Archive for the ‘CogNeuro’ Category
The minds of robots
The Sage Center sponsored a talk this afternoon by Daniela Rus entitled “Do Robots Have a Mind?”. Dr. Rus is a Professor at MIT in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) department. She is also a Co-Director of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory Center for Robotics (CSAIL).
Her talk focused mostly [...]
Dissertation: Thesis Online
Most of my dissertation experiments will hopefully have a future in peer-reviewed neuroscience journals. The bad news is that it will take a few years to rewrite each experiment and get it out the door. If you are curious about internal state information processing or want to know more about interoceptive development I [...]
Determinants of Free Decisions
I recently went over “Unconscious determinants of free decisions in the human brain” for a presentation during our weekly lab meeting. The article’s first author is Chun Siong Soon, who is an old friend from time he spent at Dartmouth several years ago. I also saw the senior author, John-Dylan Haynes, present the [...]
Representation of envy?
Aldo Rustichini , Professor of Economics at the University of Minnesota, gave an interesting talk at the Sage Center yesterday titled, simply, “Envy”. He argued that envy is the social equivalent of regret and that each plays a pivotal role in decision making. He defined regret as discovering that an alternate [...]
Dissertation: Defense Video
Have you ever sat there and thought how your life would be much more complete if you could just learn more about interoceptive development? Well my friends, worry no more. By watching this video of my dissertation defense presentation you too can know far more about this amazing topic.
Title: “The Integration of [...]
Dissertation: Defended
It has been a very long road to get to this day, but after five years at Dartmouth College I have successfully defended my dissertation and completed my PhD. [whoa!]
My public talk went rather well despite the anxiety that was welling up inside. I may have stuttered a big more than average, but [...]
Can you see the faces?
I was knee-deep in dissertation drudgery today, making 28 tables of data for the final thesis. Not my idea of a good time. Still, you come across things that lighten your day as you work. For instance, the above axial slice was taken at z=68.5mm of the MNI 0.5mm ICBM-152 template [...]
Twas the night before Christmas
I am aware of how cliché it is to parody this poem. Still, in the wee hours this Christmas morning I was too weak to resist the temptation.
Please to enjoy…
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‘Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house,
Everyone was sleeping, as I left-clicked my mouse.
The data was organized hierarchically with care,
In [...]
Data Collection Complete!
I just wrapped up data collection for my dissertation. It has been a long road, taking 8 months to recruit and scan 80 participants. Scanning was completed in two waves of adults and adolescents across four fMRI experiments. Along the way we also picked up some excellent T1 anatomical images and diffusion [...]
Political Pseudoscience
Marco Iacoboni, Joshua Freedman and Jonas Kaplan recently authored an op-ed piece for the New York Times entitled “This Is Your Brain on Politics”. The authors describe a new study where they put 20 swing voters through an fMRI session designed to reveal their true thoughts and feelings regarding the current field of political [...]