That was last month

Thanksgiving is in October! Why can't Americans understand this and stop wishing me "Happy Thanksgiving" in November?

They could wish me a happy Grey Cup weekend instead. Go Blue Bombers!

Getting to the bottom of things

Today's Ph.D. comic captures something that's not fashionable for practicing scientists to talk about, in this age of restricted and competitive funding. Any comment by me might spoil the punchline, so just check it out.

The Zen of Presentations, Part 11: The Chinese Run-Through

Want to test that you really know your talk?
This is a trick I learned from actors, where it is often called a Chinese run-though. Or Italian run-through. Or [Insert name of language other than the one you speak] run-through. It's typically one of the last stages of rehearsal.

Do the entire talk out loud as fast as you possibly can.

You should sound like one of those frantic radio ads for demolition derby Sunday or the old FedEx ad.

It becomes incredibly obvious where you don't know your stuff, where the transitions are weak. And talking as fast as you can really gets your energy levels up. So do the Chinese run through it as near to the actual presentation as you actually can.

The embarrasment of networking riches

I've spent the last couple of days adding in sharing / social networking / bookmarking tools to this blog. I don't think the process is complete. Compare the list of option currently added on the "Share and subscribe" list (about 9) to the little patchwork quilt of sharing icons that I found on another website (pictured).

While any one of these may be all someone needs as a reader, it's very frustrating as a writer. You want to provide useful tools, but there are so many competing services that it's very hard to stay on top of them all.

A new blog in town

My latest venture is to launch Marmorkrebs.org, and an associated Marmorkrebs blog. The reason why should be fairly obvious: it’s a new animal I’m gearing up to work with, and I’m excited about it and want to evangelize it.

They are more technical websites and blogs than this one, which is meant to be loosey-goosey. (And I like it that way!) So if there’s nothing of note over there, you can click on the picture here and try to count the baby crayfish.

A new icon in town

If you look back through some of my old posts, you may start seeing something new. You may see a little icon with a paper and a check mark, and it says, "Blogging on Peer Reviewed Research." The icon and the idea behind it can be traced back to BPR3 – itself a blog, naturally.

Although reviewing papers isn't the main thrust of this particular blog, it does crop up occasionally (and maybe more often now that I have a cool icon to use). Some recent examples include the "Classic graphics" entries I've been writing. Perhaps a little different than the majority of blog posts that cover recent papers, but they're still peer reviewed. Those are the first I've tagged with the new icon.

We think you're clumsy

They've stuck these signs up around my campus at various places. At first, I thought it was just near some of the places they're doing construction, but no, it's all around.

That's right, we cannot be trust to walk safely without warnings. I'm sure there's a pithy comment about standing on your own two feet in there somewhere.

It's absolutely emblematic of the mania for safety that has gripped our current society. Everyone must be safe. Everyone must be appraised of every possible risk, so that nobody is culpable if you get hurt.

I'm surprised they don't have these next to every stairwell.

11/11

Classic graphics #4: Cortical wiring

In the last installment of this series, I talked about cortex. And here we are again at the cortex.

I got the idea for looking at this graphic from the recent Neuroscience meeting, where I saw this diagram in at least two of the featured late afternoon talks. So I reckoned that qualified it as a classic. Of course, it probably didn't hurt that one of the authors of the paper that featured this diagram was the current president of the Society, David Van Essen. I was able to track it down, and it's freely available online in the original paper (it's figure 4, on page 30).

It also didn't hurt the fame of this diagram that it was printed in the very first article of a brand new journal, I imagine.

And I'm pretty sure I saw this picture prominently featured in a commentary by Nobel laureate and DNA structure describer Francis Crick in Nature. He used it as an example of something we know in monkey, but we should know in humans. We discussed the Crick paper when I was a grad student at our weekly "neurolunch" seminar. (Checking this now, it was Crick and Jones, actually.)

This figure shows the wiring diagram of the part of the brain responsible for visual processing in macaques -- which, because primates are visual animals, and because it's easy to control visual stimuli, is one of the best understood regions of the brain. 32 areas, 10 hierarchical, levels, and 187 linkages, most two-way between connected areas.

I should say, though, that the original was published in colour, based on comments in the text. That the PDF online now is in black and white is probably an oversight.

This diagram is clearly not famous because of its elegance. It's very hard to interpret and looks like the electrical wiring from the Chilton's manual of the car you hope you never own. Heck, even the authors write, "The sheer complexity of Figure 4 makes it difficult in many places to trace the lines representing specific pathways." (They go on to describe a computer representation that allows you to highlight specific connections. Sadly, that diagram does not appear to have made its way online, though I haven't looked hard).

But then, that's the point. It's considered a classic, not despite its complexity and difficulty in interpretation, but because of it. It emphasizes the tremendous complexity of the cortex and how different areas are connected to others.

And make no mistake: this diagram certainly represents a nearly heroic compilation of experimental results. And perhaps that admirable feature has helped people view it favourably over time.

Looking at the text, though, I'm struck by the several qualifiers, provisions, caveats, and tentative interpretations about the information that went into making this figure. The diagram, in a way, is often shown as factual, but is in fact somewhat hypothetical. Something which is not often mentioned when this picture is shown. It's possible, I suppose, that all the hypothesis have been shown correct in the following 16 years of research -- though I doubt that.

Next in this series, I will probably be looking at some graphics by Jerison on brain size.

References

Felleman DJ, Van Essen DC. 1991. Distributed hierarchical processing in the primate cerebral cortex. Cerebral Cortex 1: 1-47.
http://cercor.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/1/1/1-a

Crick F, Jones E. 1993. Backwardness of human neuroanatomy. Nature 361: 109-110. http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/361109a0

Late SfN pics 2007

When was the last time you saw an ad directed specifically at scientists in an airport? Science journals, sure. Science websites, sure. Airports?

The view from my far too nice hotel room, overlooking the San Diego convention center.

The main, overwhelming fact about the Society for Neuroscience meeting is that it is big. You can't really grasp the vast number of people in a single picture, but some give you hints.

And more people...

I was listening to the Nature podcast for 1 November, and they estimated 25,000 attendees. A substantial underestimate of the actual attendance of 31,000 plus.

A featured lecture; Jeff Hawkins prepares to give a talk. It's pretty rare that to need a big screen at a scientific conference to determine that the speaker does, in fact, have a face.

Again, an attempt to convey the airplane hanger-like size of the poster sessions / vendors area.

Note that the exhibitors row numbers (top) here is in the low hundreds; the other end is up in the thousands.

Finding lunch can be a challenge. Especially if you make the mistake of going to the world's slowest Subway... :(

And of course, there's the enticement to attend next year.

The flight home

Has been made much more pleasant because I had the good fortune to be seated in the first row behind first class. Extra leg room - yes!

Also got seated next to a very nice neuroscientist from Baylor University who works on development of the cortex in mice. Whisker barrels, in particular. Had a very nice talk to her.

And we even got some food, which is an unpredictable rarity these days on planes. Not getting food on the plane would not be such a problem if airport restaurants stayed open longer. Flights come in from around the world, at odd times, with people coming from different time zones... but the restaurants close at 9 or so. C'mon -- if Wendy's drive through can stay open late or even 24 hours on some odd highway somewhere, why not in an airport? I'm just saying.

How connected are we?

There are two people on the shuttle back to the airport: myself and another neuroscientist. I mentioned I had been at J.B Johnston Club. She asked if Joe Ayers was a participant.

Two people out of 31,000. 1 degree of separation.

Joe Ayers was the external examiner on my Ph.D. defense.

SfN, last day

Insanity: Doing the same thing and expecting different results.

It pays to be insane, I guess, sometimes, since I kept trying to get wireless in the convention center for days before it worked. And I seem to have finally found one -- and seemingly only one -- room where it works with my Pocket PC. Strange.

FUN social last night was packed. Very much busier than previous years, I hear.

Last morning for me here, partly spent revisiting the world of cricket hearing. I have an afternoon flight back, and will be home late tonight.

SfN, Monday

Good thing there weren't many posters I wanted to see this afternoon - not much chance to see after the symposium.

Celebrity spotted: Daniel Dennett (author of Breaking the Spell and philosopher of science), seen near the lectern after the evolution symposium. He's taller than I expected!

Speaking of evolution, the FUN committee meeting on evolution was good. Went perhaps a little long, because the topics lend themselves to wide ranging conversation and it can be tricky to stay task oriented. If you're in San Diego, the --

31,731 (attendance value just announced)

Dussini Mediterranean Bistro is worth visiting just for the menus alone. Heavy, metal bound, coppery-looking things in a trapezoid shape.

Wireless!

The SfN wireless is finally working!

The Evolution of Nervous Systems symposium is FULL.

31,300 and change

That's the attendance total for Society for Neuroscience.

Lots of cool posters today. Crayfish sleep, katydid attention, and found some good stuff in the vendors.

Problem remains finding lunch and dinner company. Because you really feel like such a loser to be eating alone at a meeting over over 31,000 people.

SfN, Days 1 & 2

So the hotel wants $$$ for wireless, and the free wireless at the convention center isn't working for me, for some unknown reason.

Cool posters from yesterday: nociception in fruit flies helps them escape parisitoid flies, and a cool neuron in the STG with multiple spike initiation zones.

Not cool: featured lecture in the evening with barely legible slides in a huge hall with a speaker who rarely looked at his audience. Cool topic spoiled by not tailoring the talk to the huge venue.

Today the vendors open up.

SfN, Day X

Yep, it's reaching the point where it's all a big blur.

And why is even freaking Starbucks wanting people to pay for wireless?

On today's agenda:

FUN evolution committee lunch meeting.

Paul Katz's evolution of nervous systems symposium. Which is the main reason I'm still at this meeting.

SfN, Pre-day 1

I'm in the San Diego conference center, sitting on the hallway floor, after finally getting wireless to work. First lecture in 75 minutes.

JB Johnston Club meeting was good. The talk went well on many fronts. I had some good discussions with some cool new people I hadn't met before (Hi Kara! Hi Sarah!).

I am completely kicking myself now, though, over a purchase several months back. My PDA has two expansion slots -- one for a Compact Flash (CF) car, and one for an SD card, both of which are also used in digital cameras. I could just take pictures with the camera then swap them over to my PDA directly to email and such. But no... I had to go and buy a Sony with its silly memory stick.

Neuroscience food

Things I like about SfN meetings in San Diego:

CineCafe, across from the convention center, is the only place I've found in North America that keeps Violet Crumble in stock. (An Australian chocolate bar.)

The conference center sells these soft pretzels, and the cinnamon one is very nice.