Issue 4 April 2015 Sundial 03 05 06 12 Profile Looking back Research Corpus Papers Robin Murphy discusses 20 years at Unravelling Cryptography Corpus manuscript in major Experimental Psychology Corpus with Dr Louis Aslett British Library exhibition 14 Studentships Jonathan Wolf celebrates his father Sundial Issue 4 April 2015 Issue 4 April 2015 Sundial Welcome Profile From the President Professor Robin Murphy Professor Richard Carwardine FBA Fellow in Experimental Psychology 500 Campaign – since 2010 – we have Professor Murphy joined the understanding of debilitating and these tasks relatively naïve about the made significant progress. Thanks to destructive psychopathologies such as nature of the task and are required to SIMON CHAPMAN SIMON Sundial College in 2009. He has been a University matched-funding scheme, Issue 4 depression and psychopathy. Robin’s learn a statistical or causal relation. but even more to our Old Members, the April 2015 Welfare Tutor for Men and since lab has close ties with researchers in Using a combination of observation, College has endowed in perpetuity four 2011 has been Dean at Corpus. Australia, Canada, Ireland and the recordings and variation to brain Tutorial Fellowships: in Philosophy, UK as well as with university spin action the experiments are designed English, Latin and History. This is out companies involved in software to understand how learning comes an outstanding expression of Old development and the search for a cure about, its content and ultimately how to Corpuscles’ generosity for which the for Alzheimers. support learning where biases emerge. College is profoundly grateful. The study of learning assumes that Associative learning attempts to Building on these recent underlying our behaviour and thoughts describe how connections can produce achievements, the Campaign is focused are the connected activities of neurons. the thoughts that allow us to pick up a on raising funds to provide graduate Neurons are complex biological cup of coffee or to imagine a cure for studentships and more support for entities with interesting and varied cancer. The theories are instantiated undergraduates and to extend the electrical and chemical function, but in computer simulations from which Michael Brock Junior Research Professor Robin Murphy’s lab ultimately their physical action reduces we can generate predictions about how Fellowship in Modern History. We investigates the neurobiological to a binary event – either the neuron particular experiences that we might The countdown to 2017 has begun. also want to resource a programme to computational and behavioural is active or inactive. The search for present to our laboratory participants or Enclosed with this issue of The Sundial encourage girls from state schools to consequences of learning. an explanation for how neurons can subjects will be learnt. you will find a brochure – The Corpus read science subjects at university. We Noncontroversially, the experimental collectively produce complex thought One example of recent advances in 500 Campaign – that launches our aim to improve the facilities for College study of learning believes that an and behaviours requires theories that the lab is the use of these associative fundraising appeal in support of the rowing and music, and enhance the enduring effect of our experiences is consider how excitatory and inhibitory models to understand how people learn College’s ambitious projects to mark cultural and sporting lives of our a change to the physical brain and our processes can combine in complex that they are causal agents – how they our Quincentenary. Let me tell you students in other ways, too. subsequent behaviour. He uses both organised systems. can cause things to happen and how the about the thinking that has shaped the Above all, we have ambitious plans rodent and human-based models of Robin uses computational theories neurotransmitter serotonin might be plans to mark this momentous year in for a New Library. They include: how experience is translated into these of stimulus association to describe crucial in feeding human perceptions our history. • Bringing into the light of the changes in behaviour and thinking. these complex interactions. The of agency. It is well known that one of On 5 March 1517 our founder, 21st century a treasury of rare A goal of this type of behavioural and human-based work studies people the symptoms of depression is a loss Richard Fox, placed his new College manuscripts and early books, cognitive neuroscience research is while they engage in computer- of agency and instrumental control. into the hands of a president, twenty currently held in a College basement. to use the findings to develop our based tasks. Participants come into When we press a door bell, steer fellows, and twenty scholars. This was These include a spectacular set of the wheel of car or send our CV to the culmination of some six years’ medieval Anglo-Jewish texts, early a potential employer we are using work. Corpus was to be a pioneering our memory of learned contingencies Greek and Latin manuscripts, and READ NICK and unequivocally humanist college letters of Sir Isaac Newton. Our 20,000 to guide our behaviour, but in to train secular priests. Thanks to Fox, early printed books constitute one Editors depression the perception of Renaissance learning took its place for of the most important collections in Nick Thorn instrumentality diminishes. the first time in Oxford. Oxford or Cambridge. above, top Another symptom of depression is We are now just two years away • Providing areas for study groups and [email protected] altered neurotransmitter action. from our 500th anniversary, and the more space for readers. Neurotransmitters are the chemicals steady pulse of routine business in • Providing a good working Sarah Salter that carry signals between neurons. Corpus cannot conceal the quickening environment for scholars, archivists above, middle Robin has been studying the of excitement. Equally, as I talk to Old and librarians. [email protected] involvement of the brain network Corpuscles, I am greatly encouraged • Liberating once-beautiful ground- involving the neurotransmitter by your eagerness to see us inaugurate floor space in the main quad, Sara Watson serotonin and its our next half-millennium with bold currently housing book stacks, to above, bottom role in instrumental action. ambition. It is not unreasonable to become much-needed public rooms. [email protected] The research in Robin’s lab has assert that the Quincentenary projects, • Improving the College’s architectural been funded over the years by the UK fully realised, will constitute a Second aesthetic. ©Corpus Christi College research councils Biotechnology and Renaissance. The plans for the New Library Oxford, 2015 Biological Sciences (BBSRC), Economic Renaissance humanists sought to are currently the subject of public www.ccc.ox.ac.uk and Social (ESRC), Medical Research nurture intelligent, prudent citizens consultation. In their final, approved Council (MRC) and the Wellcome capable of engaging in civic life and form we shall post them on the Corpus Designed by Foundation. He sits on international promoting public virtue. Theirs is website for you to consider. www.pelotondesign.co.uk journal editorial boards and has an enduring ambition. Our objects I hope you will agree that this project advised the Canadian and British at Corpus are to advance scholarly and our other schemes collectively Printed by governments’ research councils. research and foster students’ intellects, offer a fitting programme for our 500th Taylor Brothers Bristol Ltd alert of course to the demands anniversary. To realise these goals the For the interested reader a collection edited by of a rapidly changing economy, College depends, as it has throughout All details are correct at the time Professor Murphy on associative learning and while preparing them, like their its history, on its members’ generous of going to press. its application is freely available as an ebook predecessors, to engage in civic life and giving. I very much hope we can count download at: www.frontiersin.org/books/ promote public virtue. on your support. Individual_differences_in_associative_ For Corpus to continue to provide learning/315 and in 2015 the Wiley/Blackwells With my best wishes, COVER: Cloisters a liberal, humane education, Photography by Handbook of the Cognitive Neuroscience independent of the political weather, Patrick Meyer Higgins of Learning will be released. requires financial independence. During the initial quiet phase of our 2 3 Sundial Issue 4 April 2015 Issue 4 April 2015 Sundial Our Academic Registrar The Dial College Faces looks back over 20 years at Corpus Rachel Pearson Academic Registrar Reunion Theatre Trip -STOCK i Corpus in Blanche Changing times Rome 2014 McIntyre at The Globe This is Rachel Pearson’s 21st Friday 26- Sunday 28 September year at Corpus. During that READ NICK Tuesday 9 September 2014 time her job has changed When Dr Anna Marmodoro announced that she Last September, Blanche considerably. We asked her to was holding a Philosophy Summer School at the McIntyre (Classics, 1999), reflect on how it has evolved. British School in Rome in September, it seemed directed Shakespeare’s The only sensible to hold an Alumni weekend that Comedy of Errors at The would tailgate the Summer School but would Globe to wide critical acclaim also explore some of the beauties of Rome. and on 9 September thirty A group of twenty, including the President, Old Members and guests began their visit with an illuminating lecture from enjoyed the performance Dr Marmodoro at the British School, entitled immensely. Before the ‘What the Roman Philosophers, philosophically, performance, over a pizza did for us’. The group then headed off for a guided supper, Blanche gave a What attracted you to the post at Corpus? tour of the Galleria Borghese with its breath- very well-received talk to the I had worked for the university for six years and taking interiors and sculpture.