The University of Colorado at Boulder Chancellor聮s Community Lecture Series resumes in February with four distinguished women faculty from the Boulder campus presenting topics from their fields of expertise.
Completing its second year, the series brings CU faculty into the community for talks ranging from arts and humanities to business and the sciences.
The February series highlights the work of professors Linda Watkins, Jane Bock, Susan Avery and Anne Costain. The series kicks off with the talk "How Does Your Immune System Tell Your Brain That You Are Sick?" by psychology Professor Linda Watkins.
The lectures, co-sponsored by The Academy and the CU-Boulder Office of Community Relations, will be on Tuesdays, Feb. 8 through Feb. 29, at 7:30 p.m. in the chapel of The Academy, 970 Aurora Ave. in Boulder.
Watkins, who has been at CU-Boulder since 1988, will explore how and why the immune system controls the brain and how that relates to what people experience when sick.
"Everyone knows how awful they feel when they get sick, but we rarely stop to really think about what聮s happening," Watkins said. "When you analyze the sickness responses 聳 the fever, the sleepiness 聳 what you find out is that the brain causes virtually all of them, in an attempt to help you survive."
Watkins has been doing pain research for more than 20 years and is working toward an understanding of chronic pain, such as that experienced by people with AIDS. She has been studying the immune system for 12 years.
"I聮ll start off the lecture by building the case that we can now think of our immune system as a 聭sense organ,聮 just like eyes and ears. But what the immune system senses is infection or inflammation in the body," Watkins said. "The immune system then tells the brain about it. It聮s fascinating.
"I will also introduce the idea that exaggerated pain is a natural result of immune-to-brain communication and describe how and why this occurs."
Professor Watkins is a member of the President聮s Teaching Scholar Program, which was established in 1989 to honor and reward a select number of faculty members from the four CU campuses for exemplary teaching and scholarship. She also serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Pain and the board of directors at the American Pain Society.
All the lectures are free and open to the public. Parking is available along the streets that border The Academy: Lincoln Place, Cascade Avenue, Aurora Avenue and 10th Street.
For more information, contact the CU-Boulder Office of Community Relations at (303) 492-8384.