2024 Programs

Protecting our brains and protecting nature are both important for our long-term wellbeing. Professor Masino will share how these two goals are mutually reinforcing, and how common-sense actions can benefit individual and collective health. The growing evidence for brain health benefits of nature span across all age groups and levels of activity, and range among beneficial changes in brain activity, improved cognition and emotional regulation and decreased depression and anxiety. The good news is these benefits do not require a wilderness trip; they can be achieved right here in our communities.  In addition to practical information on brain health, the presentation will feature local data and   implications of the recent regional report titled, “Wildlands in New England: Past, Present and Future”.   

Susan Masino is the Vernon D. Roosa Professor of Applied Science at Trinity College, a member of the Science and Technology Working Group of the Connecticut Governor’s Council on Climate Change (GC3), the Hartford County Coordinator for the Old Forest Network and recently a Charles Bullard Fellow in Forest Research at Harvard University. Her laboratory-based research focuses on mechanisms of brain health and disease, and her scholarship outside the lab focuses on nature and brain health, and the critical role of climate-regulating ecosystems.

Professor Angie Johnston is an assistant professor at Boston College where she directs the Canine Cognition Center and the Social Learning Laboratory. She received her Ph.D. in Psychology from Yale University and her B.S. in Child Development from the University of Texas at Dallas. Her research on canine cognition and child development has received numerous awards from sources such as the National Science Foundation, and her work has been featured on NBC Nightly News, the Today Show, and Scientific American.  

The primary goal of her lab is to understand how dogs think and see the world. Dogs are a ubiquitous part of our lives, yet we know surprisingly little about their psychology. Her lab’s research is designed to tap into dogs’ minds by creating fun scenarios (e.g., searching games, puzzles, and magic shows) in which to observe dogs’ behavior. Although her lab is interested in answering many questions about dogs’ minds, much of her work investigates how dogs learn from and interact with humans. Through this work, her lab hopes to gain insight that can help facilitate service and working dog training, bolster human-dog bonds, and enhance the welfare of pet dogs. Finally, although dogs are interesting to study in-and-of-themselves, her lab also studies dogs because of the insight they provide into our own human psychology.