About: change

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A great project I was told about.
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About: blank

Any human sensation of the external world, that may or may not become aware, is recognized by inherent neuronal structures and learned patterns of the person’s previous experience. While that same sensation, that experience, incident, reaction, conversation, mood or even relationship passes away, the way we experienced it somehow conserves in our brains as patterns that make us understand what we perceive now. This understanding of the brain being basically to understand presence and predict future by constantly perceiving, learning and conserving patterns in time and thus enabling our actions to be potent, strikingly realizes the sensation of every day experience as being embedded in past experience. And by emphasizing plasticity of the brain and thus convertibility of prior experience, it acknowledges that different understanding of us and the world is possible.

Science Future

http://www.flickr.com/photos/29891216@N05/3265568769/

Since the amount of readers is, I am pretty sure smaller than I could say cheers to in a glance, dear friends, I comment before I write the next post, that I am quite sure I won't rename this blog to something like "student J's diary". Nevertheless, I will write about a student J today. It is not very personal, since what I want to write about is a public topic. It is mainly related to the posts before and regards psychology, science, and academic development in that field today. Theses aspects are certainly endless and what I want to write about specifically concern my thoughts about looking for a PhD position.

Since I am a German student of psychology and planning to enter a (probably clinical) PhD program next year, I am thinking about that and so a write here. What I am wondering is, what parameters for choice count when looking for a PhD position. Surely, the quality of the advisor, the dynamics and expertise in the lab, the department laboratories and the university itself do and especially important might be to have possibilities to work for instance with persons of other fields/sciences.

Beside all that, I would say, one other "parameter" is, what one assumes, how the field one is interested in, develops. This can only be answered within each field. Nevertheless there are factors - though they are related to the field of interest - that are genuinely rather aspects of society. I think trying to figure out those factors of society that are related to "the future of the field of one's interest" is also critical, when looking for possible PhD positions.

But somehow like "by definition" some of those society related factors are blurry. Especially, when they are due to questions of the development of some technology within the near future. In my case e.g. looking at the present and the past of the use of (multi)-media might be a blurry factor for decision making. But I think when I ask myself, what the "future" of media-technology could be like in 20 years, I quite confidently assume a development that I would express in analogy to the recent past of media. A precondition for that kind of outlook though is, that we hopefully will have a peaceful, positive development as society, what clearly is not for sure.

So then, what role might media play in basic research or in clinical research? I think an answer is mainly approached by looking at the development of computational power. 1st, for example it surely was not very thinkable to imagine graphical computer games, when the first digital computational machines were developed. Still only a short time later the gaming industry is now as big as the film-making industry. I would say this is "just" due to something that is reflected in the fact, that nearly each person in the "western world" has a computer and uses it as much as the television is in use, even more in the younger generations. Only a 2nd argument I consider at the moment as another technological aspect in regard to the questions about media in future research (dame, maybe it is better to consider more...). It is the development of statistics (like network modeling or structural equation modeling or ............) and its application.

I would say, that "the next levels" underlying/interacting with those technological aspects are, economical, demographical, political, climatical, ... work, wealth, adam and eve's apples and peace and love ;)

Anyway fortunately here we are far off topic.

Scientific Objectivity

Since I stopped working on theory since a few days, my first choice story is not a specific neuro-scientific one. But I am proudly slow-reading a so far beautiful book named "Objectivity". In this book the authors describe the history of scientific objectivity. In the preface the authors state, that working on the history of scientific objectivity made them see, that at it's heart lie "ways of seeing that are at once social, epistemological and ethical".

Please allow to repeat in student-bullets: Main components of(History of) Scientific Objectivity are Ways of Seeing [that are at once] Social, Epistemological and Ethical.

Daston and Galison, 2007

Robert Hecht-Nielsen from UCSD developed something maybe extreme. Yesterday I came across the "Confabulation theory". I don't seriously know anything about it, just:

Assuming, that thinking is an offspring of moving - evolutionary and functionally -, this theory applies principles of the neuro-muscular system to the brain. And they are using network modelling. And it is a general theory of mind/brain. Impressive is following application of the theory:
An "empty" system (program build according to the theory) was fed with text of a newspaper. After that it was able to produce (output):

1.) grammatically correct sentences. (Without being taught grammar)

2.) If you give him a (random meaningful) sentence, his output is...

...well, check out your self. One example:

The program read:

“He started his goodbyes with a morning audience with Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace, sharing coffee, tea, cookies and his desire for a golf rematch with her son, Prince Andrew. The visit came after Clinton made the rounds through Ireland and Northern Ireland to offer support for the flagging peace process there.”

The program then generated following sentence:

“The two leaders also discussed bilateral cooperation in various fields.” The output is the conclusion the program draws on bases of the (random-news-paper-)-feed and resembles - in order - the words, it calculates as most expedient to follow the last two sentence it was input.

I thought, wow.

I tried to find more information but all I got, is:

He wrote a book and a few publications, there is a little bit in xyPedia, he seem to be still at UCSD and is (still?) Vice President of a company, that develops and applies technologies for decision management. (?!)

"Confabulation theory" produces no search results in

- web of knowledge

- IEEE

- ACM

Well, maybe we will hear more about him in the future, maybe not.

Who is interested, a talk he gave at IBM:

http://www.almaden.ibm.com/institute/2006/agenda.shtml

Btw., more about network modelling and general theory of mind: Jeff Hawkins

When is future...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/79557817@N00/24106648/

...If we start thinking "When is future..", we probably are already in it somehow.

Recently I was surprised, excited and... , by the work at a 9 year old institution run at USC, fundet by the Army and placed right next to Hollywood, it is called "Institute for Creative Technologies". I don't exactly know, what my feelings about that future is (excitement + ...), mainly probably, because it is not really possible to foresee or even imagine it. I guess that is why also concern arises. Mainly I was curious about:

If that technology is combined with the future of any kind of on-line analysis of an expression (face, eyes, body, voice, words...)

• (Check out the Software "Observer" and their extension of automated emotion recognition that simply needs a video of a person. Or consider, that you can already do voice analysis of two persons having a conversation and tell online, using frequency-analysis, how much sympathy they have for each other (the voices (and also the bodylanguage) kind of converge)...)

• And that combined with some sophisticated statistical analysis:
  (Is there already something like
  An individual frequency analysis of e.g., of emotional facial expression / voice / skin conductance / ... Combined with something like network-modelling kinda based on the individual traits and states of that person...???)

That idea feels like web.10

But it started already e.g., near Hollywood, Science and the Army (bless, of a more or less democratic nation). Today I thought, I want to write bits of delight. Maybe tomorrow. But you may imagine a really great hour (or three) with some friends. You all live here and there. But every now and then you meet in a really really photorealistic 3d virtual reality.

And enjoy a glass of wine...

One of the projects of that institute - and, I think, that is just one field, where future technology will be present, like the internet is today, - ,is clinical psychological treatment: 

From their website:

"The Laboratory for Virtual Reality, Psychology, Rehabilitation, and Social Neuroscience at the University of Southern California's Institute for Creative Technologies is engaged in a broad program of research on the brain mechanisms that underlie neurocognitive functioning and emotion regulation in persons throughout the life course.

We make use of Virtual and Augmented Reality to study associations between the essential neural correlates of cognitive functioning and emotion regulation to assess the mechanisms of brain-behavior relations. Included among the disorders we have recently studied are mood and anxiety disorders, stroke, mild traumatic brain injury, ADHD, autism, Alzheimer's, and pain distraction.

We believe that the use of Virtual and Augmented Reality are essential components in the evolution of medical and psychological sciences in the digital age. As with any technology applied in these areas, both challenges and opportunities will emerge in how Virtual and Augmented Reality are usefully applied and validated. The development of archetypical virtual environments (i.e., offices, homes, social environments, etc.) will likely continue as Virtual and Augmented Reality are applied to a wider range of clinical and scientific research questions in the future."

Also check out a more technical talk of their graphics department. Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=556FvXHLtAo

[Key Words]

http://www.flickr.com/photos/aoifecitywomanchile/3828589327/

Imagine someone walking an empty quiet sunny street. The sounds of the city are hushed while he thinks of yesterday. Another person walking barefood nearly caught up to the first person and that person, ergrossed in thought as well, accedinetially kicks some waste on the street, a plastic lid of a cup of coffee lying on poros asphalt. First it jams, then shoots ahead but only to slow down as sudden, as it started moving and stopping a meter behind and half a meter left of the person ahead.

What might go on with that person? Naivly we know the unfamliar and context-unfamliar scratchy sound gets conscious like an unexpected flash. Kind of coincidentally a surprised and puzzeld cognition process takes place reflecting a space-time continuum and an object-analysis of the auditive stimulus and the context by that person. Also kind of coincidentally and somehow ingeniously calculated and coordinated, the person, slightly faster, than he is used to move, he turns his head leftward down and focuses his visual attention to a spot on the street where he could had spotted an object that would have lurched him. Meanwhile he does not change his walking behaviours, the head remaines hardly perceivable at posture and returns while the person might think “huh?…plastic!…oh, someone is walking behind me… …I want a coffee… ”

[Key Words] 

working memory, stimulus selection, prefrontal cortex, parietal cortex, superior colliculus, vision 

screens: Fundamental Components of Attention. Knudsen, Eric. 2007

http://www.flickr.com/photos/juseppe90/3415538262/

Insula

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ra-felo/3624963478/sizes/o/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/22230018@N03/3111749976/sizes/o/


"We are an essentially social species; no component of our civilization would be possible without large-scale collective behavior. Yet much of our social behavior arises from neurobiological and psychological mechanisms shared with other mammalian species, raising questions ...
... [culture]* may arise from knowledge of our own minds and those of others...

...For instance, observing the hand of a loved one receive a painful electric shock will activate the insula in the brain of the perceiver (Singer et al. 2004). This and other studies have tied the insula not only to the experience of one's own emotions, but also to the empathic feeling of others' emotions: one way in which we know what is going on inside other people is to simulate aspects of what is happening in their brain (Keysers & Gazzola 2007). Associating our observations of other people with representations of our own internal states, motivations, and intentions is hypothesized to be a general mechanism whereby we are able to generate knowledge of other minds (Keysers & Perrett 2004).

...And the knowingly shared conscious experience opens up forms of social learning on which culture can build (Frith & Frith 2007)."

Adolphs, R. 2009. The social brain: neural basis of social knowledge. Annual Review of Psychology
* sentence slightly changed by j.

D-Cycloserine

Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jaciii/2711510473/

"Last night, I went to bed, was having a good sleep for a change. Then in the early morning a storm front passed through and there was a bolt of crackling thunder.
I awoke instantly, frozen in fear. I am right back in Vietnam, in the middle of the monsoon season at my guard post. I am sure I’ll get hit in the next volley and convinced I will die. My hands are freezing, yet sweat pours from my entire body. I feel each hair on the back of my neck standing on end. I can’t catch my breath and my heart is pounding. I smell a damp sulfur smell. Suddenly I see what’s left of my buddy Troy, his head on a bamboo platter, sent back to our camp by the Viet Cong. Propaganda messages are stuffed between his clenched teeth. The next bolt of lightning and clap of thunder makes me jump so much that I fall to the floor. "
Quote and screenshot from: "Facilitation of Extinction of Conditioned Fear by D-Cycloserine"
Davis, M. et al. (2005)




npr on Anxiety Treatment
http://www.npr.org/templates/player/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=112531962&m=112546526



http://www.flickr.com/photos/22761088@N06/2187126603/

Attention

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(ATTENTION = WM x CS x STDC x AFS)

WM = working memory
CS = competitive selection
STDC = sensitivity top-down control
AFS = automatic filtering for saliency

" Many disorders affect attention, but they do so in different ways.
Different manifestations of attention disorders indicate that the components of attention, particularly working memory, competitive selection, and top-down sensitivity control, are differentially affected by disorders. For example, prominent among the symptoms of schizophrenias is the inability to ignore irrelevant or imagined stimuli (Phillips & Silverstein 2003), suggesting a particular problem with mechanisms of competitive selection either within, or for, working memory. In contrast, attention deficit disorder frequently includes an inability to retain information in working memory and/or an inability to maintain attention on a specific task (Biederman & Faraone 2005), suggesting problems with working memory and top-down sensitivity control, respectively. These different components of attention are mediated by different, although potentially overlapping, sets of neural mechanisms. Therefore, the development and selection of optimal therapies for ameliorating such disorders of attention require that we both greatly expand our knowledge of the neural mechanisms that underlie attention and diagnose the symptoms of attention disorders precisely and in the context of this knowledge.
Hopefully the framework for attention presented here will be useful in this regard."


Sources:

• 1.st photo by flickr:com/photos/margaretv/

• Scientific background (the formula and the quote):
  Titel: Fundamental Components of Attention
  Author: Knudsen, Eric I.
  Journal: ANNUAL REVIEW OF NEUROSCIENCE