Research

Television is a laughing matter

Rachel Sauer — Mon, 15 Sep 2025 22:17:11 +0000

Television is a laughing matter Rachel Sauer Mon, 09/15/2025 - 16:17

Jared Bahir Browsh

In the 75 years since it was introduced, the laugh track has conditioned viewers to know when and how much to laugh

Some audiences love it, and some audiences hate it, but the laugh track��which celebrates its 75th anniversary this year��has a deeper, more psychological impact than many realize.

For months after I completed my book on Hanna-Barbera, I purposely avoided shows with laugh tracks. After hundreds of hours of over-the-top laughter that followed every Fred Flintstone fall or Scooby Doo pun, I became hyperaware of the laughter that accompanied my favorite shows like ��I Love Lucy" and ��Seinfeld.�� These shows returned to my TV rotation after this short detox, but similar to involuntary processes like breathing, once I begin noticing laugh tracks, I couldn��t stop, breaking the desensitization and conditioning that has occurred for many viewers after decades of watching sitcoms.

Like a number of early television shows, laugh tracks originated on radio before transitioning to television. Pioneering radio engineer Jack Mullin brought a tape recorder back from Germany after World World II, exhibiting the technology by recording musical performances and then playing back the music. In June 1947, he met the producer for Bing Crosby��s radio show, and after he demonstrated the technology, Crosby decided to pre-record his show.

Jared Bahir Browsh is the Critical Sports Studies program director in the CU Boulder Department of Ethnic Studies.

At the time, the few shows that were prerecorded were done so on acetate disc, which was fine for scripted content, but the low quality of the recording prevented the discs from being used to broadcast music. Crosby preferred a pre-recording in a studio, but NBC denied his request. He left NBC in 1945, then joined ABC in 1946 after the young network allowed him to record his show, the first major radio show to be recorded. The first season was recorded on disc, but when Crosby heard the quality of magnetic tape, he switched to tape recording the show.

The improved quality of the recording helped push the show to the top 20 during its second season. The technique allowed show producers to edit out less-entertaining segments or performances deemed inappropriate for radio. During the third and final season of the show, comedian Bob Burns performed a ��blue�� set, which led to raucous laughter but was too racy for broadcast. Producers kept the laughter, and when the studio audience was less than receptive to a comedy performance a few weeks later, Mullin added the laughter from Burns�� performance during post-production, and the laugh track was born.

Sweetening live laughter

In early television, shows that were not recorded live used a single camera, filming the same scene several times. CBS engineer Charles (Charley) Douglass noticed inconsistencies in the laughter, with some reactions shorter or longer than intended, especially after the third or fourth filming. Also, certain individual laughter could be distracting, overshadowing the performance when audience members laughed at the wrong time. Douglass began ��sweetening�� the live laughter by adding recorded laughs when the joke did not land, and even edited down laughter when it went on too long.

The first time recorded laughter was used not merely as a sweetener but as the sole source of laughter for a sitcom was in 1950 during ��The Hank McCune Show�� produced for CBS by Bing Crosby Enterprises. Although the sitcom lasted only 13 episodes, other shows began to pick up the practice. The recorded laughter not only helped to signal jokes in the program but was also used to cover bumps in the original recording.

Many early sitcoms and variety shows filmed in front of a studio audience, but the design of multiple-set studios blocked half the audience from seeing some scenes and performances, so the laugh track helped fill some of those gaps. ��I Love Lucy" was a famous exception, using mostly audience laughter and reactions in the original broadcast; however, even some of "I Love Lucy��s�� laugh audio was sweetened.

Douglass went on to create what was known as the ��laff box,�� a large, organ-like box that contained different laughs, many of which were originally recorded from segments of ��The Red Skelton Show.�� Douglass, who founded Northridge Electronics, was so secretive about his device that his family were the only ones to see inside it and just a few select technicians trained to use it. Douglass would often receive directions and edit in the laughter isolated from other producers and editors.

��I Love Lucy" used mostly audience laughter and reactions in the original broadcast; however, even some of the show's laugh audio was sweetened with a laugh track. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

Psychology and social conditioning

The laugh track has survived 75 years on television, but not without challenges or controversy. The television comedy community has at best been ambivalent toward canned laughter, with some early television performers like Crosby, Milton Bearle and Bob Hope understanding how a laugh track could be used to project their desired reaction to a joke or routine. Many producers hated the artificial laughter, but because all the most popular comedies had laughter and most used a laugh track, they submitted to the trend at the time.

By the 1960s, most comedies had stopped filming in front of a studio audience, knowing the broadcast audience did not care whether the laughter was canned or real. They also knew the audience needed to hear the laughter to know a show is a comedy, so a laugh track was a requisite to any show categorized as a comedy. One of the most famous tests of this idea involved ��Hogan��s Heroes��: Audiences were shown early episodes with and without the laugh track, and the response was much better for the episodes with a laugh track. Shows like ��Hogan��s Heroes�� and ��M*A*S*H�� have had laugh tracks removed in rebroadcasts, leading to much darker shows around war themes.

The goal is for the canned reactions to match the assumed reactions of the audience, conditioning the audience to react or engage in the way intended. Media theorist Stuart Hall famously discussed encoding and decoding in his reception theory, although the audience does have the agency to decode, or create their own meaning, even when producers encode the content with their intended messages. The laugh track is another form of encoding in which the message��in this case the joke��is encoded with humor, and the laugh track is used to reinforce the message so the receiver, or audience, decodes the dialogue or action and finds it humorous.

Some creators pushed back against this, including Mel Brooks when creating ��Get Smart,�� Jackie Cooper in his show ��Hennessy�� and The Monkees, who thought the band��s comedy was intelligent enough to not require the track in their self-titled show. Brooks eventually relented, whereas Cooper and The Monkees finally were able to eliminate the laugh track in the third and second seasons, respectively. Both ��Hennessy�� and ��The Monkees�� were cancelled the season after they eliminated the laugh track, whereas ��Get Smart�� lasted six seasons.

Laugh tracks were also widespread in children��s television. When Hanna-Barbera created several shows, including ��The Flintstones" and ��The Jetsons�� for primetime, they included a laugh track similar to that in sitcoms, which they brought with them when they transitioned to Saturday morning. Hanna-Barbera��s Saturday morning cartoon budget was more limited than their primetime budget, so they and other animation studios created their own, more limited laugh track to circumvent Douglass�� monopoly, but would occasionally still employ Douglass laugh tracks for more high-profile productions. Other producers such as Rankin/Bass and Jim Henson also developed their own laugh tracks. The canned laughter not only showed animated viewers when to laugh, but it also extended scenes to reduce the amount of animation and, in turn, cost.

The Monkees thought their comedy was intelligent enough to not require the track in their self-titled show. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

However, some children��s television producers, like their live-action counterparts, hated laugh tracks and tried to broadcast without them. Ross Bagdasarian pushed back against a laugh track for ��The Alvin Show.�� Despite the popularity of The Chipmunks�� novelty music, the show was cancelled after one season, which was blamed partially on its lack of a laugh track.

Creators who won their battle against canned laughter were Charles Schultz, Jay Ward and Bill Scott. NBC assumed ��A Charlie Brown Christmas�� would fail without a laugh track, but 60 years later, the holiday favorite and Schultz��s other specials remain classics��without the laugh track. Ward and Scott were supported by the show��s sponsor General Mills when negotiating with ABC regarding the laugh track in "Rocky and His Friends/The Bullwinkle Show,�� and it was ultimately eliminated after the fourth episode.

Canned laughter��s introduction to children��s television contributed to the continued social conditioning of television audiences; laugh tracks both signal that the program is a comedy while helping audiences recognize jokes and know when they should laugh. The laugh track also creates a feeling of connection or community rooted in visual media transitioning from theaters, where audiences watched the show together, into homes where an individual or small group is watching alone.

Return of live audiences

A mix of old-school sensibilities, a crop of new producers and a shift in settings for sitcoms led to the return of live audiences in the late 1960s. When ��Here��s Lucy�� debuted in 1968, Lucille Ball insisted on a live audience for her third network sitcom. That era also saw a shift back to shows set in urban environments after networks earlier moved toward rural settings like those in ��The Beverly Hillbillies�� and ��Green Acres,�� attempting to appeal to middle America. This not only led to the rural purge in the early 1970s, as series returned to cities, but these urban sitcoms, created in larger, more accommodating studios, were more conducive to live audiences.

Writer and producer Norman Lear��s legendary career was built in front of a live studio audience, as his urban sitcoms like ��All in the Family�� and ��Good Times�� not only featured working-class Queens or the housing projects of Chicago but were also groundbreaking in bringing more diverse representation to television. Similar to theater, actors in these sitcoms allowed the audience reactions to simmer, ultimately pausing the scene until the laughter subsided. However, even as live studio audiences returned, showrunners continued to sweeten the laughs with laugh tracks.

Actors in sitcoms like "Good Times" allowed audience reactions to simmer, ultimately pausing the scene until the laughter subsided. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

Comedy dramas (or dramedies) like ��Eight is Enough�� and ��The Love Boat�� even employed laugh tracks to help signal jokes, as they mixed comedy and more serious story lines and used the laugh track to help the audience distinguish between them.

Some games shows, like Chuck Barris' ��The Newlywed Game�� and ��The Gong Show,�� were also sweetened with laugh tracks, especially since audiences were less excitable due to the lack of prizes given or won. Mark Goodson��s productions, like "The Price is Right�� and ��Family Feud,�� were and continue to be famous for more raucous live audiences, but there still have been instances of occasional sweetening for broadcast.

As time went on, laugh track options were expanded, with the type of laughter increasingly customizable depending on the show. Both Douglass and the companies creating their own tracks, like Hanna-Barbera, ensured the laugh track for each show matched the tone, mood and pace of the show in which they were used. More subtle comedies featured more subdued laugh tracks, while more slapstick or over-the-top comedies used more raucous laugh tracks to match the program and encourage similar viewer reactions.

The laugh track continued to be nearly ubiquitous in sitcoms through the 1980s. However, as more satirical and animated sitcoms made it to broadcast, producers of this new crop of series began to move away from the laugh track to maintain flow and introduce more subtle humor. When ��The Simpsons�� debuted in 1989��the first primetime animated sitcom on a broadcast network since ��The Flintstones�� in 1966��the series departed from its prehistoric counterpart and trusted the audience to recognize the humor in the show. The shift also allowed for more visual humor and for producers to stack more jokes and allow dialogue to flow without waiting for the canned laughter to subside.

Yet, even through the 1990s, the most popular sitcoms, including ��Friends�� and ��Seinfeld,�� maintained the classic sitcom approach and both invited live audiences to tapings and sweetened laughter with more advanced laugh tracks that were increasingly digital and customizable. As television entered a new millennium, more single-camera comedy series, including mockumentary series like ��The Office�� and cult favorites like ��Arrested Development,�� ditched the laugh track. Also, cable dramedies like ��Shameless�� and ��Atlanta�� emerged, particularly on cable, balancing serious storylines with subtle comedy where laugh tracks just did not fit with the overall audience experience.

New generations of television (and streaming) viewers are now conditioned to watch comedies without laugh tracks, but there still is a place for traditional multicamera comedies that are either filmed in front of an audience whose laughter is sweetened or whose editors just insert laugh tracks. Audiences may be familiar with formulas or tropes in sitcoms, but laugh tracks still provide a feeling of communal watching even as appointment viewing and broadcast television slowly fades.

Jared Bahir Browsh is an assistant teaching professor of critical sports studies in the CU Boulder Department of Ethnic Studies.

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In the 75 years since it was introduced, the laugh track has conditioned viewers to know when and how much to laugh.

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Top image: iStock

When the microbiome is a family matter

Rachel Sauer — Mon, 15 Sep 2025 16:00:54 +0000

When the microbiome is a family matter Rachel Sauer Mon, 09/15/2025 - 10:00

Cody DeBos

CU Boulder researcher Jessica Finlay wrote and recently published a book with her father about how microbes unlock whole-body health

When Jessica Finlay moved from Canada to Minneapolis for graduate school, she didn��t expect microbes to be part of her academic journey. Now an assistant professor of geography at the �� with a focus on health, neighborhoods and aging, she��s still an unlikely candidate to write a book about the body��s microbiome.

Yet, alongside her father, Brett Finlay, a professor of biochemistry and microbiology at The University of British Columbia, that��s exactly what she has become.

Together, the pair wrote The Microbiome Master Key: Harness Your Microbes to Unlock Whole-Body Health and Lifelong Vitality. Their new book blends cutting-edge science with practical advice for healthier everyday living.

Jessica Finlay (left), a CU Boulder assistant professor of geography, and her father, Brett Finlay (right), a professor of biochemistry and microbiology at The University of British Columbia, together wrote the recently published The Microbiome Master Key: Harness Your Microbes to Unlock Whole-Body Health and Lifelong Vitality. (Photo: Jessica Finlay)

But hiding below the science is a family story that bridges disciplines and perspectives to give readers a better understanding of the hidden ecosystem within everyone.

From aging in place to microbial studies

Jessica��s primary research focuses on how environments affect health, aging and quality of mid- to later-life. She regularly delves into what it means to grow old in different neighborhoods and seeks to understand what people need to stay safe, active and connected.

��I��m a health geographer and environmental gerontologist,�� she explains. ��I��d never considered microbes as part of my research, but in conversations with my dad, I realized that they are everywhere and underpin many of the processes I study.��

Her interest in aging began during grad school, when she volunteered at community programs for older adults in north Minneapolis. That experience��and the changing urban landscape she witnessed��helped her to develop a dissertation focused on the lived experience of aging in place.

One recurring fear she identified while interviewing 125 older adults was the threat of Alzheimer��s disease and related dementias. Hearing their concerns eventually propelled Jessica to study how neighborhood environments affect dementia risk.

But it wasn��t until she started talking more about her work with her father, a long-time microbial science researcher, that she considered an even smaller-scale environmental factor.

��Microbes are our invisible neighbors and lifelong partners that fundamentally shape our health and well-being,�� Jessica says. ��When participants in my study are able to exercise, get outside, and socialize, they are swapping microbes and picking up new ones.��

Eat dirt

In 2016, Brett published Let Them Eat Dirt: How Microbes Can Make Your Child Healthier, a popular science book focused on how early microbial exposure supports childhood development.

The public response was positive, but readers kept circling back to one question: ��What about the rest of us?��

Preparing for a follow-up, Brett knew his daughter would be the perfect collaborator. Together, they set out to explain gut health in accessible language and explore how microbial ecosystems influence nearly every part of the human body.

The Microbiome Master Key: Harness Your Microbes to Unlock Whole-Body Health and Lifelong Vitality blends cutting-edge science with practical advice for healthier everyday living.

��This book talks about microbiomes all over the body, not just the gut. It also looks at most of the body��s organs and the effect of microbiomes on them. It also provides a list of prescriptive things you can do based on science to improve your health,�� Brett says.

That holistic approach was important to both him and Jessica. While Brett reviewed thousands of publications across microbiology and immunology, Jessica took the lead in translating technical insights into clear, practical prose. She also infused the book with narrative storytelling, expert interviews and examples from everyday life.

��We wanted to distill an overwhelming breadth of information into key evidence and studies so that readers have the facts to make health decisions based on what��s right for them,�� Jessica explains.

Their core message? Taking care of your microbial health isn��t inherently complicated, but it often requires us to rethink how we move through the world.

As Brett puts it, ��Look after your microbes and they will look after you. Eat healthy, exercise, stress less, sleep well, and have a good community of family and friends. All these factors really impact the microbiome.��

Collaborating for a cause

Collaborating on a book is never easy. Doing so across disciplines poses its own challenges, and during the years-long process, Jessica and Brett had to overcome many of them. But they both found the experience deeply rewarding.

Jessica says, ��We wanted to continue the conversation from my dad��s first book. I was initially apprehensive to write together, since my depth of knowledge is health geography and environmental gerontology, not microbiology. But it was a true pleasure to collaborate and each [of us brought] distinct skills and knowledge to the book.��

Now, the Finlays hope their book will help people make informed choices about their health, whether it��s deciding if a probiotic is worth the hype or learning how to create healthier environments at home.

��Thankfully it��s relatively simple and hopefully affordable to support your microbes. Eat an array of plant-based foods. Get outside, move your body, and connect with people to swap both conversation and microbes,�� Jessica says.

For her, science is about bridging the gap between research and real life��and it��s reflected in her work.

��Life throws us many unexpected situations,�� she says, ��and knowing the current state of science and what sources to trust can help us make the best decisions for us and those we care about.��

Brett agrees, summing up their shared hope for the book��s impact, saying, ��I hope it makes readers aware of the microbiome and how it can affect our well-being.��

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CU Boulder researcher Jessica Finlay wrote and recently published a book with her father about how microbes unlock whole-body health.

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It��s not a glitch in the matrix, it��s a mathematical phenomenon

Rachel Sauer — Wed, 10 Sep 2025 22:37:27 +0000

It��s not a glitch in the matrix, it��s a mathematical phenomenon Rachel Sauer Wed, 09/10/2025 - 16:37

Rachel Sauer

CU Boulder applied mathematician Mark Hoefer and colleagues answer a longstanding question of how to understand tidal bores in multiple dimensions

The photos and videos were all over Chinese social media last autumn: a grid-like pattern that suddenly appeared in two colliding waves on the Qiantang River and looked��if you didn��t know better��like a glitch in the matrix.

This rare phenomenon, called a matrix tide, is caused by two tidal bores��or events in which the front edge of an incoming tide forms a wave that travels up a river against the current��approaching each other from different directions, colliding and forming a grid pattern.

It��s visually stunning and, until very recently, mathematically confounding. However, in newly published research, Mark Hoefer, �� professor and department chair of applied mathematics, and his research colleagues detail how they��ve cracked the mathematical code of matrix tides.

Mark Hoefer, CU Boulder professor and department chair of applied mathematics, and his research colleagues recently cracked the mathematical code of matrix tides.

Previously, matrix tides were only studied in one dimension but, because of their characteristics, needed to be studied in two. Adding that second dimension, however, required developing computationally intensive numerical simulations and the mathematics to interpret the results, building on the previous work of mathematicians Gerald B. Whitham, Boris Kadomtsev and Vladimir Petviashvili.

��There are certain equations that model how these waves change in time and space, and those equations simplify when you��re working with just one-dimensional waves,�� Hoefer explains. ��They start out as Euler equations, the partial differential equations of three-dimensional fluid dynamics��basic models in engineering and science broadly��and when you restrict shallow water waves to move in one dimension, they can essentially be simplified. In some cases, you can simplify them further to ordinary differential equations, which is something we teach in lower-division, fourth-semester calculus. They are much easier and accessible to analyze mathematically.

��When you add more dimensions, you��ll inherently get a partial differential equation in time and space, and, for the matrix tide that we studied, the equation will be nonlinear and not reducible to an ordinary differential equation. Nonlinear means that the nature of the waves you see��how fast they move, their shape and the patterns they make��all depend on how big they are. These are all factors that challenge the mathematical analysis of the patterns in these multidimensional, nonlinear waves.��

Studying the matrix tide

In some truly propitious timing, Hoefer and his colleagues Gino Biondini and Alexander Bivolcic at the University of Buffalo had been working on the question of multidimensional, nonlinear waves when Hoefer's wife, Jill, showed him a video that his mother-in-law had sent.

��I started this research because the general field of study I work in is waves,�� Hoefer says, adding that he studies waves in a variety of applications, including the types whose expression can be seen in undular bores, which are tidal bores with smooth, wave-like profiles. ��Waves like undular bores arise in a variety of physical settings��from waves in water, air, light and even matter in quantum mechanics��and the fundamental mathematical reason why that��s the case is that all of them are modeled by similar partial differential equations.��

For a long time, the study of these wave phenomena focused on analyzing them in one dimension, in which they move in one direction and there��s no variation in the perpendicular or transverse direction. ��But my colleagues and I recognized that we really needed to extend their mathematical description to more than one dimension because the world is multidimensional,�� Hoefer says.

A numerical simulation of the matrix tide.

So, the researchers began studying undular bores in two dimensions. They had made good progress and had core results by fall 2024, which is when Hoefer��s mother-in-law sent an Instagram video to his wife, saying, ��These waves are so cool, you��ve got to show Mark!�� he recalls. ��I thought, ��Whoa, this is awesome!�� I immediately realized, ��Oh, these are the waves we��re predicting in our mathematical analysis.��

Hoefer contacted former CU Boulder applied mathematics PhD student Yifeng Mao, now a postdoctoral fellow at Scripps Institution of Oceanography and who is from China, and asked her to help him get to the bottom of the images and videos he was seeing on social media. She discovered that a tide association for the Qiantang River completed a tidal survey last fall, adding a new tide type to the eight previously identified ones. Piecing together that and other data, Hoefer and his colleagues identified the multidimensional waves they had been studying as what was seen on the river��s surface in the matrix tide.

Expanding the model

Among the challenges in studying waves in undular bores is that while certain physical effects can be disregarded at the outset when studying other types of waves, they must be considered with undular bores, Hoefer says. For example, when the wave oscillations are short enough, gravity causes them to move slower than longer waves. This effect, called negative wave dispersion, can be set aside in the mathematical analysis of longer waves because there are principles that account for it.

��In this setting, though, those effects are things we can��t neglect in our first pass-through,�� he says. He and his colleagues used a supercomputer at the University of Buffalo��s Center for Computational Research and graphical processing units to run many wave simulations in a few hours that would each take a day on a regular computer.

A simulation of the Mach stem and colliding undular bores.

They used shallow-water wave models, in which fluid depth is much less than the horizontal wavelength. ��Counterintuitively, shallow water models can apply even in the open ocean,�� Hoefer says. ��The reason is when you have something like a tsunami, where an earthquake suddenly shifts the ocean bottom and displaces huge amounts of water at the surface, it generates a wave that can be many, many miles wide. Fishermen may be on their boat and not know that a 200-mile wavelength wave is passing under them. There, the tsunami wave is so long that dispersion can be neglected. It��s only when it gets close to shore and the depth gets lower that the waves shorten, compressing the energy and creating destructively large waves. So, the same kind of dispersive wave model that describes near-shore tsunamis is what we used to describe this bore.��

Hoefer and colleagues�� mathematical analysis of two obliquely colliding undular bores predicts that, for a special collision angle, the biggest waves in the matrix tide are eight times the size of the original waves: ��This critical angle prediction was borne out in our wave simulations and marks a fundamental change in the shape of the waves from a matrix tide to another pattern called a Mach stem,�� he says.

Hoefer adds that the applications to describing these waves in more than one dimension extend beyond the surface of water��to fiber and crystal optics, quantum mechanical Bose-Einstein condensates and magnetic materials, meteorology and other applications.

��We have a number of directions to go,�� Hoefer says. ��We are looking for examples of the Mach stem from colliding undular bores. Maybe this will be the tenth tide type discovered during the next river survey.��

On the mathematical modeling, Hoefer adds that the model he and his colleagues used "is what we would consider in the field to be the simplest model to describe this setting. Another thing we assumed was that the waves are not too big, so they��re not breaking. But if you look at the Instagram videos of this phenomenon, you see them break. Another assumption we make in this model is that the variation in the direction that is transverse to wave propagation is not too large, so we want to quantify what that means and see if there are any other possible wave patterns.

��There are these assumptions in the model, so we want to gradually start adding more terms to the equations representing more physics and allow for more complications to see if new things happen. This will make the mathematics harder, but the challenge and reward of predicting new physical phenomena from mathematical models is why I keep doing applied math research.��

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CU Boulder applied mathematician Mark Hoefer and colleagues answer a longstanding question of how to understand tidal bores in multiple dimensions.

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Top photo: the grid pattern of a matrix tide (Photo: �� Creative Commons)

Why do some thoughts refuse to leave?

Rachel Sauer — Tue, 09 Sep 2025 23:38:52 +0000

Why do some thoughts refuse to leave? Rachel Sauer Tue, 09/09/2025 - 17:38

Cody DeBos

CU Boulder graduate student researcher Jacob DeRosa delves into the brain��s ability to remove unwanted thoughts

Imagine trying to fall asleep, but your brain won��t cooperate. You tell yourself to let go of the embarrassing conversation from earlier in the day that keeps looping through your head, for example, but you can��t stop thinking about it.

Why are some thoughts so hard to dismiss?

It��s a question �� psychology and neuroscience graduate student Jacob DeRosa has been pondering for years. Now, with a newly published study in NeuroImage. Clinical, DeRosa and his co-researchers may be closer than ever to understanding what makes some brains better at letting go of unwanted thoughts��and why other brains tend to get stuck.

Jacob DeRosa, a CU Boulder psychology and neuroscience graduate student, studies the question of why some thoughts are so hard to dismiss.

��Why is John really good at getting a thought out of his mind and going on with his day and I��m not?�� DeRosa says. ��This thought just seems to get stuck up in my head, and I��m thinking about it over and over and over again.��

That puzzle��why some people can suppress a thought and move on while others can��t��drove DeRosa to design a study that explores the neuroscience behind thought control.

The findings point to specific brain patterns and networks that may explain why some of us struggle to quiet our internal noise.

A question of control

Before tackling the nuances of thought control, DeRosa wanted to define what it actually means to ��control�� a thought. He and his team focused on four mental operations that are performed in working memory��the brain��s active thinking space.

The distinct tasks they studied included maintaining a thought, replacing it with a new one, suppressing it entirely or clearing the mind completely.

��What am I doing when someone tells me a phone number? Am I switching it with other information? Am I suppressing it? Or am I clearing my mind completely?�� DeRosa asks.

To get to the bottom of it, study participants were asked to view and manipulate words in their working memory while undergoing functional MRI scans. This allowed researchers to observe when different parts of the brain activate and determine whether those patterns vary between people with and without self-reported difficulties in controlling unwanted thoughts.

They found that participants who reported more trouble controlling their thoughts showed less distinct neural activity across the four control operations.

��We��re basically creating a map of the brain,�� says DeRosa, ��and we��re looking at, well, how organized are these networks when someone is removing information?��

Hoping to better understand which regions play a role in thought removal, the team started looking closer at how they were recruited during different operations.

��What we found is that people who are really good at controlling their thoughts have really distinct color patterns for each operation. People who aren��t have a similar color pattern across the four operations, which tells us there��s not a lot of distinct activity happening,�� DeRosa explains.

That lack of distinctness, when the brain isn��t clearly switching between tasks like suppression and replacement, could be why some people struggle to get rid of unwanted thoughts.

��It��s going to take some time to get more organization in your brain and get it working together to remove those thoughts, but it��s definitely possible,�� says CU Boulder researcher Jacob DeRosa. (Photo: Pexels)

��There seems to be more of this blending across the brain in terms of what��s happening when someone is trying to remove a thought. What it tells us is that these individuals aren��t able to precisely implement a certain operation,�� he adds.

In other words, your brain might try to use the same mental tool for every task��like using a hammer for every job, when what you really need is a screwdriver.

But perhaps more importantly, DeRosa��s study found that this neural blending didn��t show up when people were at rest. It only emerged when they were actively engaged in trying to remove or control a thought.

DeRosa says the nuance matters.

��It��s not that people��s brains are just disorganized in general. It��s actually when it comes time to remove the information where we see them having a harder time,�� he notes.

Bridging brain scans and mental health

Although anyone can have difficulty controlling thoughts, it��s also a common symptom of a range of mental health conditions, including depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). DeRosa believes that mapping out the brain mechanisms responsible for thought control can help researchers identify objective markers for these disorders and even ways to track how treatments are working.

��What��s nice about this initial study is that it gives us a baseline. Now we can begin to compare between high- and low-internalizing populations and eventually move on to even more specific psychiatric populations like depression, anxiety and PTSD,�� he says.

The good news for everyone is that thought control isn��t necessarily a fixed trait.

��Our biggest takeaway is that it��s possible for anyone to practice getting better at thought control. I think beginning to practice these operations when unwanted thoughts come in is helpful for people because they can begin to differentiate what��s working for them,�� says DeRosa.

That idea reframes thought control not as a matter of brute force willpower or something in our genetics. Rather, it��s a skill that can be trained and supported, whether through mindfulness, cognitive behavioral techniques, journaling or simply paying attention to what works for you.

For anyone who��s ever felt stuck in a spiral of unwanted thoughts, DeRosa��s research offers a glimpse of both clarity and hope. Of course, he also cautions that improvement doesn��t happen overnight.

��It��s going to take some time to get more organization in your brain and get it working together to remove those thoughts, but it��s definitely possible.��

Researchers Harry Smolker, Hyojeong Kim, Boman Groff, Jarrod Lewis-Peacock and Marie Banich also contributed to this study.

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CU Boulder graduate student researcher Jacob DeRosa delves into the brain��s ability to remove unwanted thoughts.

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From Huffy to high tech, it's been a wild ride

Rachel Sauer — Fri, 05 Sep 2025 19:29:05 +0000

From Huffy to high tech, it's been a wild ride Rachel Sauer Fri, 09/05/2025 - 13:29

Rachel Sauer

For CU Boulder alumnus Todd Carver, what he learned in the lab as a student inspired industry-rocking innovation in developing digital bike-fitting technology

For a long time, one of the unspoken truths of cycling was that if you ride hard and long enough, it��s going to hurt: foot or hand numbness, back pain, shoulder pain, the list is intimidating.

Every rider feels it differently. For Todd Carver (IntPhys��00, MIntPhys��02), ��my lower back is the problem. I struggled with my position but finally got to the point where I could ride pain-free as I understood the human body more and was actually able to make changes to my position on the bike.

��Plus, the bike��s adjustable, right, so you can move the seat, you can adjust your touchpoints to the bike, your hands, butt and feet can all be adjusted. And if you don��t adjust those and just plop yourself on the bike, there��s a chance you��re not going to perform well and you��re going to get injured.��

CU Boulder alumnus Todd Carver (IntPhys��00, MIntPhys��02) co-founded Ret��l, a bike fitting and product matching technology now used by professional cycling teams, performance centers, rehabilitation centers and bicycle retailers worldwide.

While working with Bill Byrnes and Rodger Kram, associate professors emeritus in the �� Department of Integrative Physiology, in the Applied Exercise Science Laboratory during his graduate studies, Carver began wondering if competitive cycling��or even long-distance recreational cycling��needed to end in pain.

��The big thing the cycling world was missing was information about the rider��the human aspect,�� Carver explains. ��How should riders fit on a bike? How do you position a rider to be powerful, efficient and perform well? All the things I was learning in my academic career under Bill Byrnes and Rodger Kram��the focus of my research��was in predicting cycling performance, who��s going to perform well and who��s not.��

The problem was, there just weren��t that many tools to assess a rider��s position on their bike and give them a three-dimensional, dynamic bike fit. So, Carver and two colleagues developed one: Ret��l, a bike fitting and product matching technology now used by professional cycling teams, performance centers, rehabilitation centers and bicycle retailers worldwide.

Ret��l wrought such a change in the cycling world that Specialized acquired it in 2012. Now, as head of human performance for Specialized, Carver continues to innovate at the vanguard of cycling fit and performance.

��Riders just want to be pain free,�� Carver says. ��And even if they don��t care about being fast, they don��t want to push on the pedal and not go or push on the pedal and it hurts.��

Bike = freedom

Carver discovered young that pushing on a bike pedal is bliss and freedom in equal measure. ��My first bike was a Huffy, and it was frickin�� rad,�� he recalls. ��As a kid, I realized that on a bike I can go way farther. So, I had this Huffy that I rode around the neighborhood, and it gave me a lot of freedom as a kid.��

Celebrate cycling (and correctly fitted bikes) Sunday, Sept. 7, at the Buffalo Bicycle Classic!

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His first ��real�� bike as a recreational and then competitive cyclist was a mountain bike, which he rode while figuring out what to do during the several years he lived in Breckenridge between high school and college. ��I moved to Breckenridge and just got hooked on endurance sports, especially mountain biking, and I said, ��I need to go study the science of this.��

He came to CU Boulder and joined the cycling team, eventually realizing that he didn��t want to pursue professional cycling and that the science of riding held a lot more fascination for him. Plus, he brought to the performance lab and insiders knowledge of the problems cyclists could have.

��One of the studies that we did with Rodger (Kram) was measuring aerodynamic drag on bikes, and I saw how big of an opportunity fit was,�� Carver says. ��You can have a really fast bike, and that��s good, but the human body makes up 80 to 90% of drag.

Todd Carver (left) works with a cyclist to gather data for a bike fitting. (Photo: Todd Carver)

��To this day, we still do that analysis with all of our pro riders. We take them to the velodrome, measure aerodynamics and then work with fit to try to improve it. I��d almost say that one of the biggest impacts we��ve had is helping send professional and career cycling more toward science.��

After earning his master��s degree, Carver worked at the Boulder Center for Sports Medicine, where he and an engineer colleague, Cliff Simms, soon realized that people were flying in from as far as Europe to get fitted for bikes. He wondered why they couldn��t get fitted in their hometowns, ��and it really came down to the technology. For a bike shop to get the digital technology was too expensive and it was too hard to run��you basically would need a master��s degree in biomechanics to do it��so this engineer friend and I started to look at how we could break down those barriers.��

They began developing a motion-capture system that measures length and trigonometric relation between small LED markers placed all over the cyclist��s body and synchronized to flash at certain times, a process that happens in milliseconds. 3D cameras positioned around the rider record the data, which is immediately analyzed and used to fit riders to bikes with millimeter precision.

Affordable, portable, easy to use

With partner Franko Vatterott, Carver and Simms founded Ret��l in 2007 with a goal of making bike fitting more affordable, portable, easy to use and data driven.

��I say I got my MBA starting a company,�� Carver says. ��I knew nothing, and I learned it starting a company. One big thing we learned is you better have a darn good product, and what we felt we had was a really good product, so that made some things easier. We didn��t need to take investment initially; we were able to just bootstrap it and work off the money we were making (during development).��

They also were building a database containing everything they were learning about different types of bodies and how they fit on bikes��data they knew would be appealing to bike manufacturers. In fact, he adds, the goal was always to sell to Specialized, which had worked with doctors on ergonomic design and lacked only data from digital fitting.

Todd Carver (right) shows a cyclist data from a digital bike fitting. (Photo: Todd Carver)

They initially worked with professional riders, drawing on connections Carver had made with riders in CU Boulder performance labs, and marketed Ret��l to fitting pro teams. ��Then bike shops were coming to us saying, ��We��d like to buy one of your systems.��

��From the rider point of view, what I was hearing was, ��Wow, that feels way better, and it��s easier for me to pedal�� or ��That completely got rid of my injury and now I can push harder.�� The problem might not be the bike itself, it just might be the saddle or the shoe or the footbed, or it just might be that the rider needs to reposition themself on the bike. From the rider point of view, that��s powerful because they could see that bike shops weren��t always trying to sell them a new bike, but had the data to say, ��Let��s try a new saddle.��

��More fun with data��

As head of human performance for Specialized, Carver continues to work with riders at all levels and in all areas of cycling.

��We work in optimizing athlete and product performance using science,�� Carver says. ��In addition to fitting pros and selling fit systems to retailers, we do a lot of research and development��we take that fit knowledge we have and are able to then use that for ergonomic design of saddles, shoes and hand grips.

��How hand grips are shaped, for example, affects how a rider��s hand sits, which can mean the difference between a comfortable hand and one that goes numb. So, what we do is prototype and test and gather data for better design. We do so much work in saddles, which is the hardest thing on a bike to get right, so we��re always testing with pressure mapping.��

The overarching goal, Carver says, is to solve riders�� problems, ��and that��s more fun with data.��

Carver often considers whether his life��s work is science or art, and figures it lives somewhere between the two: ��We use scientific tools, have all these ranges, but we can��t know everything from that. I think that��s where the art comes in. You need to work with a lot of different riders��some who just want to ride bikes down to the grocery store and don��t want to be aerodynamic or fast��and you have to be able to empathize with that as well as the more competitive side of cycling. You have to have the human side, too, and really read people, have really good interviewing skills and listening skills to know what they want to do on a bike.

"I think I can empathize because I still love to ride, and I still feel that freedom when I get on my bike.��

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For CU Boulder alumnus Todd Carver, what he learned in the lab as a student inspired industry-rocking innovation in developing digital bike-fitting technology.

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Top image: A cyclist receives a bicycle fitting using technology co-developed by CU alumnus Todd Carver. (Photo: Todd Carver)

We��re still tasting the spice of 1960s sci-fi

Rachel Sauer — Fri, 29 Aug 2025 13:00:00 +0000

We��re still tasting the spice of 1960s sci-fi Rachel Sauer Fri, 08/29/2025 - 07:00

Bradley Worrell

With this month marking Dune��s 60th anniversary, CU Boulder��s Benjamin Robertson discusses the book��s popular appeal while highlighting the dramatic changes science fiction experienced following its publication

Sixty years ago this month, a novel about a galactic battle over a desert planet valued for its mystical spice forever altered the face of science fiction.

Authored by Frank Herbert, Dune would go on to sell more than 20 million copies, be translated into more than 20 languages and become one of the bestselling science fiction novels of all time, spawning several sequels and movie adaptions that have further boosted its popularity.

Benjamin Robertson, a CU Boulder associate professor of English, pursues a research and teaching focus on genre fiction.

In retrospect, it��s hard to quantify how important Dune was to the genre of science fiction, says Benjamin Robertson, a CU Boulder Department of English associate professor whose areas of specialty includes contemporary literature and who teaches a science fiction class. That��s because the status Dune attained, along with other popular works at the time, helped transition science fiction from something that was primarily found in specialty magazines to a legitimate genre within the world of book publishing, he says.

Robertson says a number of factors made Dune a remarkable book upon its publication in August 1965, including Herbert��s elaborate world building; its deep philosophical exploration of religion, politics and ecology; and the fact that its plot was driven by its characters rather than by technology. Additionally, the book tapped into elements of 1960s counterculture with its focus on how consuming a spice harvested on the planet Arrakis could allow users to experience mystical visions and enhance their consciousness, Robertson says.

Journey beyond Arrakis with a different kind of dune

��There��s also the element of the chosen one narrative in the book, which is appealing to at least a certain segment of the culture,�� he says. The book��s protagonist, Paul Atreides, suffers a great loss and endures many trials before emerging as the leader who amasses power and dethrones the established authorities, he notes.

While Dune found commercial success by blending many different story elements and themes in a new way that engaged readers, it��s worthwhile to consider the book in relation to other works of science fiction being produced in the 1960s, Robertson says. It was during that turbulent time that a new generation of writers emerged, creating works very different from their predecessors in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, which is often considered the Golden Age of Science Fiction.

Whereas many Golden Age science fiction writers tended to set their tales in outer space, to make technology the focus of their stories and to embrace the idea that human know-how could overcome nearly any obstacle, Robertson says many science fiction writers in the 1960s looked to reinvent the genre.

��The 1960s is probably when, for me personally, I feel like science fiction gets interesting,�� he says. ��I��m not a big fan of what��s called the Golden Age of Science Fiction��the fiction of Asimov or Heinlein. The ��60s is interesting because of what��s going on culturally, with the counterculture, with student protests and the backlash to the conformities of the 1950s.��

New Wave sci-fi writers make their mark

In 1960s Great Britain, in particular, writers for New Worlds science fiction magazine came to be associated with the term New Wave, which looked inward to examine human psychology and motivations while also tackling topics like sexuality, gender roles and drug culture.

��This new generation of writers grew up reading science fiction, but they were dissatisfied with both the themes and the way it was written,�� Robertson says. ��One of the New World��s most notable writers, J.G. Ballard, talked about shifting away from, quote-unquote, outer space to inner space.

��That dovetailed with other writers who weren��t necessarily considered New Wave but were writing soft science fiction that was not focused on technology itself��such as space ships and time travel��but more about exploring the impact of technologies on humanity and on how it changes our relationship with the planet, the solar system and how we relate to each other.��

New Wave authors also wrote about world-ending catastrophes, including nuclear war and ecological degradation. Meanwhile, many British New Wave writers were not afraid to be seen as iconoclasts who challenged established religious and political norms.

��Michael Moorcock, the editor of New Worlds, self-identified as an anarchist, and Ballard was exemplary for challenging authority in his works. He was not just interested in saying, ��This form of government is bad or compromised, or capitalism is bad, but actually the way we convey those ideas has been compromised,�� Robertson says. ��It wasn��t enough for him to identify those systems that are oppressing us; Ballard argued we have to describe them in ways that estranges those ideas.

��And that��s what science fiction classically does��it estranges us. It shows us our world in some skewed manner, because it��s extrapolating from here to the future and imagining ��what might a future look like that we couldn��t anticipate, based upon the situation we are in now.��

American science fiction writers might not have pushed the boundaries quite as far their British counterparts, Robertson says, but counterculture ideas found expression in some literature of the time. He points specifically to Harlan Ellison, author of the post-apocalyptic short story ��I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream,�� who also served as editor of the sci-fi anthology Dangerous Visions, a collection of short stories that were notable for their depiction of sex in science fiction.

Robertson says other American sci-fi writers of the time who embraced elements of the counterculture include Robert Heinlein, whose Stranger in a Strange Land explored the concept of free love, and Philip K. Dick, who addressed the dangers of authority and capitalism in some of his works and whose stories sometimes explored drug use, even as the author was taking illicit drugs to maintain his prolific output.

Meanwhile, Robertson notes that science fiction during the 1960s saw a more culturally diverse group of writers emerge, including Ursula K. Le Guin, the feminist author of such works as The Left Hand of Darkness and The Lathe of Heaven; Madeliene L��Engle, known for her work A Wrinkle in Time; and some lesser-known but still influential writers such as Samuel R. Delaney, one of the first African American and queer science fiction authors, known for his works Babel-17 and Nova.

At the same time, even authors from behind eastern Europe��s Iron Curtain were gaining recognition in the West, including Stanislaw Lem of Poland, author of the novel Solaris, and brothers Arkady and Boris Strugatsky in the Soviet Union, authors of the novella Ashes of Bikini and many short stories.

Impact of 1960s sci-fi remains long lasting

As the 1960s and 1970s gave way to the 1980s, a new sci-fi genre started to take hold: Cyberpunk. Sharing elements with New Wave, Cyberpunk is a dystopian science fiction subgenre combining advanced technology, including artificial intelligence, with societal collapse.

Robertson says the 1984 debut of William Gibson��s book Neuromancer is widely recognized as a foundational work of Cyberpunk.

While works of 1960s science fiction are now more than five decades old, Robertson says many of them generally have held up well over time.

��Dune definitely broke out into the mainstream��and the fact that Hollywood is continuing to produce movies based upon the book today says something about its staying power,�� he says. ��I think the works of Ursula K. Le Guin, particularly the Left Hand of Darkness, is a great read and a lot of fun to teach. And Philip K. Dick is always capable of shocking you, not with gore or sex but just with narrative twists and turns.��

If anything, Dick is actually more popular today than when he was writing his books and short stories back in the 1960s, Robertson says, pointing to the fact that a number of them have been made into films��most notably Minority Report and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (which was re-titled Blade Runner).

��At the same time, I think one of the dangers of science fiction is thinking what was written in the 1960s somehow predicts what happens later,�� Robertson says. ��It can look that way. But, as someone who values historicism, I think it��s important to think about cultural objects in the time they were produced. So, the predictions that Philip K. Dick was making were based upon the knowledge he had in the 1960s, so saying what happened in the 1980s is what he predicted in the 1960s isn��t strictly accurate, because what was happening in the 1980s was coming out of a very different understanding of science, of politics and of technology.

��What I always ask people to remember about science fiction is that it��s about more than the time that it��s written about��it��s about what the future could be, not about what the future actually becomes.��

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With this month marking Dune��s 60th anniversary, CU Boulder��s Benjamin Robertson discusses the book��s popular appeal while highlighting the dramatic changes science fiction experienced following its publication.

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Top illustration: Gary Jamroz-Palma

CU Boulder scholar helps unite Navajo culture and modern science

Rachel Sauer — Tue, 26 Aug 2025 22:43:38 +0000

CU Boulder scholar helps unite Navajo culture and modern science Rachel Sauer Tue, 08/26/2025 - 16:43

Cody DeBos

Kelsey John��s Navajo-centered Horses Connecting Communities initiative offers culturally relevant, practical education about horses

When Kelsey John left Oklahoma to pursue her PhD in New York, she quickly started missing a central piece of her lifestyle: horses. Raised in an environment rooted in horse culture, John��s life is deeply intertwined with the animals.

��I am a citizen of the Navajo Nation, and I am a lifelong horse person,�� she says. ��Both sides of my family had horses in their background, so I grew up with a lot of exposure to them and education about them.��

As she studied away from home, Kelsey John, a CU Boulder assistant professor of ethnic studies, felt a strong pull to return home and rediscover the close relationship with horses she once had.

As she studied away from home, John, a �� assistant professor of ethnic studies and Center of the American West affiliate, felt a strong pull to return home and rediscover the close relationship with horses she once had. That realization inspired her doctoral research and gave birth to a community organization centered on the profound bonds between humans, horses and the environment. Ultimately, it led her back to her community to spearhead a unique initiative called Horses Connecting Communities.

Blending cultural traditions and modern science

Originally started as a one-day conference, Horses Connecting Communities quickly became a cherished gathering, providing Navajo people with culturally relevant and practical education about horses.

��The goal was to kind of braid those things together and just make it a really Navajo-centered event for the needs of the Navajo people and their horses. That��s where it all started, and it��s grown since then,�� John says.

Events hosted by the organization typically include speakers, demonstrations, and hands-on workshops on horse care, training and veterinary skills. They are often led by Navajo experts like John, who return to their community to share their specialized knowledge.

��We��ve also partnered with a different camp that��s been happening on the Navajo Nation for over 10 years now called Song of the Horse Camp, which is organized by the folks at the University of Arizona,�� says John.

��Since we partnered with them, we��ve been able to introduce more equine facilitated learning, which helps either youth or adults with academic skills, life skills, personal communication, confidence building, body language awareness �� all these different interpersonal and personal skills in a new and different way,�� she adds.

Horses, land and Navajo identity

At the heart of Horses Connecting Communities is the understanding that horses, land and Navajo cultural identity are inseparable.

��Something really unique about horses is that, in order to have a relationship with them, you��re kind of inevitably having a relationship with the land as well,�� says John. ��Because we are an indigenous community, we have a deep relationship with our ancestral land.��

She also emphasizes how Navajo traditions and modern equine science are not opposing ideas, but natural complements to each other.

��There is a great effort among the horse community in the Navajo Nation to understand and integrate our cultural beliefs with the best and most current science,�� John explains. ��I��ve had the huge privilege of being able to work with lots of professionals who are also tribal members so they can personally and in a communal way integrate tradition with relevant science.��

��There is a great effort among the horse community in the Navajo Nation to understand and integrate our cultural beliefs with the best and most current science,�� says CU Boulder scholar Kelsey John. (Photo: Kelsey John)

Working ��with,�� not ��on��

John��s approach to relationship building through Horses Connecting Communities emphasizes the ethical necessity of working hand-in-hand with indigenous communities rather than just researching them. Her organization exemplifies this with a collaborative and sustained partnership that is directly shaped by the Navajo people��s needs and aspirations.

��The idea is making your research relevant and useful to the community and keeping that ongoing relationship and ongoing presence,�� she says.

But community partnerships can still be complex, John acknowledges.

��There��s always going to be a power differential between a university��even a university researcher such as myself��and a community. You��re always dealing with power and access to resources and sometimes even conflicting ideas of what��s beneficial.��

Yet, despite these challenges, the rewards of genuine community-based collaboration inspire John to keep coming back for more.

��It��s been almost nine years now since I started my research, but I still work with a lot of the same people that I worked with for the first Horses Connecting Communities event. We��ve brought in new people and changed our programming and are always evaluating if what we��re doing is relevant,�� she says.

John adds, ��But it always goes back to what I learned in that initial research about what the horse means to the people, what they want, and what are the challenges they��re facing, then finding ways to support that.��

Looking ahead

Thanks to recent support in the form of a CU Boulder PACES Grant, Horses Connecting Communities will further explore equine facilitated learning tailored to the Navajo community.

��We want to understand what the needs of the tribe are and if they can be met through this unique educational approach,�� John says.

She is also excited about organizing specialized events for Navajo women that recognize culturally significant beliefs about their relationships with animals and the land.

John��s ultimate aspiration, however, goes beyond education and research. She hopes her initiative will inspire a deeper appreciation for horses, their care and the Navajo people��s enduring relationship with these animals.

��The big thing is to really be aware of the legacy and the significance of the horse and the people��s relationship with the horse��and the land, too,�� she concludes. ��There��s such a long history there, and I��m so glad to be a part of the larger narrative about horses.��

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Kelsey John��s Navajo-centered Horses Connecting Communities initiative offers culturally relevant, practical education about horses.

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Prof focuses on the brothers behind the fairy tales

Rachel Sauer — Mon, 25 Aug 2025 21:37:22 +0000

Prof focuses on the brothers behind the fairy tales Rachel Sauer Mon, 08/25/2025 - 15:37

Clint Talbott

CU Boulder��s Ann Schmiesing, professor of German and Scandinavian Studies, publishes first English-language biography in more than five decades on Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm

Once upon a time, a professor volunteered to develop a college course on German fairy tales. She did as she promised, but that was not the end.

��Once I prepared the course and began teaching it, I was just smitten,�� says Ann Schmiesing, professor of German and Scandinavian studies at the ��, now a world-renowned scholar of the Brothers Grimm.

CU Boulder scholar Ann Schmiesing is author of The Brothers Grimm: A Biography, published last year to wide acclaim and reviewed in publications from The New Yorker to The Times of London.

Schmiesing has written two books on the Brothers Grimm. The most recent, The Brothers Grimm: A Biography, was published last year to wide acclaim and reviewed in publications from The New Yorker to The Times of London. It is the first English-language biography in more than five decades on Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, whose first names (and life stories) are less well-known than their usual moniker, the Brothers Grimm.

Jacob (1785-1863) and Wilhelm (1786-1859) are widely known as collectors of fairy tales, but they were also mythographers, linguists, librarians, civil servants and philologists who, among other things, strove to preserve key elements of German culture.

They produced a vast body of work on mythology and medieval literature, launched on a monumental German dictionary (which they had completed through the letter F by the time they both died), and made groundbreaking linguistic discoveries.

��By and large, people don��t know a whole lot about the Brothers Grimm, and that was one of the reasons why I wanted to write the book,�� says Schmiesing, who is also the senior vice chancellor for strategic initiatives at CU Boulder.

While teaching the course on the Grimm fairy tales, she noted that students were often familiar with some version of the tales, principally through Disney versions or other contemporary retellings of stories like Snow White.

Teaching moral lessons

The Grimms released seven complete and 10 abridged versions of the tales, and the brothers revised the tales over time. Starting with the second edition, for instance, doves peck out the evil stepsisters�� eyes in Cinderella as a punishment for their wickedness. Violence in the tales is rarely gratuitous, Schmiesing says, but in Cinderella and other tales, the Grimms sometimes added violence to teach a moral lesson.

As they edited and revised the tales, she adds, they mediated among different versions and revised them to reflect 19th-century bourgeois norms. For instance, female characters in some tales contribute less dialogue in later editions, Schmiesing says: ��Their thoughts are simply paraphrased.��

Similarly, the Grimms adjusted ��Hansel and Gretel�� to reflect then-contemporary notions of women. In an earlier version, the culprit was their biological mother but in a later version of this tale, a stepmother abandons the children.

��They change that because they feel like they can��t possibly suggest that a biological mother would abandon her children,�� Schmiesing says, adding, ��Again, that's playing into their 19th-century ideas of women and motherhood.��

The Brothers Grimm: A Biography by CU Boulder Professor Ann Schmiesing is the first English-language biography in more than five decades on Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, whose first names (and life stories) are less well-known than their usual moniker, the Brothers Grimm.

Additionally, some female characters are initially more independent than they appear in later editions, ��so the Grimms kind of lessened their independence and increased their dependence on male characters,�� Schmiesing says.

Over time, the Grimms also made the tales folksier, adding rhymes and idioms. And the Grimms did not think the tales were just kid stuff. They saw the tales as being interesting to all ages and relevant to German culture, Schmiesing says.

Germany in the Grimms�� lifetime was not politically united, and it was wracked by the revolutionary and Napoleonic wars. Their own part of Germany was occupied by the French for a time, and ��so they see collecting and publishing fairy tales and other texts . . . as a way forward for Germany,�� Schmiesing says.

In the Grimms�� view, if Germans could appreciate their cultural heritage, perhaps they��d be able to assert themselves as a politically united entity: ��So it might seem to be naive, but they really thought that their scholarly works, their collections, would also be a path out of the wars,�� Schmiesing says.

Asking deep questions

Their scholarship was even broader, however. The brothers were interested in deep questions, such as how languages developed over time, how customs developed over time, how literary texts developed over time, ��and that to them is all interwoven.��

Jacob Grimm, in particular, devoted much of his scholarly life not only to literature, but also to legal customs, linguistic study and his German Grammar, which includes his discovery of what is now called Grimm��s Law.

��It��s been said that Grimm��s Law was as important to the humanities as Darwin��s On the Origin of Species is to the sciences,�� Schmiesing says.

They did all of this on top of full careers as librarians, university professors, and, in Jacob��s case, a civil servant.

��It��s just extraordinary, the volume of scholarship that they produced,�� Schmiesing says, noting their ��sheer accomplishments�� of ��incredible breadth.��

Of the tales themselves, Schmiesing says Rumpelstiltskin is among her favorites. ��It is one of the most enigmatic tales in the Grimms�� collection.�� The tale can be viewed as being about the forced labor of female characters, disease and disability, or the meaning of spinning straw into gold.

In addition to these and other possible meanings, the tale changes significantly between versions, she notes. In an early version, the woman despairs not because she can��t spin straw into gold, but because she wants to spin yarn but can spin only gold.

��Also, who is Rumpelstiltskin, and what does he represent?��

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CU Boulder��s Ann Schmiesing, professor of German and Scandinavian Studies, publishes first English-language biography in more than five decades on Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm.

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Top illustration: by Walter Crane from "Household Stories by the Brothers Grimm" (1886).

CU Boulder scholar receives Fulbright support to study fossil mammals in Poland

Rachel Sauer — Fri, 22 Aug 2025 19:23:11 +0000

CU Boulder scholar receives Fulbright support to study fossil mammals in Poland Rachel Sauer Fri, 08/22/2025 - 13:23

Professor Jaelyn Eberle will teach and pursue a hypothesis that a Cretaceous land bridge between Asia and North America was a dispersal route for land mammals at the time

Jaelyn Eberle, a �� professor of geological sciences and CU Museum of Natural History curator of fossil vertebrates, has received a Fulbright U.S. Scholar award to study the extensive collection of Cretaceous (about 75 million years old) Mongolian mammals housed at the Institute of Paleobiology in Warsaw, Poland.

Eberle will travel to Poland Aug. 31 to begin work comparing the Mongolian mammal collection with fossil mammals that she and her colleagues discovered on the North Slope of Alaska, in the hopes of identifying some of the earliest mammals to cross from Asia into North America via Beringia, a prehistoric land bridge that once connected the two continents. Along with Professor Lucja Fostowicz-Frelik, Eberle also will team-teach a graduate seminar on the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary for the BioPlanet Doctoral School in Poland, which attracts PhD students in biology, geology and biochemistry from across Europe.

Jaelyn Eberle, a CU Boulder professor of geological sciences and CU Museum of Natural History curator of fossil vertebrates, has received a Fulbright U.S. Scholar award to study the Cretaceous Mongolian mammals housed at the Institute of Paleobiology in Warsaw, Poland.

��Until now, my research has focused mostly on North American fossil mammals,�� Eberle explains. ��The Fulbright award allows me to broaden my research to include ancient Mongolian mammals and collaborate with the foremost expert on them, Dr. Fostowicz-Frelik. I am also excited to co-teach a class with Dr. Fostowicz-Frelik; this will build my knowledge of the Eurasian fossil record and inject new content, perspective and teaching styles into my courses at CU Boulder.

��Being immersed in the language and culture of Poland for four months and teaching PhD students from across Europe will also give me perspective on how to better support CU students from international backgrounds, too.��

Fulbright U.S. Scholars are faculty, researchers, administrators and established professionals teaching or conducting research in affiliation with institutes abroad. Fulbright Scholars engage in cutting-edge research and expand their professional networks, often continuing research collaborations started abroad and laying the groundwork for forging future partnerships between institutions.

��Professor Eberle��s fascinating research is important not only because it advances scientific knowledge, it also expands the Museum Institute��s vibrant international collaborations, helping us to connect with scholars around the globe,�� says Nancy Stevens, director of the Museum Institute and professor of anthropology.

Upon returning to their home countries, institutions, labs and classrooms, they share their stories and often become active supporters of international exchange, inviting foreign scholars to campus and encouraging colleagues and students to go abroad.

More than 800 individuals teach or conduct research abroad through the Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program annually. In addition, more than 2,000 Fulbright U.S. Student Program participants��recent college graduates, graduate students and early-career professionals��participate in study/research exchanges or as English teaching assistants in local schools abroad each year.

Fulbright is a program of the U.S. Department of State, with funding provided by the U.S. Government. Participating governments and host institutions, corporations and foundations around the world also provide direct and indirect support to the program, which operates in over 160 countries worldwide.

As a Fulbright U.S. Scholar, Eberle will further her study of fossil mammals, their evolution during past intervals of global warmth and their dispersal across the Northern Hemisphere when polar land bridges connected North America to both Asia and Europe.

��I hypothesize that some of the Cretaceous Alaskan mammals belong to Asian lineages; if true, this would provide direct evidence that Beringia was a dispersal route for land mammals at the time,�� Eberle explains. ��The Alaskan fauna preserves the northernmost known mammals of the Mesozoic Era (or Age of Dinosaurs), and our team��s latest findings mean it may also include among the earliest mammalian immigrants from Asia to North America.

Jaelyn Eberle (foreground, yellow jacket) and her colleagues quarry for tiny vertebrate fossils in Alaska's Prince Creek Formation. (Photo: Kevin May)

Many of the mammal teeth Jaelyn Eberle studies are the size of sand grains. This is a tooth of the tiny Alaskan mammal Sikuomys mikros (meaning "tiny ice mouse") that lived in northern Alaska about 72 million years ago. (Photo: Jaelyn Eberle)

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Professor Jaelyn Eberle will teach and pursue a hypothesis that a Cretaceous land bridge between Asia and North America was a dispersal route for land mammals at the time.

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Top illustration: James Havens

Video games don��t rot your brain��they train it

Rachel Sauer — Mon, 18 Aug 2025 20:06:22 +0000

Video games don��t rot your brain��they train it Rachel Sauer Mon, 08/18/2025 - 14:06

Blake Puscher

CU Boulder scientists find that playing video games comes with small but significant cognitive benefits

Ever since video games began to gain widespread popularity, some have questioned how playing them consistently affects people, especially mentally. Like with TV, the internet, social media and AI, the tendency has been to assume negative effects. However, a number of studies have suggested that playing video games can help strengthen people��s cognitive abilities.

Despite similar research findings, many of the studies disagree on the size of this effect and to which areas of cognition it applies��perhaps, in part, because of the limitations inherent to their typically cross-sectional approach.

A team of �� scientists including Shandell Pahlen, Anqing Zheng, Robin P. Corley, Naomi P. Friedman, Sally J. Wadsworth and Chandra A. Reynolds, all members of CU Boulder��s team within the CATSLife project, aim to address these uncertainties with a longitudinal study on video games and cognitive health. CATSLife stands for Colorado Adoption/Twin Study of Lifespan behavioral development and cognitive aging.

Chandra Reynolds, a CU Boulder professor of psychology and neuroscience, and her research colleagues found small, positive cognitive benefits of playing video games.

��We can leverage the twins and siblings�� similarities and differences to understand aspects of behaviors and cognitive abilities,�� Reynolds explains, a CU Boulder professor of psychology and neuroscience, ��especially as they relate to how well people maintain their cognitive functioning, not only now, but eventually we hope to continue following them as they transition into midlife.��

Video games and cognitive health

Video games are an accessible way to engage one��s mind for several reasons. Like board games, video games do not require much in the way of physical ability, unlike sports and other such ways to exercise the mind. Additionally, video games are widely popular, with 2.7 billion gamers worldwide as of early 2025, according to Statista.

These traits suggest that video games could be used as a tool to support cognitive health, but this assertion raises some questions: What are the specific abilities that comprise generalized cognitive functioning, and how can scientists determine whether video games serve this purpose?

The study covered three important cognitive domains: processing speed, working memory and spatial reasoning. It included 1,241 individuals from CATSLife between 28 and 49 years old who had taken at least one of these tests. Some of the participants played video games and some did not, so the effects of playing video games were determined based on what video games they played. These games were categorized broadly into Action+, Puzzle+, and Other genres. The plus signs refer to the fact that the categories include genres that are not usually described with the base name, like life simulation games being included in Puzzle+ even though they aren��t puzzle games.

Reverse selection

One argument against prior studies suggesting that video games provide a cognitive benefit is the concept of reverse causation. In this case, reverse causation refers to certain people��s cognitive skills making them more likely to play video games, as opposed to playing video games causing an increase in cognitive skills.

Reverse causation is therefore part of the nature vs. nurture discourse, and as such, the point is not that engaging in an activity can��t improve people��s abilities, but that part of the correlation between activity and ability comes from those who already have above-average abilities choosing to engage in activities that take advantage of them. For example, a hypothetical study that compared Olympic runners with people who never run without accounting for reverse causation would overestimate the physical benefits of running, because a large part of the gap between the two groups is baked in: Most people can��t reach the level of Olympic athletes just by exercising.

This study factored in the participants�� baseline cognitive ability by looking at their adolescent IQ scores. ��We��re fortunate that we had a longitudinal design,�� Reynolds says, ��and that we��ve assessed our participants multiple times over their earlier development into adolescence. Most studies of video games are cross sectional, and they don��t have indices of people��s cognitive performance at earlier ages.��

The researchers also considered several variables associated with performance on specific cognitive tasks. These included age, sex and educational attainment. The first two of these are especially important, because the genre of video games that people play varies within these demographics. Specifically, women and older adults are more likely to play Puzzle+ games, and men and younger people are more likely to play Action+ games.

CU Boulder researcher Chandra Reynolds and her colleagues found that spatial reasoning benefited most consistently from playing video games. (Photo: Unsplash)

��There are some sociodemographic differences in what kinds of games people are playing,�� Reynolds says, ��and we wanted to account for that to isolate the differences that might arise from the gameplay itself.��

Increased processing speed

Spatial reasoning benefited most consistently from playing video games, with a significant effect measured in all three tests before and after adjustment for adolescent IQ, although the effect was about half as large after adjustment. There is also evidence that processing speed performance could increase after playing video games, as the results of one test remained significant even after adjustment. Working memory was the only domain that did not show evidence of improvement due to video game play, with non-significant numbers before and after adjustment.

Reynolds says that unimproved working memory results could be a consequence of the test used and the fact that only one test was used for this ability, compared to the three tests used for both processing speed and spatial reasoning.

��We can��t say a whole lot about working memory from one test,�� he says. ��In the future, we want to extend to other measures that would get more specifically at attention, working memory and other aspects of executive functioning.��

When video game play was broken down by the broad genre of game, there were some negative correlations: people who played Action+ games scored worse on processing speed, and those who played Puzzle+ games scored worse on spatial reasoning. However, these correlations were very small, and only statistically significant for one of the processing speed tests.

These results seem counterintuitive, which makes it particularly interesting to see if they will be replicated in other studies. As to benefits by genre, Action+ games had a particular association with spatial reasoning and Puzzle+ games had a particular association with processing speed.

According to the paper, the results for different tests may have been affected by how similar they are to video games. For example, with respect to spatial reasoning, Action+ gamers scored best on the Block Design test, which involves three-dimensional operations similar to those involved in playing many modern action games. By the same token, gamers may have performed worse on tests that were more divergent from video games due to their familiarity with related but substantially different tasks.

Future assessments

The researchers are currently collecting more data from the CATSLife sample, asking the same questions for further insight into how the observed effects change over the course of five or six years. ��If people continue to play games, they��ll likely nominate newer games��it would be interesting to see if there is a long-standing influence or if new game play factors emerge,�� Reynolds says.

Some changes could be made to the assessment of people��s gameplay to get more particular results. In the future, Reynolds says, ��we would conduct more specific surveys of our participants: asking for more details about the games they play, the systems they use and how they approach gameplay. We asked questions that allowed us to get at the kinds of games they play, but not how they play them, and we��re making some inferences, so we��d want to dig deeper into that.��

��There has been some debate in the literature about the potential benefits or even detriments of video game play,�� Reynolds explains, ��but I think we found that, in a general sample that isn��t selected for pathological use or other characteristics related to playing video games, we found some salient, small positive effects.��

This brings up an important caveat, which is that even though there could be positive effects of playing video games, it is still possible to experience negative effects by engaging with them in a unhealthy manner. Because the positive effects are small, any negative effects due to playing video games irresponsibly, such as playing them for an excessive amount of time each day, are likely to outweigh the benefits.

��I think it will bear additional replication and future work,�� Reynolds says, ��but the benefits are quite interesting, and we��d like to see how this plays out with other kinds of activities as well.��

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CU Boulder scientists find that playing video games comes with small but significant cognitive benefits.

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