#SFN10

I officially fail at social media. Told myself I was going to liveblog the bejesus out of this year's Society for Neuroscience conference but of course I chose the road more easy to travel by: a path paved with 140 characters and mobile connectivity. In my defense I was pretty busy during the daytime wandering around the convention center, stalking awesome professors and refueling on Starbucks grande chai lattes. But anyway, so that the nerdtastic excitement and general awesomeness of everything don't wither away in my terrible-excuse-for-LTM storage, I've decided to extrapolate my memories from posts to the twitterverse and hope this compiles a somewhat coherent narration of experiences.

It really was though. Airports are usually such depersonalized spaces: you're surrounded by thousands of people shuffling brusquely along in their own worlds, too worried about their own travel plans and schedule to waste time interacting with others. Understandable. Still, it was nice to look around and be able to connect with these complete strangers without saying a word: I knew why they were here and where they were going. It felt like we were all part of some secret club except instead of a complicated handshake, membership is demonstrated with long, awkwardly shaped luggage (even though technically I didn't have one. Boo. Joined my lab too late to be included in the abstract submission. But hey, I could still appreciate the unspoken bond.)

Touched down on Golden ground and had our spirits instantly lifted. How can you not smile at such a gorgeous state? We took shuttles provided by the conference to our hotel and were welcomed by this view. Immediately made a pact with my roommate to miss our returning flight and become bums on some, any, street corner of this beautiful city. But enough about our plans for umbrella tent shelters- IT'S TIME FOR #CONFERENCEBANTER.

View from our hotel room. Rockstar.

I really wish I could have taken pictures to capture the enormity of this convention. It was just... mindblowing. Humbling, even. Here are 30,000ish people that have come together to learn and share and explore research in a fantastically broad field. I was surrounded by molecular biologists, geneticists, computer scientists, engineers; people who work with worms, rats, clinical populations, controls; studies that utilize  psychopharmacology, neuroimaging, behavioral psych measures... the list goes on. Yet we're all here on the same mission: to understand the brain (or waste our lives away trying). Gets me all warm and tingly.
Poster of the day: "An fMRI Study of Two Brain Interaction Using a Novel Dual-Head MRI Coil System" That's right, you heard (/read) correctly- a dual head coil.  The ability to scan two people's brains simultaneously opens up a new dimension of social neuroscience research. Assuming you have two verrrry small people that are comfortable hanging out in an enclosed space for the duration of the study and you're not particularly interested in the visual cortex- the possibilities are endless!

How about instead of asking me what I'm supposed to do with a handful of eppendorf tubes you ask yourself what CAN'T you do? eh?
Poster of the Day: "Atypical Thalamocortical Connectivity in ADHD Youth" Theoretically, when we're not actively engaged in a particular task, our brain runs on a functionally connected network of brain regions, nominally, the default mode network. Looking at differences in activation between ADHD youth and control youth can help us understand what is going on when people's minds wander. Which, if the way I write is any indication, is something I'm INTENSELY interested in.

Eeeeeeeeee!

No offense to Science, Cell, Interdisciplinary Reviews in Cognitive Science, Nature, Nature Reviews Neuroscience or NIDA brochures. Just saying, you'd be a lot cooler if you were color-in-able.
That is all.

So this reminds me of a good point about social media: not everyone uses this platform to have narcissistic conversations with total strangers about the everyday minutiae of their lives: sometimes Twitter is actually useful. Case in point, if @BrainCatalog hadn't started following my account, the chances of me seeing their booth in the sea of vendors would have slim to none. And that would have been tragic. In a nutshell, they're creating a GoogleEarth-esque application that allows you to browse through mouse brain terrain. The exciting potential of this technology is tangible- can't wait to see where it takes us in the next few years. You can read more in the NYTimes or watch their intro video:

Poster of the day: Uhm, that one. "A Remarkable Increase of Visual and Mental imagery Following Ayahuasca Ingestion: An fMRI study" While I'm still very curious how they're explaining away the fact that an MRI machine overwhelms even the most sober of participants with booming, unsettling sounds and overloading the senses of someone on psychedelics is INFINITELY different than using the same environment with a control subject... this still wins the My Favorite Poster Ever Award (prestigious, I know). They interpreted their results to mean that more activation in areas typically associated with memory, vision and intention shows that using hallucinogenics affects our perception and separation of real life and our internal mental environment. A small step toward exploring reality perception and consciousness but a friggin' LEAP toward making psychedelic research a respected branch of neuroscience.
And it's about time.
(Randall Munroe, you're not helping. Even if we were all thinking it.)

(Almost) last but (certainly) not least:
Check out my lab buddies' sweet posters!
B. KING-CASAS et. al. The neurobiology of diffusion of responsibility in social dilemmas
S. BOUCHER et. al. Affective phenotypes exhibit distinct neural response magnitude and duration to emotional sounds
J. EISEMAN et. al. Neural substrates of interpersonal function in post-traumatic stress disorder
G. CHRISTOPOULOS et. al. Behavioral and neuronal mechanisms underlying reinforcement learning of social stimuli
L. LINDSEY et. al. Neural substrates of drug use, craving, and executive control in cocaine users
K. MCCURRY et. al. Neural correlates of aggression in cocaine dependent individuals
D. TANKERSLEY et. al. Reward and punishment learning associated with differential response to positive and negative prediction errors in stimulant-dependent subjects
** I actually need to go through and fix the links so they redirect to the SFN website, but for now this'll do**

Much love for the CKC Lab :)

Some parting thoughts: In the end, I'm very grateful for having the opportunity to attend this year's conference. It was a learning experience on many different levels and definitely makes me appreciate academia just that much more. Thanks to everyone who came to present their research and share their positive energy with the rest of us. Also, a special 'thank you' goes out to SFNPosterFace.com for access to the abstracts and entertaining us with their super creative Lady GABA- Posterface parody.

"When it's cor-ti-cal / If it isn't rough it isn't fun" ...Truth.

See everyone next year!

It always had to go this way.

I was asleep in a hammock

I was dreaming that I was a web

I was a dream-catcher hanging in the window of a minivan

parked along the water's edge.

I'd say that I was all alone.

Finally got around to listening to Wolf Parade's album Expo 86 and of course, am left absolutely infatuated. I know it's trite to say shit like "they've really matured as a band over the years and it's been a privilege to tag along for the ride" but there, I said it. Not because Expo is better than Apologies (blasphemy!) or Mt Zoomer (not-quite-as-blasphemous!), just that it demonstrates progression, exploring and conquering new territories of sound. There's something mesmerizing about their particular brand of synthpop -- the songs feel optimistic despite intense melancholy overtones and electric harmonies that pierce your soul.

Case in point: In the Direction of the Moon.

Also see:  What Did My Lover Say (It Always Had to Go This Way)

Maybe I'm too vulnerable to cover-art influence, but listening to the album straight up overwhelms me with nostalgia. The kind that gnaws at you until you stop whatever you're doing to go roll around in the grass or build a couch-cushion fort.

Well, that or channel the flood o' feelings into a Wikipedia binge...

Read more »

Science is art, art science

—that is all

Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know

I'm going through another one of those phases where I obsess over the people I want to be when I grow up instead of working on the steps to become them (like tracking down their address and social security information). Actually that's not quite fair, I have been trying to work on a fun side-project animation for about a month now but keep getting distracted by my job, responsibilities to my future, and fantastic animators who blow my mind open with their science-art.

First up: Candaş Şişman dives into the artistic side of math with F L U X.

Dedicated to the sculptor İlhan Koman, this animation explores new perspectives on his works "Pi, 3D Moebius, Whirlpool and To Infinity" with hypontic audio-visual textures. Remember Peripetics? Similar animation style, but overall F L U X is more fluid and less... strange.

(via Change the Thought)

Next: David Bolinksy's 2007 TED talk, The Inner Life of a Cell. He chats about truth, beauty and the exciting field of medical animation. You can can check out more of his studio's work on their website. Seriously Jeremiah, your dad is a bamf.

Now, I know I've been saying this a lot lately but how has someone not made a live action remake of the Magic School Bus series yet?! WE HAVE THE TECHNOLOGY. I'm looking at you, Spike Jonze, for apparently not having any qualms rewriting our generation's collective childhood memories anyway. Wait, I take that back. The only person I would completely trust with my favorite book series is Michel Gondry. So you guys should to work on it together. Mmkay, good talk.

Last but not certainly not least, I present to you one of my all-time favorite animations: Procrastination, an unassuming masterpiece that perfectly captures how it feels to resist productivity at all costs. This is Johnny Kelly's graduation film from the Royal College of Art in 2007 and while it might not have anything to do with the science-of-art or art-of-science, I trust in your abilities to figure out how it's relevant.

Aaaaaand that's my cue.

Ozzy Osbourne Gets His Genetic Code Sequenced

"I was curious. Given the swimming pools of booze I've guzzled over the years—not to mention all of the cocaine, morphine, sleeping pills, cough syrup, LSD, Rohypnol…you name it—there's really no plausible medical reason why I should still be alive. Maybe my DNA could say why."

Looks like pretty flawless logic to me.

Thank you Ozzy, for your dedicated contributions to science and mankind.

You can read the full article on Scientific American where they interview one of the co-founders of the company in charge of genetic analysis. They talk dopamine, metabolism and the presence of "rare genetic variants." The interviewee actually does a pretty solid job of answering questions clearly intended for the CSI generation. FYI kids: Analyzing genetics is friggin' hard-- you can't just dump someone's DNA into a machine and have it spit out all predispositions for illnesses, character traits and the "secrets" to their existence. YAKAWOW!

sup SAN FRAN CISCO

Observation number one: It is surprisingly easy to get from Oakland airport to the Haight-Ashbury district. Yes, I went from bus to train to another bus and walked a total of about 2 miles but it was ridiculously easy to do so. I didn't realize public transportation could be so available, useful, and tourist-friendly. Weird.

Observation number two (brought to you by Mr. Timothy Faust, Master Fusion Food Finder): You can shove literally anything into a flour tortilla and call it a burrito. Don't think I'm complaining about these flexible semantics though, I'm devouring them. We started with a spicy Korean bbq kimchi&pork burrito and ended the night with a Curry Up Now Green Monster delight. MulticultralWIN.

Observation number three: This has absolutely nothing to do with San Francisco and everything to do with what goes through my head when I'm alone for too long. So let's just say, studying for the GRESubject psych test has left a fair amount of buzzwords swirling around my working memory. I first noticed this when I brought up Kandel's experiments on the sea-slug aplysia in the middle of a conversation because I genuinely thought it was relevant. It wasn't. But anyhow, as I sit here sippin' my second cafe au lait of the day, I'm imagining what a coffeeshop conversation with John B. Watson would be like were he around. He'd probably point out that drinking coffee is part of a multi-reinforcement model with both primary positive (the energy, euphoria and overall warm tastiness) and primary negative (the headaches, ohtheheadaches!) reinforcement. Add in the common traits of free wifi and a chill place to sit around and you've even got some variable-schedule secondary positive reinforcements. Word. And now you know! (and knowing is half the battle)

Observation number four: Wandering around alone outside is officially my most favorite pastime ever. But who am I kidding, we all already knew this. There's just something so awesomely meaningful about journeys powered solely by your rhythmic footfalls- uphills, downhills, aroundabaout hills, through parks, under trees. Suddenly everything becomes a great purposeful metaphor for life in general and as Mr. Tom Wolfe would say "it's phony goddamnit it... but mysto..."

Observation number five: It is fucking GORGEOUS outside. And that's all I've got, folks.

Now back to working on my grad school apps. Spoiler alert: Berkeley's statement of purpose begins: "I would like to be a part of your program so that please don't make me ever leave here ever"