2010 California Cognitive Science Conference!

The 2010 California Cognitive Science Conference is this Sunday, May 2nd! The CSSA is proud to host George Lakoff of UC Berkeley and James McClelland of Stanford as our keynote speakers; we also are featuring an amazing set of break-out speakers and presenters: Ming Hsu of UC Berkeley discussing Neuroeconomics, Manuel Vargas of the University of San Francisco discussing free will, Antonello Bonci from UC San Francisco discussing the neurobiology of addiction, Amy Orsborn of UC Berkeley discussing brain-mind interfacing, and Bradley Voytek of the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute discussing neuroanatomy and presenting a hands-on demonstration with real brains. We will also be holding "Cognitive Conversations": an interdisciplinary panel on action, volition, and free will with all of our speakers. 

Space is limited, so register now! Light breakfast and lunch is included.

 http://cssa.berkeley.edu/ccsc10

Another "Say What?": Grad School!

Oh man. Graduate school. Eek.

Fear not: ScienceBlogger SciCurious of blog Neurotopia just wrote an advice post on what to look for in graduate schools! This is absolutely priceless insider's info. Although SciCurious seems to be working on the more neurobio side of things (Physiology Ph.D.), and the article talks about biomedical students, the advice is pretty field-neutral so anyone would likely find it useful. It's probably most relevant to CogSci people interested in fields that are mainly lab work, like neuroscience, artificial intelligence, linguistics, and psychology. Also, she explicitly mentions neuroscience programs, so this is almost custom-made for these folks. Definitely worth a look from all CogSci people who may apply to a lab for grad school.

Here's the article link: Ask SciCurious: So you want to be a biomedical grad student...

MadCog

Link to Neurotopia: http://scienceblogs.com/neurotopia/

"Voodoo Correlations in fMRI Studies"...say what?!

The neuroscience blogosphere and science reporting in mainstream media has been abuzz lately over a paper published by Vul, Harris, Winkielman, and Pashler¹, titled "Puzzlingly High Correlations in Studies of Emotion, Personality, and Social Cognition"². A really amazing and clear analysis of the hype/media coverage by ScienceBlogger Neuroskeptic can be found here: "Voodoo Correlations" in fMRI: Whose Voodoo? This makes the paper and the issue really easy to synthesize, and keeps a good grasp on the scientific principles for which research like social cognition and fMRI should always strive. Neuroskeptic even managed to make confusing statistics really clear! I highly recommend reading this one, particularly if you're into fMRI studies at all.

MadCog
¹ You may recognize Vul and Pashler as the authors of "Measuring the Crowd Within", a paper on "the wisdom of crowds": the averaged guess of a group of people is more accurate than the guess of any one person. That's a fun interesting quick one.
² This was called "Voodoo Correlations in fMRI Studies" in the Neuroskeptic article, I'm guessing that must have been an earlier title.

Do I Know You?

Radiolab is one of my favorite things ever.

This is a short clip about a rare disorder called Capgras, in which patients seem to think that their close family members are impostors who look exactly like them. Are the feelings we have for those we love actually essential in recognizing them?? It looks like it is!

[P.S. Professor Ramachandran from UCSD is in this one, and he is great.]

Quicklink: How we avoid running into each other

You know that "dance" that happens when you're walking down a hall and someone is walking directly towards you, and neither of you knows which way to go, so you both try and let each other go but then both go at the same time and repeat for several painfully awkward seconds? Someone's been researching how we avoid that when we walk down the street. How do we avoid crashing into each other? Great article, check it out: http://thequantumlobechronicles.blogspot.com/2010/02/one-day-friend-and-i-were-briskly.html

MadCog

Stroke of Insight

For my fellow CogSci lovers who have never heard of this lady or seen this TED talk, this is one you cannot pass up.

Imagine being a neuroscientist or a neurologist experiencing a stroke--how surreal would that be? Everything you've studied and diagnosed yourself in other people.. all of a sudden it's happening to you.

Well that's what happened to Jill Bolte.

Chay

"No One Knows What The F*** They're Doing -- Or, The 3 Types of Knowledge"

Got a super article that is a repost from Bradley Voytek, the Cal neuroscientist whose research I mentioned in this other blog post. This article brought me back to my freshman year when I thought "Oh my god, I used to think I was pretty smart but everyone here knows so much more than me!", particularly the part of that year when I figured out what Cognitive Science was like, and thought "DAAANG this field is massive, and there's so many smart people, how could I possibly learn everything and become as smart as them?!" Sound familiar? Fear not. Read No one knows what the F*** they're doing.  (if it wasn't evident by the title, this article contains profanity, so don't be offended.) If you've ever beat yourself up for not knowing something, or been intimidated by that person in class who seems to be the fountain of All Relevant Knowledge, or ever tried to eat poisonous berries, this article will help you understand why you feel that way, why that other person thinks they know everything, and puts forward a really useful way of framing knowledge. You should definitely read this if you are planning to learn anything in the next forever (aka that's you). Thinking about this kind of stuff is especially important for scientists, who are often straddling the very edge of knowledge, and even more so for cognitive scientists, 'cuz our field is pretty brand spankin' new and people think up new stuff all the time. Take a read: http://jangosteve.com/post/380926251/no-one-knows-what-theyre-doing

 MadCog