J. Paul Hamilton

Paul Hamilton became interested in studying cognition and emotion from the perspectives of phenomenology, biology, and behavior as an undergraduate at UC Berkeley and went on to apply neuroscientific and computational orientations to examining cognition as a graduate student at the University of Michigan. Paul then furthered his studies as a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford by investigating affective disorders from an integrative, multidisciplinary perspective. He then continued his career trajectory in Scandinavia, investigating affective and psychotic disorders with a variety of neuroimaging, genetic, and molecular techniques. Paul currently serves in the role of Associate Professor at the Department of Biological and Medical Psychology at the University of Bergen in Norway.

At Whitman, Paul teaches a course on how conceptualizing the human brain as a prediction machine can further our understanding of mental illness. Paul very much enjoys engaging the bright and curious minds at Whitman both to help further them on their own trajectories and to seek inspiration in developing his own research.

Areas of Expertise and Interest

Biological psychiatry, neuropsychiatry, unified models in psychiatry, affective neuroscience, cognitive neuroscience, functional neuroimaging, and molecular neuroimaging.