higher risk of depression, even accounting for many possible confounding factors.

“I think it’s important that people take interactions on social media seriously and don’t think of it as somehow less impactful because it’s a virtual experience as opposed to an in-person experience,” said lead author Samantha Rosenthal, an epidemiology research associate in the Brown University School of Public Health who performed the research as part of her doctoral thesis at Brown. “It’s a different forum that has real emotional consequences.”

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Titled ‘Brown University president: A safe space for freedom of expression,’ guest column comes at a time of fierce debate about the capacity of universities to prepare students for confronting difficult, complex issues.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — The Washington Post published in its newspaper today, Sept. 6, a guest column titled “Brown University president: A safe space for freedom of expression” by Brown President Christina Paxson.

The column is framed as an opening address for the new academic year for students entering college across the country at a time of fierce debate about the capacity of colleges and universities to truly prepare students for confronting difficult, complex issues that face society today. The column previews themes Paxson will share with the campus in greater depth during Brown’s 253rd Opening Convocation, which will be held at 4:00 p.m. on the College Green.

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