Kimmel’s research explores the intersection of revenge, violence and addiction. “The Science of Revenge” seeks to merge several academic fields: evolution and brain biology, criminology and psychology and addiction. 

“The Science of Revenge,” Kimmel explained, will serve as a non-violence toolkit. By distributing this information, he intends to inform policy makers, educators, parents, mental health professionals and the criminal justice system about violent and non-violent revenge seeking behavior.

“It’s based on the research of more than 60 neuroscientists at universities around the world, and I’ve been able to bring it all together with other research that talks about the role of revenge in violence and put that all together with all of the addiction research that exists,” Kimmel said.

Kimmel’s previous work has attempted to prevent and treat violent tendencies.

In the past, Kimmel launched the website SavingCain.org in an attempt to prevent homicides and mass shootings. SavingCain, modeled after suicide prevention websites, speaks directly to prospective killers before they strike. The site includes a page titled “Warning Signs of a Revenge Attack” based on popular public health campaigns for heart attacks. 

Kimmel also created The Nonjustice System, a “12-step program” to recover from revenge addiction, an unseen brain biological addiction triggered by a grievance, and the related Miracle Court App. This mental practice puts one’s mind inside an imaginary, or virtual, courtroom with the wrongdoer on trial. In this court, the wronged individual plays prosecutor, victim, judge and jury. This process, Kimmel elaborated, is intended to enable forgiveness while releasing revenge cravings and honoring that human desire for accountability. 

Human violence, Kimmel mentioned, is primarily a consequence of revenge addiction. Kimmel hopes this newfound understanding of revenge related behavior will demonstrate why we harm other people, but also provide pathways for solution. 

Jessica Stern, a professor at Boston University’s Pardee School of Global Studies who has taught classes on counter-terrorism and the history of terrorism, finds Kimmel’s discussion of revenge as an addiction powerful.

“Kimmel demonstrates that emerging neuroscientific and behavioral research indicates that retaliatory impulses from perceived injustices stimulate the same neural reward pathways as those activated in substance dependence,” Stern wrote to The News.

Kimmel argues that society should address revenge in the same way it addresses behavior addiction, which Stern finds compelling. 

Dr. Michael Norko DIV ’10, a professor of psychiatry at the School of Medicine, is a forensic psychiatrist who worked in the state’s mental health system for years. Norko was intrigued by Kimmel’s work. 

“These concepts of harm that people do to one another, and then the outcomes of those, is something I have a lot of experience with from a different perspective,” said Norko. “So Kimmel’s work resonates with me.”

Norko was impressed with the accessible writing of Kimmel’s book, and found its narrative style to be engaging and interesting.

By telling his own personal stories and presenting his information in a storytelling framework, Norko believes that Kimmel can reach a broad audience, which could be powerful in helping people to think about how society addresses revenge, including in the news and media.

“I think it can potentially have a profound effect on efforts to mitigate those effects in our lives,” Norko said. 

“The Science of Revenge” will be released on May 27.

The post James Kimmel Jr., Yale psychiatrist, to publish “The Science of Revenge” appeared first on Yale Daily News.

Founded in 2020, the CarDS Lab has been at the forefront of creating AI-based applications to improve medical diagnoses of heart muscle diseases for the past five years.

“We want to design AI tools that we can use with tests that are easy to perform and that can be easily available in the community,” Dr. Evangelos Oikonomou told the News. “We don’t necessarily want to build AI tools for technologies that might be very hard to come across or find and are only restricted to very specific, high resource settings.”

The team of researchers began working on the grant proposal almost two years ago and spent around a year and a half compiling data from different hospitals to train the AI model. 

With an interest in developing AI models that rely on data provided by accessible diagnostic tools, the team focused on point-of-care ultrasound — a portable ultrasound test that can be performed by plugging an ultrasound rod into a smartphone to obtain a detailed image of the heart. The test is widely available to medical providers but is mainly used for crude assessments of how the heart works and if there are any obvious abnormalities.

According to Oikonomou, even with the use of point-of-care ultrasound, many abnormal heart conditions go undetected. Recognizing patterns that indicate cardiomyopathies requires extensive training and expertise, and it is difficult for expert operators to carefully examine every ultrasound image. 

“We see that the model is actually able to pick up on patterns that are visible to the human eye, but probably not detectable by an untrained operator,” Oikonomou said. “But it also goes a bit beyond that. It even seems to detect those conditions way before clinicians actually suspect what’s going on.”

The study focused on two main forms of cardiomyopathies — hypertrophic cardiomyopathy and amyloid cardiomyopathy, both diseases that make it difficult for the heart to pump blood. 

Oikonomou noted that medical professionals have realized that the condition is much more common than previously thought and that the lack of expert operators and effective diagnosis tools made the diseases difficult to detect in the past. 

To train their AI model, the team fed real-world data collected from more than 30,000 patients across the Yale Health System over a decade.

After the team created a functional training model, they started testing videos from patients who were not seen by the AI model beforehand and who were screened with point-of-care ultrasound devices across the emergency rooms of the Yale Health System, the Yale New Haven Health System and the Mount Sinai Health System.

While hypertrophic cardiomyopathy is inborn and amyloid cardiomyopathy is acquired during one’s lifetime, both diseases are progressive, meaning that the model can actually pick up on earlier stages of the disease that cannot be detected by the human or untrained eye.

“We found that the algorithm could pick up the disease at an average of two years before the disease was eventually diagnosed in real-world practice,” said Oikonomou. “We also found that there were a lot of patients that were never actually tested for any of those conditions but were flagged as high risk by our models, and these patients went on to have worse outcomes.”

Oikonomou noted that the model stratifies risk in patients, with those flagged positively being much more likely to have the disease progress faster than those flagged negatively. 

AI models accurately detected two types of cardiomyopathy with 0.95 and 0.98 AUROC, a performance metric used to evaluate binary classification models where achieving a 1 is considered a “perfect model,” and were received well in testing at Mount Sinai Hospital System located in New York.

The CarDS lab published this AI application for anyone to access for research purposes. 

“We need to make use of AI. We need to leverage AI to make those technologies more accessible, more scalable,” Oikonomou told the News.

AI has become increasingly integrated into medical practices. However, the successful widespread implementation of such technologies depends on their affordability and availability.

The CarDS lab used point-of-care ultrasound because it is easily applicable for community-based screenings of abnormal heart disorders, costs less than $2,000 and can easily be plugged into a smartphone.   

Oikonomou emphasized the importance of the team’s work with external collaborators at Mount Sinai, who independently ran the AI model without any transfer of their data. 

“This multi-site validation confirms that the model will work reliably when exposed to new settings and patient distributions beyond what was seen during model development,” Gregory Holste, a doctoral student in the CarDS Lab, said.

Oikonomou shared that they are in the process of designing a clinical trial where some providers are going to have access to these AI tools and others will not. Over the years, the results from this trial should give insight into the clinical value of using AI technologies to detect cases of abnormal heart muscle disorders.

More information regarding the CarDS Laboratory’s research can be found here.

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Project Sunshine is a national community-based organization that aims to improve the in-patient pediatric experience by creating art, playing games and spending time with children through volunteer-led programming. Nicholas Murphy ’27 and Noah Glassman ’27, working with Yale New Haven Hospital, started the Yale Chapter of Project Sunshine. The chapter aims to serve Yale New Haven pediatric patients, alleviating some of the stress of hospitalization.

“According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, play is the most effective method of reducing stress in children, allowing their bodies to heal,” said Lauren Pierce, the associate manager of programs in the Northeast region. “Play is at the heart of our efforts because it provides a vital outlet for patients, helping them cope with the stress and difficulties they face during their medical journeys.”

Pierce is a Certified Child Life Specialist and previously worked with Project Sunshine volunteers for 11 years. She joined the organization as a Consultant in Pediatric Experience March 2023, transitioning into her current role this past November. 

Project Sunshine has been around for over two decades. In 1998, college student Joe Weilgus founded the organization after walking through a pediatric wing and observing the patients sitting by themselves in their rooms. With the intention of cheering them up, Weilgus returned to the hospital the next week dressed as a clown, soothing scared patients and apprehensive caregivers. 

Regarding his experience volunteering with Project Sunshine, Murphy told the News, “You see the kids slowly bring out their own talents. They bring out their own energy. From my experience, you get an unbelievable reaction from a lot of the patients.”

Both Glassman and Murphy previously volunteered with Project Sunshine outside of college, which inspired them to bring the organization to Yale. 

Project Sunshine has three main programs that can be tailored to each pediatric patient’s needs: Here to Play, Teleplay and Kits for Play. Here to Play is their in-person volunteer-led arts and crafts programming. Each session goes for about two hours and can either be in groups or one-on-one. Teleplay, which takes place over a HIPAA compliant Zoom call, is their virtual program where patients and volunteers can play from a Game Library. Kits for Play are individual play kits packed by Project Sunshine volunteers. 

“While there are these formalized programs, there are specialty events that come up on a hospital to hospital basis,” Glassman added, expanding on how Project Sunshine events can go beyond the three programs. For example, Glassman has decorated pediatric wards for hospitals in Harlem. 

On Feb. 1, the Yale Chapter of Project Sunshine held their first meeting, serving as both an information and kit building session. They assembled around 250 basketball kits which patients will be able to decorate. Project Sunshine requires each chapter to host at least two kit building sessions per year. After the kits are built they are shipped back to Project Sunshine for distribution across various affiliated hospitals. 

From their initial email, Glassman and Murphy have received considerable interest, with over 120 responses from freshmen and sophomores. 

“People want to volunteer. People love working with children. And the support from the Yale community immediately has been really amazing,” Murphy said. 

Volunteers must complete both Project Sunshine training and gain YNHH clearance in order to participate in the in-person programming. Glassman and Murphy’s main intention for the club will be the in-person programming -–  Here to Play –– along with kit building and fundraising events. In the future, they hope to have volunteer groups go to YNHH twice a week for two-hour sessions. 

Although the Yale Chapter is relatively new, Murphy and Glassman can see this initiative expanding outside of just the YNHH to other hospitals.  

Project Sunshine operates in five countries, reaching 250,000 patients and families.

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The event was organized by the Yale Blockchain Club and the SOM Arts and Culture Club. When asked about his most important takeaways, Glimcher told the News that the art world is a closely-tied reflection of society. 

“[The art world] isn’t a disconnected ivory tower,” Glimber told the News. “It is interwoven into our whole society. It is about extending the perception of humanity.” 

To many, the art world may feel distant and only relevant to a select few. And while it can be an exclusive space, Glimcher said that art has a fundamental purpose: to evoke a shared feeling.  This understanding of art, he said, is one that people need to invest in. 

Glimcher and Resch discussed the current art market recession and the state of the art market. According to the two experts, the art market has been in somewhat of a decline. Due to interest rates, coupled with global instability, the art market has lost a lot of its speculators, according to Glimcher. A speculator is an investor who makes short-term investments in hopes of high returns. 

“We lost a lot of enthusiasm and confidence amongst the collectors because of the macroeconomic situation,” stated Glimcher.

Many art galleries have seen revenue declines of over 50 percent, shared Resch. He said that more people are consuming art visually than physically buying art. According to Glimcher what the art industry needs is for the demand for art to rise higher than its supply. 

Discussing the communication pathways in the art world, Glimcher shed light on how galleries play the intermediary role between the artist and the collector. Nowadays, another player has entered the art market: art advisors. 

Art advisors introduce artists and works to a certain client and have aided gallery growth. Their presence can mean that art gallerists, who manage art advisors, may not have as close personal relationships with individual collectors.

Turning to the topic of art itself, Glimcher said that the art world faces danger when it focuses its efforts only on “one-hit wonders.” He emphasized the importance of retaining the core value of art.  

“We need great art, and we need great storytelling. We do need people, collectors out there, who are devoted to discerning something,” said Glimcher. 

Art is provocative, and that’s perhaps what makes it beautiful, according to Glimcher’s lecture. 

At the end of the panel, Glimcher spoke directly to the artists in the room. His advice: protect your art rather than just your career. According to Glimcher, artists are born with a gift to tease a thread out of humanity’s collective unconscious. 

An audience Q&A followed the panel discussion. Attendees were eager to ask questions to the CEO of one of the biggest contemporary art galleries in the world. Questions spanned from when gallerists like Glimcher add artists to their Rolodex to an intermediary’s potentially negative impact on artists. 

“Today’s event gave us the opportunity to hear from the other side who we are marketed to, and you don’t frequently get to hear those voices firsthand,” said Taisha Carrington ART ’26. “That’s the important part. Firsthand. The opportunity to hear it straight from the horse’s mouth is rare, so that’s what brought me here, I was not going to miss it.”

A first-year student in the master’s sculpture program, Carrington said that one of the main priorities of the program is to understand the art market. She said that those in the master’s program consider themselves artists who may be pursuing an advanced degree to go into education or to simply expand their art practice — or both. 

The School of Art’s master’s program allows its students to interact not only with the SOM, but also with various players in the art sphere from art historians, to buyers, to collectors. 

The hour-long event also reflected the close friendship between Resch and Glimcher. 

“Marc is one of the visionaries in space,” said Resch, reflecting on their 10-year friendship.   “I’m from the outside and I didn’t grow up with much art around me. So I’ve always asked a lot of questions and Marc has asked himself the same questions, but he comes from the inside so it’s always fascinating to learn from him.” 

Providing an informative and engaging panel, Resch and Glimcher volleyed back and forth and challenged each other’s ideas. 

Austin Cai SOM ’25, co-president of Yale Blockchain Club, said that he hoped for audiences to learn about blockchain technology and digital art. Cai, a previous student in Resch’s art and entrepreneurship class, was motivated to understand how technologies such as blockchain can apply to various industries, including art.  

Magnus Resch’s “Entrepreneurship in the Art Market” is offered at Yale School of Management every fall.

The post Pace Gallery CEO Marc Glimcher talks about the true value of art appeared first on Yale Daily News.

Language significantly shapes our thought processes and how we interact with one another. According to Yale experts, learning a second language increases cognitive capacities, makes one more culturally aware, expands perspective and broadens communication abilities. 

“There are numerous practical benefits [to being bilingual],” Fernando Rubio, director of the Yale Center for Language Study and linguistics professor, said. “Bilingual individuals often possess soft skills that are highly valued by employers, such as adaptability, creativity, teamwork, communication skills, cross-cultural communication, empathy, problem-solving and critical thinking.”

Although it is often taken for granted, speaking is a complex cognitive process. In order to speak any language, the brain needs to use both long-term and working memory processes, engage attention as well as use motor control and abide by social norms, according to Maria Teresa Borneo GRD ’28, who is pursuing a doctorate in linguistics.

Borneo’s research at Yale’s Language & Brain Lab focuses on understanding the mechanisms by which language users combine different kinds of information, linguistic and nonlinguistic, to convey meaning.

“Research on the field [of bilingualism] has shown that the two language systems seem to be activated at all times, and that they affect each other, as well as affecting language processing in real-time,” Borneo said. “One example of this is code-switching, which involves going back and forth between languages.”

According to Rubio, when one can speak two languages, cognitive functions, such as memory processes, are enhanced. Thus, experts say that being bilingual can delay the onset of memory-related disorders, such as Alzheimer’s or dementia.

However, Rubio said these benefits are tied to using multiple languages consistently, not just memorizing vocabulary, grammar rules or completing a Duolingo streak. A true bilingual has the language embedded into their thinking and a part of their cognitive process. 

However, it’s important to remember that it takes time and dedication to master a language. 

“Yale is one of only a handful of institutions in the country in which the language requirement is not simply a box to check, but really an opportunity to develop a set of skills that have many intellectual and practical advantages,” Rubio said.

The Center for Language Study offers over 50 languages, including American Sign Language and classical languages. Students have the option to start a language from scratch, be placed into a certain language level or join the heritage track, meaning they work on improving their native language. For further cultural immersion, Yale also allows certain study abroad programs to count towards fulfilling the language requirement. 

Alongside the cognitive benefits that these programs grant individuals, bilingualism impacts students’ academic experiences.

“In math, I subconsciously talk or think in French,” international student Milo de Guillenchmidt ’28 told the News. “Also, the approach to the discipline is different. In the French system, you have to justify everything you’re doing, whilst here you don’t. So it’s just adapting to different sets of [academic] requirements.”

There are various cultural differences in how subjects are taught across the globe and understood in other languages. For example, Europe uses a comma instead of a decimal point in math. 

Understanding these cultural variations is an added benefit of bilingualism and provides a deeper understanding of the world and people around us.

Furthermore, to access all these benefits, one does not have to be bilingual from a young age.

“There isn’t such a thing as a “real” or a “better” bilingual,” Borneo told the News.

Even if one was not born into a family with a second language, the myriad of benefits from bilingualism can be accessed by learning a language at any point in life.

The Center for Language Study is located at 370 Temple St.

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Earlier this September, Brackett, a founding director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, or YCEI, talked about improving emotional intelligence on the Huberman Lab Podcast, listened by millions of people. With his research, he wants to achieve “emotion[al] revolution,” he said.

“We all need emotional intelligence,” Brackett told the News. 

Why? “Life’s simply an emotional rollercoaster,” Brackett says.

When he was younger, Brackett experienced a tough childhood that included abuse and bullying. His uncle, a middle school teacher, stepped into his life and provided security, he said. 

His uncle happened to be creating a curriculum to teach children how to understand emotions and piloted the program with Brackett. Ever since, Brackett has been fascinated with emotional intelligence. 

Brackett describes emotional intelligence as a complex field that refers to human reasoning and understanding of emotions. The term encompasses skills such as labeling emotions, recognizing the emotions of others and regulating your own emotions.

Managing stress and negative emotions can lead to improved physical health, while an inability to do this can lead to mental health problems. 

Emotional intelligence is also vital for maintaining healthy relationships, whether platonic, romantic or familial. Failing to understand and regulate emotions in the context of relationships with other people can lead to strained communication and weaker connections, as Brackett explained in the Huberman Lab episode.

“Our research shows that people with higher emotional intelligence are healthier, happier, more connected and more likely to achieve their goals,” Brackett said.

Brackett worked with two emotional intelligence pioneers, John Mayer from the University of New Hampshire and Yale’s former president Peter Salovey, who coined the term emotional intelligence in the 1990s. Now, Brackett continues the work of his former mentors, wishing to impact individuals around the world.

“We’ll come one step closer to my personal vision of creating an emotion[al] revolution in our nation’s homes, schools and workplaces,” Brackett said, summarizing his research’s mission.

As such, Brackett’s recent work centers around infusing school systems with information about emotional intelligence through an evidence-based approach called RULER. RULER is an acronym for the five key emotional intelligence skills that Brackett has identified as vital for all ages to learn — recognizing, understanding, labeling, expressing and regulating.

As such, RULER teaches not only children, but also staff, about emotional intelligence at the schools where the curriculum is implemented. Brackett told the News that emotional intelligence is needed at every age, not just throughout adulthood. 

Zorana Ivcevic Pringle, director of the Creativity and Emotions Lab at the School of Medicine, told the News that RULER is a unique program in the way it acknowledges that teachers can only effectively teach emotional intelligence skills if they work on developing their own first.

“What a kindergartner needs to make friends is different than what a teenager needs, than what a leader in my position needs,” Brackett said. “We always need to understand our own and other people’s emotions. That helps us be better learners, decision makers, relationship builders and perform at our best.” 

According to the Huberman Lab episode, understanding emotional intelligence develops an individual’s empathy, allows them to self-regulate to feel better and improves communication. 

Brackett told the news that understanding emotions and studying emotional intelligence are even more important in a digital era, as Americans spend over six hours a day online.

Currently, 30 percent of adults report feeling lonely at least once a week and 10 percent are lonely every day. To Brackett, this suggests that the digital age inhibits our ability to fully understand and communicate emotions, highlighting the need for improved emotional intelligence.

“I believe it is what will preserve our humanity,” Brackett said. “We are built to connect with other people, not devices.” 

Brackett’s colleagues attest to his commitment to the field of emotional intelligence.

Nicole Elbertson, YCEI’s director of product development and implementation, has worked with Brackett for over twenty years. She described him as a “supportive and empowering leader and colleague” who impresses her with knowledge of the field. 

Jessica Hoffmann, director of implementation science, added, “Working for him is inspiring and fulfilling. I am constantly learning and growing while doing meaningful work that directly impacts people’s lives.”

Marc Brackett’s book, “Permission to Feel,” has sold over 500,000 copies and has been translated into 26 languages.

Correction, 9/19: This story was updated to reflect the correct number of “Permission to Feel” copies sold.

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