Join Ann-Christine Duhaime, MD, author of "Minding the Climate: How Neuroscience Can Help Solve Our Environmental Crisis" for a keynote lecture and dialogue for Earth Month as she explores the evolution of the human brain and the neuroscience of decision-making. “Increasingly politicians, activists, media figures, and the public at large agree that climate change is an urgent problem. Yet that sense of urgency rarely translates into serious remedies. If we believe the climate crisis is real, why is it so difficult to change our behavior and our consumer tendencies?”

Co-sponsored by the McAuley Institute for Mercy Education and the Department of Cultural, Environmental, and Global Studies.

Dr. Duhaime is senior pediatric neurosurgeon at Massachusetts General Hospital, where she also serves as Associate Director of the Center for the Environment and Health. In addition, Dr. Duhaime is Nicholas T. Zervas Professor of Neurosurgery at Harvard Medical School.  Her neuroscience research investigates mechanisms, pathophysiology, imaging, and treatment of injury in the immature brain, using translational and clinical approaches to study injuries occurring in infants and young children, including those seen most commonly in child abuse.  The work also investigates plasticity, recovery, and return of brain function in children and adolescents during maturation.

Dr. Duhaime also has a longstanding interest in the relationship between brain and behavior, and in environmental issues.  She is a Faculty Associate of the Harvard University Center for the Environment.  Beginning with a fellowship at the Radcliffe Institute in 2016 she has explored the neurobiology of reward circuitry and plasticity and its relevance to pro-environmental behavior, and also worked with a diverse team to design a prototype advanced “green” biophilic pediatric hospital. Her book on this work, Minding the Climate, was published in 2022 (Harvard University Press). She now serves as Associate Director of the Massachusetts General Hospital Center for the Environment and Health and as Associate Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Climate Change and Health.