Academia Ghetto Thread

[Cain]

Hah, nice of them to narrow it down for you.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Hah, nice of them to narrow it down for you.

Right?

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

So today while I was at the Primate Center, I was talking to one of the other students about my interview tomorrow and a dude in the class turns around and says "You'll get it. I work there and you'll get it" and then proceeds to tell me that it's impossible to volunteer there because the summer is filled up with highly competitive internship spots.

So now I'm really, really confused.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Interview has happened. "Your research interests are a perfect match", the good doctor said, after listening to me with a perfectly straight face while I explained that I am obsessed with Bad Ideas.

I start training ASAP. He wants me to apply for summer funding.

I mayyyy possibly have just found the lab I will do my graduate work in.

[Vanadium Gryllz]

Interview has happened. "Your research interests are a perfect match", the good doctor said, after listening to me with a perfectly straight face while I explained that I am obsessed with Bad Ideas.

What are your research interests?

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Interview has happened. "Your research interests are a perfect match", the good doctor said, after listening to me with a perfectly straight face while I explained that I am obsessed with Bad Ideas.

What are your research interests?

I just said them! Mostly bad ideas.

I'm also interested in ADHD and autism, as well as neurodegenerative diseases.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I'm going to be working on a research study on decision-making in the teenage brain.

Muahahaha.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Oh and BEST THING! I can probably parlay some of my work in the lab into a senior thesis. If not the lab, then surely I can shoehorn something about my Peru trip and sustainability into some sort of thesis project.

On a non-neuroscience note, I'm really interested in the urban relationship with wildlife, and particularly predators. As wild animals move back into regions they had previously been driven out of, ie. cities, humans will have to come up with an approach to cope with them. This approach is unlikely to take the form of "trap and shoot", as it has in the past; for the most part, we've moved beyond that and are more likely to take a conservationist, sustainable approach to cohabiting with wildlife.

So then, my question becomes, what does that approach look like? I'm not a wildlife biologist, but I will probably take a wildlife management class to try to get some insight into this problem. I'm starting to get some ideas, which started with an essay I wrote a year ago for my Honors College application, about wildness in the city.

I'd be really happy if my senior thesis was something that could be presented to the Urban Planning folks as a viable pathway for guiding city interaction with our nearby wilderness.

[Vanadium Gryllz]

I just said them! Mostly bad ideas.

I'm also interested in ADHD and autism, as well as neurodegenerative diseases.

Ah I just clicked through the last couple of pages and there it was!

I think there is an interesting differentiation between bad ideas and Bad Ideas. Anyone can have the former while the latter ones are those that really shake things up. 

Tangentially related: a good friend of mine developed ataxia in his teens which sounds like a very unpleasant disease. I would be interested to hear if it's something you've come across in your studies.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I just said them! Mostly bad ideas.

I'm also interested in ADHD and autism, as well as neurodegenerative diseases.

Ah I just clicked through the last couple of pages and there it was!

I think there is an interesting differentiation between bad ideas and Bad Ideas. Anyone can have the former while the latter ones are those that really shake things up. 

Tangentially related: a good friend of mine developed ataxia in his teens which sounds like a very unpleasant disease. I would be interested to hear if it's something you've come across in your studies.

Ataxia was covered in Neurophysiology I, but I can't say we spent much time with it and I haven't looked into it on my own. Any particular questions about it? I can always look it up.

[Reginald Ret]

Oh and BEST THING! I can probably parlay some of my work in the lab into a senior thesis. If not the lab, then surely I can shoehorn something about my Peru trip and sustainability into some sort of thesis project.

On a non-neuroscience note, I'm really interested in the urban relationship with wildlife, and particularly predators. As wild animals move back into regions they had previously been driven out of, ie. cities, humans will have to come up with an approach to cope with them. This approach is unlikely to take the form of "trap and shoot", as it has in the past; for the most part, we've moved beyond that and are more likely to take a conservationist, sustainable approach to cohabiting with wildlife.

So then, my question becomes, what does that approach look like? I'm not a wildlife biologist, but I will probably take a wildlife management class to try to get some insight into this problem. I'm starting to get some ideas, which started with an essay I wrote a year ago for my Honors College application, about wildness in the city.

I'd be really happy if my senior thesis was something that could be presented to the Urban Planning folks as a viable pathway for guiding city interaction with our nearby wilderness.

That sounds fascinating!

I think wildness management in cities would for a large part be crowd psychology. Your knowledge of neuroscience may be tangentially useful there. Your proven insight in human behaviour will certainly be of use.

Good luck!

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Oh and BEST THING! I can probably parlay some of my work in the lab into a senior thesis. If not the lab, then surely I can shoehorn something about my Peru trip and sustainability into some sort of thesis project.

On a non-neuroscience note, I'm really interested in the urban relationship with wildlife, and particularly predators. As wild animals move back into regions they had previously been driven out of, ie. cities, humans will have to come up with an approach to cope with them. This approach is unlikely to take the form of "trap and shoot", as it has in the past; for the most part, we've moved beyond that and are more likely to take a conservationist, sustainable approach to cohabiting with wildlife.

So then, my question becomes, what does that approach look like? I'm not a wildlife biologist, but I will probably take a wildlife management class to try to get some insight into this problem. I'm starting to get some ideas, which started with an essay I wrote a year ago for my Honors College application, about wildness in the city.

I'd be really happy if my senior thesis was something that could be presented to the Urban Planning folks as a viable pathway for guiding city interaction with our nearby wilderness.

That sounds fascinating!

I think wildness management in cities would for a large part be crowd psychology. Your knowledge of neuroscience may be tangentially useful there. Your proven insight in human behaviour will certainly be of use.

Good luck!

Thanks!

I was thinking more along the lines of wildlife corridors, greenspaces, nesting/denning habitat, and "So hey, what are these coyotes going to eat, anyway?"

The thing is, they're already here, so we have a few basic choices: trap and remove them (expensive, potentially dangerous, temporary fix, they come back), kill them (runs contrary to the conservation/sustainability direction society is moving in) or figure out how to accommodate them.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I need to stop procrastinating studying for tomorrow's midterms.

Since I have seemingly endless capacity to sit on the internet and look shit up for purposes of posting here, I decided that I would make a list of things I need to memorize certain details of for tomorrow, and then I will look the things up and list the details that I need to memorize, annoyingly responding to my own post like a neurotic wanker.

Here we go:

Memory formation
Dyscalculia
Phantom limbs
Blindsight
Balint's syndrome
Kluver Bucy syndrome
Charles Bonnet syndrome
Hemispatial neglect
Anosognosia
Capgras syndrome
Temporal Lobe Epilepsy
Savant Syndrome
Pain asymbolia
Pseudocyesis

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I need to stop procrastinating studying for tomorrow's midterms.

Since I have seemingly endless capacity to sit on the internet and look shit up for purposes of posting here, I decided that I would make a list of things I need to memorize certain details of for tomorrow, and then I will look the things up and list the details that I need to memorize, annoyingly responding to my own post like a neurotic wanker.

Here we go:

Memory formation - Hippocampus

Dyscalculia - Damage to left angular gyrus

Phantom limbs - Interaction between postcentral (sensory) gyrus and precentral (motor) gyrus, visual/motor feedback loop, body map invasion

Blindsight - Damage to V1(Striate cortex) or optic nerve after branching to superior colliculi

Balint's syndrome - Single-object fixedness; bilateral damage to parietal lobes

Kluver Bucy syndrome - disinhibition, anterograde & retrograde amnesia, loss of object recognition, hypersexuality, hyperorality; complete bilateral destruction of temporal lobes

Charles Bonnet syndrome - Complex visual hallucinations in scotomas or cases of full-field blindness; multiple causes including macular degeneration, nerve damage.

Hemispatial neglect (Unilateral neglect) - Usually of the left side, caused by damage to contralateral parietal lobe

Anosognosia - Damage to (usually) right parietal or diffuse lesions on the fronto-temporal-parietal area in the right hemisphere

Capgras syndrome - Damage to amygdala

Temporal Lobe Epilepsy - electrical misfirings originating in limbic system, esp. hippocampi, & spreading to temporal lobes. Left medial temporal lobe seizures most typical

Savant Syndrome - Left angular gyrus - association area - is found to be larger in some savants

Pain asymbolia - Damage to the insular cortex, severing connections to the cingulate gyrus/limbic system

Pseudocyesis - Changes in endocrine system

[Cain]

So, my latest essay is going to upset people.

Because its to do with Nazis.  And Jews.  And Communists.  Basically, the question is the very trollish and devious "could opposition to the Nazis be called terrorist", or something to that effect.

As it turns out, yes some of it can.  I especially think the Belarussian Soviet Partisans, who executed schoolteachers and minor government officials for the crime of "collaboration", certainly qualify (and likely represented an attempt by the Soviet Union to wipe out any sectors of educated, middle class resistance for when they fully assumed control of those regions again). 

But the other major groups who could be considered terroristic in nature would be...well, the right wing Zionist groups in Poland.  The way in which they took over the Warsaw Ghetto, almost overnight, killing Jewish collaborators and police officers, ghetto administrative officials and Nazi officers reads like a classic tale of urban guerrilla warfare from South America.

And, of course, that is going to upset people.  Because even though, by a certain standard these groups were pretty nasty, they were fighting the Nazis.  Who, you know, were trying to kill them all.

So I can see this paper coming back to bite me in the arse.