University psychologist
A psychologist is a professional who practices psychology and studies mental states, perceptual, cognitive, emotional, and social processes and behavior.
James V. McConnell, widely known for his flatworm research, has received a Research Career Award from Nationak Institute of Health.
The award, one of the fields of health-related sciences, enables the U-M to provide McConnell’s salary for five years for fulltime research and research thaining.
The award is intended to increase the number of stable fulltime career opportunities for scientists of superior potential and capability in the sciences related to health. Award are made on the basis of nationwide competition.
McConnell’s nine-year-old flatworm research not only made significant contributions to the basic study of learning and memory, but also points to possibilities that may eventually open a new way of facilitating learning in man.
His research has uncovered, among other starting things, that learning and memory are tranferable from one flatworm to another via cannibalistic ingestion. Evidence showed that learning causes some chemical change in cells throughout the worm’s body.
Picking up this clue, McConnell and his associates are now studying the biochemistry of learning in flatworms in an effort to pinpoint and determine the chemical change.
At the moment, however, the flatworm is sending McConnell back to school. As his research began concentrating on the biochemistry of learning in worms, McConnell decided he needed more knowledge of chemistry and is taking a course in organic chemistry this semestr at the U-M.
And in addition to learning, traching, writing and research, he has been publishing and editing perhaps the world’s only humorous scientific journal, Worm Runners Digest, whichtries to keep a balance getween the proper and the frivolous.
Editor-publisher McConnell once described the Digedt as an unofficial, irregular, and informal journsl of comparative psychology based on the motto that it is worthwile to poke fun only at worthwile things. The Digest enjoys an international circulation in 36 countries and is self-supporting.
Much of flatworm research has, however, been supported by the National Institute of Mental Health and the Atomic Energy Comission.
The United States Atomic Energy Commission was an agency of the United States government established after World War II by the U.S. Congress to foster and control the peacetime development of atomic science and technology.
McConnell, an Oklahoma
Oklahoma is a state in the South Central region of the United States, bordered by the state of Texas on the south and west, Kansas on the north, Missouri on the northeast, Arkansas on the east, New Mexico on the west, and Colorado on the northwest.
native who is now associate professor of psychology, joined, the U-M faculty in 1956.
WORM RUNNER’S DIGEST
TABLE OF CONTENT
Volume 5 Issue 2
Published Aug 1, 1963
- James McConnell. Worms & Things.
- R. A. Westerman. A Study of the Habituation of Responses to Light in the Planarian Dugesia Dorotocephala.
- Garvin McCain. Toward a Broader View for the Comparative Psychologist.
- Kiki Roe. In Search of the Locus of Learning in Planarians.
- John Gaito. Is Rna Really Involved in Memore Functions?
- M. Twente. Population Debris: A Bad Tale for Astronods.
- Edward Cohen. Is There an Amino Acid Gradient is the Planarian?
- John Murphy. Learning in the Planarian.
- B. F. Skinner. A Christmas Caramel, or, A Plum from the Hasty Pudding.
- C. D. Barnes & B. G. Katzung. The Use of Monopolar Electrical Shock as the UCS for Conditioning Planarians.
- Peter R. Runlel. A Fable.
- Ronald Raven. The Photic Responses of the Planarian Dugesia Trigina as the Function of Weber’s Law.
- Damon Knight. A Brief Introduction to Logogenetics.
- James V. McConnell. Humanism: A Conditioned Emotional Response.
- Robyn Mason Dawes. Thesis Length and Productivity.
- Gary R. Davis. Memory Loss Through Retrograde Amnesia in the Planarian.
- Joan M. Klein, K. Susan Lathrop, Elizabeth J. Lominska, Lesley E. Seaman. The Effect of a Pre-frontal lobotomy on the Mounting Behavior of the Congolese Red-Eyed, Thryoldectomized Tsetse Fly.
- Reeva Jacobson & Allan L. Jacobson. An Annotated Bibliography of Research on Planarians. Part III.
- Worm’s-Eye Point of View.
Volume 6 Issue 1
Published Mar 1, 1964
- Daryl J. Bem, Harlan L. Lane & David M. Carlson. A Relation Between Nonverbal and Verbal Behavior in Children: Control of Food Consumption by Reinforcing or Presenting Statements About Food.
- F. Galton Pennywhistle. On the Relation Between Mayhematical and Statistical Competence and Significant Scientific Producyiviyu.
- Donald L. Whaley. Serendipity: A Nrw Method of Research?
- Lucien Kabat. Transfer of Training Through Ingestion of Conditioned Planarians By Unconditioned Planarians.
- J. D. Ketchum. Nice People Don’t Eat.
- David Dwyer & Gershom Clark Morningstar. Some Though on Modern Scientific Research Institute.
- James V. McConnell. The contitual Approach. (To Worms.)
- R. J. Siegel. What Bearing Does Research on the Lower Phila Have on the Study of Human Behavior?
- Tricia Lee. An Investigation of Alternation Behavior Under Conditions of Free and Forced Choice.
- Robert Sommer. The Third Child.
- Cryde M. Senger. Effect of X-Ray Irradiation on Oxygen Uptake By Planarians.
- M. Twente. Dynamic Equilibrium of a Sort.
- Barbara Humphries & James V. McConnell. Factors Affecting Maze Learning in Planarians.
- Soe Forth. At Last: The Foodian Psycholysis.
- Edward Cohen. An Experiment in Grafting Planarian Body Parts.
- Tricia Lee. The Conditioned Cat.
- Robert L. Dean. Dr. B. Wilder’s Zigzaggery Division.
- Peter M. Driver. A Semi-Annotated Review of Papers Presented at the VIIIth International Ethological Conference (Hague and Hague.)
- Harold T. Salive & M. L. Clay. Project Glowworm Rides Again.
- Peter R. Runkel. Another Fable.
- William Corning. Evidence of Right-Left Discrimination on Planarians.
- Ursula C. Moslar & Margaret L. Clay. The Annotated Bibliography of Research on Planarians.
- The Worm’s-Eye Point of View
