Working with the Josh's

The movie project for Neuro 281 was a bit tougher and more time-consuming than I had anticipated, but, at the end of the day, an enjoyable experience - mainly because of my partners! I hadn't met either of them before this class, but I had a great time working with them. Even though, it was weird working with two different Josh's.

They were both always willing to meet, even if it was really late at night, and very engaged when we did meet. Watching the movies was fun, just because we were all just poking fun at all the cliche tropes used in the rather cheesy movies we chose. Then when it came down to discussing logistics of the presentation and piecing together what we were going to talk about, I found them to be very insightful with their points and also responsive to my ideas. I was especially thankful to their openness to working with Prezi (I know, it's a little bit complicated at first).

Thanks so much boys! (:

Week Eleven: Interaction with a dog

My brother and Winnie

Winnie! That's the name of my golden labrador, my love. She's the most loving, compassionate dog I've ever met.

She's one of those dogs that, when she sees you approaching the house, she barks up a storm and sprints over towards you (scaring the living daylights out of a lot of strangers), but then when she reaches your feet, she rolls over and then goofily asks for a belly rub.

She's the kind of dog that will watch football and basketball games with the family. When everyone gets up and start cheering, so does she. She wags her tail furiously, barks at the TV screen, and smiles at everyone around - it's like she's celebrating with us! Most likely, she doesn't understand what exactly is going on in the game, but she understands that whatever is happening is make us happy, and she mirrors that. It's very evident in my Winnie has an ability to understand human emotions at at least a superficial level, which is the evidence of dogs co-evolving with humans.

She's the best dog ever, and although she's not the sharpest tool in the shed (she chases her tail after all)... She definitely feels human to me.

Week Ten: My favorite philosopher

My favorite philosopher would have to be Rene Descartes, the "Father of Modern Philosophy." I mean, obviously his most famous (some would say cliche) contribution is "I think therefore I am." But what truly makes him the most intriguing to me personally, is the often forgotten, beginning of that quote, "I doubt, therefore I think." Basically stating that all that each of us have access to is what's in our mind, which introduces the question: what exactly is the external world? Reality really only exists in the subjective experience, so what should we doubt as being truly real? Do our senses deceive us? Is there an evil deceiver that is manipulating what we perceive as our world? It's an interesting question, because I remember once talking to a friend about whether we all see colors the same. Is my "red" the same as her "red"?

Something that's interesting about Descartes, is that he's actually also extremely renowned for his mathematical prowess - he introduced the Cartesian coordinate system, which was basically fathering analytical geometry. He also was a key contributor to the Scientific Revolution. Which kind of plays into his philosophical beliefs that are grounded in a questioning attitude, which characterizes scientists and mathematicians. Which also explains his wise quote, "It is not enough to have a good mind; the main thing is to use it well." And use it well, Descartes did.

Helen Mayberg, “Rethinking Depression and its Treatment: Insights from Studies of Deep Brain Stimulation”

I really enjoyed Dr. Mayberg's talk about depression and her work on DBS (deep brain stimulation) as a potential treatment for the future. Something she really emphasized was how we think about/how we define depression. Some key phrases that she quoted were:

• "storm of murk"
• "trance of supreme discomfort"
• "positive and active anguish"

This made it differentiated depression as, not an off state, but an on state. Unfortunately for this disease that causes state of despair is lacking a consistent, effective treatment. More than 40% of treated patients go into remission, and approximately 10% of treated patients become resistant to treatment over time. Some of the limitations of depression treatment that cause this is that there is no real pathology model, and there are no clear biomarkers of depression  Furthermore  it's hard to study the underlying basis or test the treatments due to no definitive animal models - animals have no trackable psychic pain.

Dr. Mayberg's work has been on a potential alternative to the classic depression treatment options (ECT, VNS, TMS, etc.): neuromodulation via deep brain stimulation targeting the brain region: subcollosal cingulate 25 (we talked about this region today when we discussed the reward system), whose overactivity is implicated in depression. DBS implants an electrode that then blocks aberrant cingulate 25 activity. It first only target cingulate 25, and that had pretty good success, but many times the effect wore off after some time. Then, they employed tractography to figure out the network affected, and target this circuitry - this had even better results. Patients were quoted to say that DBS "doesn't make it easy, but it makes it doable." DBS doesn't necessarily promote positivity, but just turns off negativity (negative bias).

One thing that I found kind of surprising about her methods, is that they're able to do shams, deplete the batteries, etc. I would think that this kind of research with real human patients would not allow something like controls that deprive certain patients of the treatment. Is that ethically sound?

One last thought: Dr. Mayberg emphasized at the end that recovery from depression takes more than just DBS/ECT/TMS... Depression is a feeling of helplessness, and without a complete overhaul of life with depression, life after treatment is still difficult due to depression-inducing habits. Therefore, treatment needs to encompass lifestyle changes and new motivations!

Week Nine: Favorite Economic Game

Only true altruistic human being - St. Theresa?

One of the most interesting economic games to me is the dictator game with the third participant. It's very interesting to see that the third participant, given the ability to punish unfair behavior, will do so, even at his own expense. This to me shows perhaps an altruistic (albeit a vengeful kind of altruism) side to human behavior. This third participant neither gains nor loses from the interaction between the dictator and the recipient, yet still feels compelled to punish unfair divisions of the money endowment. This kind of behavior may seem to be in opposition to my general belief in humans being naturally selfish beings, incapable of altruism. The concept of altruism is a difficult one for me to have faith in, because even when we do good deeds, even if it has no tangible benefit to us, it still makes us feel better about ourselves - so wouldn't this still be considered acting just to improve our own personal life by improving out self-image? This punishment of unfair behavior may just be putting ourselves in the shoes of the recipient or just making ourselves feel better about ourselves by helping out the gypped recipient. Call me a cynic here, but I don't think altruism really exists, not even in the dictator game.

Week Eight: Breaking a Social Norm

Today, I set out on the daunting task of breaking a social norm... Being not quite as courageous as some of my peers who did things like stealing food of the plate of a stranger, I decided to give out awkwardly long hugs.

Basically, whenever I ran into a friend today, I gave them an overly-extended hug. At first, they thought it was pretty funny, but when I refused to let go, they got a little antsy - which is to be expected, I guess. Neither my friends nor I were particularly offended because, I mean, we're friends; the people most weirded out would definitely the people watching the interaction. I got lots of stares in ABP or out on the plaza when I gave my aggressively long hugs.

In our society (I guess depending on where you hail from), hugs are pretty normal, but usually last about 2-4 seconds long. In other countries, it's the norm to exchange kisses on the cheek of others as a greeting. In others, not even eye contact is appropriate. Social norms are so very unique, and with that, I leave you with my favorite awkward hug that definitely broke some Death Eater social norms.

Week Seven: Hormones

This is a pretty easy topic to talk about it - it's so prevalent in everybody's life! I mean two things that immediately come to mind are: PMS and studying for exams.

PMS mood effects are, I think, caused by a imbalance between estrogen and progesterone, and this disruption causes mood swings and food cravings etc. I, for one, know for sure that I get cranky and hungry (for chocolate especially).

Second situation, is when we study for tests (this week of midterms has been hellacious). I can feel the stress hormone, cortisol, rushing through me during my long sessions at Perkins... I suddenly feel extremely hungry for those delicious cookies downstairs, I'm snappy if someone disturbs me, and I definitely feel like I might have gotten sick this week (perhaps due to a weakened immune system this week?).

Both of these examples are pretty negative, but I know they're really important! For example, the steroid, testosterone, can help some of my favorite basketball players (like Kevin Durant or Andre Dawkins) get more aggressive and play better!

Week Six: Emotions

Hmm, I've never been asked to define something like "emotions." I mean, we obviously all know what they are; we all feel them (hopefully). But to concretely define them is something much more difficult. I guess I'd say emotions are mindstates that one is in, in response to their environment/some stimulus (interactions with others, events happening in their environment, mood).

Like Ekman said, there are five basic emotions: happiness, sadness, anger, disgust, and fear/surprise. but there are so many varying levels of each of the basic emotions. Take happiness for example - I'd categorize things ranging from pride to feeling in love to avenged to that general contentment after having a great meal to the umbrella emotion, happiness, but they each are there own separate entity. And that's why it's hard to standardize emotions - each is personal and unique.

P.S. Emoting in text is very difficult (especially when sarcasm is involved), so I suggest everyone use emojii (see above picture). It's got a huge selection of emoticons that mean the same thing to everyone! It's pretty cool how something that is really just a variation of yellow circle denotes a certain emotion, and can completely change the tone of someone's text.

"You're so cool " vs. "You're so cool "

Week Five: Most Outrageous fMRI Study

In 2007, in anticipation of the 2008 presidential, the New York Times ran an article called, "This is Your Brain on Politics." This article discussed the results of an fMRI study that correlated brain activity of a group of swing voters when looking at pictures and videos related to politics to how one felt about the upcoming elections.

This study came to several faulty and preposterous conclusions such as that "voters sense both peril and promise in party brands," because when shown the words, "Democrat," "Republican" and "Independent," their amygdala (which deals with anxiety and disgust) and brain regions associated with the reward system (which is related to desire and the feeling connected) lit up. This is extrapolating a lot from brain regions that are part of very complex systems and have several different functions.

Another strange conclusion was that "Mitt Romney shows potential." They supported this with the observation that when subjects were shown Romney's picture, their amygdala showed a high level of activity, but then when shown the video of him, their amygdala activity went down, indicating that their anxiety towards him died down, perhaps meaning voters will become more comfortable with Romney as they see more of him. This could really just be that the subjects haven't seen much of Romney (remember, this is before the 2008 election, when John McCain was the more prominent Republican candidate), and therefore their brain reacted stronger to the unfamiliar face of Romney, but then had then become habituated by the time they saw the video.

Their are several other just as ridiculous interpretations that this article talks about, I highly encourage you to take a look and laugh, here. I can't believe that such a highly respected newspaper would publish something like this!

Participation in a Psych/Neuro Study - Neurogenetics, Hariri Lab

I participated in the Hariri Lab neurogenetics study (made popular by the flyers around campus bearing the slogan, "DO YOU HAVE A BRAIN?". It was one of the more interesting, comprehensive studies I've participated in, and am excited to hear about discoveries they make.

The first day, Dr. Hariri interviewed me on a wide range of topics to assess personal experience and personality traits - everything from my lifestyle choices to events from my past. I feel like what he learned about me makes him about as knowledgeable about me as one of my closest friends. I just hope that my information is safe!

Look, it's my sagittal slices of my brain!

The second day, Dr. Hariri tested me in a variety of mental tasks including working memory tasks (a particularly frustrating one for me was listening to a stream of numbers and adding the last two numbers I heard - so easy to get confused!), tests of mental math and vocabulary, and even assessment of my pattern recognition skills. I walked out of there feeling pretty dumb, but I didn't get any calls about having a learning disability, so hopefully I'm alright...

The third day, I went in for an MRI scan, where I performed simple number recognition tasks and matching tasks. This lasted for about an hour, and I'm not sure I'd want to do it again - I had to stay extremely still, the MRI machine made lots of loud noise, and I started feeling pretty claustrophobic.

Then before I left, I spit into a sequencing kit for 23andme. So out of all of this, I got a cash payment, an MRI scan of my brain, and a free 23andme account. Overall very worthwhile.

You should consider participating as well! Studies like this need a large database of subjects to come to concrete conclusions to link genetics and behavior/brain characteristics (which are never truly concrete because of things like epigenetics that are contributed by our environment - the nurture side of development). Click here if "you have a brain."

Week Four: Ideal Mind-Reading Machine

Inspired by the TV show Chuck, in which Chuck Bartowski (seen here to the left) has the CIA supercomputer, aka the Intersect, inserted into his brain.

You said it didn't necessarily have to be particularly realistic, right? What I think would be an awesome invention would be some kind of chip that could be inserted into our brains that would work like a smartphone. We could then use our mind to send texts, call people (that'd basically be like immediate mind-reading between two or more people), take notes in class, play games (maybe counterproductive to the previous task...), take photos (instant photographic memory), a library/encyclopedia sort thing where all the knowledge you encounter could be stored and recalled, a diary where all your memories could be stored and recalled, etc. Basically we'd become super-human. As crazy sci-fi as this may seem, I'd like to think that maybe one day in the faraway future, this kind of technology could happen! All I hope is that we wouldn't end up something like this... 

 

Week Three: Experience with someone suffering from a brain disorder

In high school, I used to volunteer at Camp Summit, a camp for children and adults with all kinds of disabilities. This camp provides a "barrier-free outdoors experience" for those who might otherwise not get the chance. The first weekend that I went to volunteer was a retreat for developmentally delayed adults. I'm not going to lie, I was really nervous, because I had never come in contact with someone who was mentally delayed, and was uncomfortable with the thought of interacting with them. But once I got there, it came pretty naturally because I realized just how "normal" most of them were. Easiest way to put it: most of them were physically adult but still mentally children.

This is me with Mickey! She was one of my favorite campers, she actually still FB messages me sometimes to catch up. She's such a sweetheart and is convinced she's going to marry Elvis Presley.

It was definitely surreal having to feed a 60 year old, or make sure that a 40 year old brushed his teeth at night, or talk to a 50 year old about her crush on Elvis Presley... But it helped me overcome an uneasiness that I had with the mentally disabled. At the end of the day, volunteering at this camp changed me for the better - I came out a person so much more grateful for the blessings in my life and empathetic for those not as lucky.

And hey, if you believe in Camp Summit's mission, feel free to find out more here.

Week Two: What do you find confusing about statistics or journal articles?

"Let me count the ways..." I'm actually taking (read: struggling in) Statistics 111 right now, and we discussed Z transformations and Bayes' rule (both of which are mentioned in the neuroimaging reading by Poldrack for next class) among other things in class today. I've never really taken much statistics, so basically everything is kind of confusing to me at the moment.

In related news, in scientific journal articles, I'd say that the hardest part is almost always the statistical analysis to determine significance of data. I hope that the combination of my statistics class and this class will help me understand this better. It also doesn't help that it's usually written very densely in very technical paragraph-form. Which is also the case for most "Materials & Methods" sections, which are very frequently filled with very technical jargon and little fluidity.

Finally, the Baron & Kenny (1986) paper gave me some trouble - I still don't think I quite know the difference between mediators and moderators.

Yay for addressing confusions! All in this together?

Week One: Why did you enroll in this class?

Freshman year, I found myself very excited by economics and neuroscience (I'm currently planning to pursue an Economics major with a Neuroscience minor). The field of study that seems to integrate these two interests of mine is neuroeconomics, a neuroscientific approach to studying how we make decisions (that affect the economy). Oh hey, that sounds familiar... This class encompasses exactly that! I'm very excited to explore not only the more technical side of neuroscience research (something I learned a lot about this summer when I took Cognitive Neuroscience), but also the social implications of what we learn from this research. I feel that this cooperation between economics and neuroscience is a relatively new field, and can't wait to delve in.

I look forward to reading all of your posts this semester!

P.S. For the neuroscience nerds/Ryan Gosling fans, check out this site: