ESP Biography



XIAO-PING LIU, MIT graduate students studying neuroscience




Major: Health Sciences Technology

College/Employer: MIT

Year of Graduation: Not available.

Picture of Xiao-Ping Liu

Brief Biographical Sketch:

Mark Howe, Josh Sarinana, Livia King, Greg Hale, and Xiao-Ping Liu are students researching how we sense the world, how we remember, how we learn, and how we process language.



Past Classes

  (Clicking a class title will bring you to the course's section of the corresponding course catalog)

S2444: Introduction to Neuroscience in HSSP Summer 2009 (Jul. 12, 2009)
The human brain is made of about ten billion neurons and more than one trillion neuron-to-neuron connections. Scientists can study the behavior of individual neurons and their connections like any other physical system. Yet they are only grazing the surface on how this remarkable network of interacting neurons can serve as the physical embodiment of our personalities, perceptions, memories, decisions, and habits. We invite you to come explore mysteries of the brain and the mind with us. In this course we will introduce you to what scientists know, and what scientists don't yet know, about the way the brain works. We will discuss current techniques in neuroscience research, and explore the field by dissecting sheep brains (optional activity).


S1415: Introduction to Neuroscience in HSSP Summer 2008 (Jun. 29, 2008)
How does the brain work? The field of neuroscience has really just begun to unravel the mystery of how our mental worlds arise from these three-pound organs; but many surprises have already been uncovered. We all take our ability to sense and manipulate the world for granted, but these abilities have been growing and evolving through intermediate states for millions of years. In our Introduction to Neuroscience class, we will learn experimental and theoretical insights into how people and animals ercieve the world, how we learn, how we think, and how we control our movement. We will discuss the evolutionary roots of the brain, and we will try to tackle some philosophical issues pertaining to consciousness and free will. You will also learn about what happens when brain circuitry goes bad: in Parkonson's disease, Alzheimer's dimentia, and dyslexia, for example; and how our own brains 'go bad' in surprisingly common ways. At the end of the course, we will learn about how research in neuroscience is done by touring several MIT neuroscience laboratories, and we will conduct an (optional) sheep brain dissection to see first-hand how brains are organized.


Introduction to Neuroscience in HSSP (2007)
Are you curious about how the brain works? This class will offer a taste of a range of topics from ...


Auditory Neuroscience in SPLASH (2007)
Do you wonder how we can hear our name whispered across the room at a large noisy party, or why ...