Amidst tailgating and catching up with old friends this weekend, students and alumni were offered a chance to hear professors speak on their work in psychology.

“Making Waves: Mind-Blowing Breakthroughs in Neuroscience” focused on the latest breakthroughs in studies on the brain. This Alumni Association-sponsored TIER (Talks that Inspire, Educate and Resonate) Talk took place in the Watters Theater on Saturday. The panel featured Brandon Gibb, Sarah Laszlo and Christopher Bishop — all currently professors at BU — as well as Steve Treistman, a psychology professor visiting from the University of Puerto Rico.

Bishop spoke about risks that are associated with humanity’s increased longevity thanks to progress in science and medicine. As people age, they are more susceptible to neurological diseases, such as Huntington’s and Alzheimer’s.

He is currently researching a way to stop or reverse the effects of these illnesses. He offered a few tips on “neuroprotection,” or preventative brain activity, like challenging the brain, learning new things and physical exercise. He listed physical exercise as the most powerful means of prevention, but said that he has faced trouble getting people started.

“If people actually started consistently exercising, they would feel it,” he said. “For people who have depression, exercise works amazingly well, but you’re trying to motivate someone who has a motivational problem.”

Gibb is a leading researcher in depression and anxiety, and his talk centered around preventing depression using pupil dilations. His studies have shown that by constantly directing someone’s attention away from negativity and toward something more neutral, the brain can be reprogrammed to be less negative, and therefore less prone to depression.

Treistman currently teaches at the University of Puerto Rico, but graduated from BU in 1961. An expert in alcohol addiction, he urged the audience to understand the difficulty that comes with quitting.

Henry Aery, a 2015 graduate, said that he decided to go to the talks because of his limited knowledge of the subject, but he found the topics to be very interesting.

“This is way too cool to not come,” Aery said. “I thought it was fascinating because I have almost no background in psychology.”

Laszlo, an assistant professor of psychology and linguistics, focused her talk on her work finding ways to replace fingerprint scanning with brain activity scanning. Laszlo said that in an experiment, she was able to identify 30 people by monitoring their brain activity.

Sofia Villela, a junior majoring in psychology, said she thought that Laszlo’s talk on brain activity scanning was something she hadn’t considered.

“It was a different track,” Villela said. “It’s crazy that something like this is happening on campus.”

TIER Talks are meant to show off the work being done by BU faculty and alumni, but according to Bishop, they are also meant to raise awareness in the community of the issues that scientists are working hard to solve.

“This isn’t a talk about the future,” Bishop said. “This is a talk about right now.”