Advertise on podcast: WaterCooler Neuroscience

This episode continues the series from December 2021 by talking with Jeremy Eberle about his experience working in Bethany Teachman's lab.

In this episode, Jordana and Wilf talk about what the research into eye movement says about how people are thinking. Why would we want to study eye movement and how does it compare to other methods?

This episode finalises the series of episodes where Jordana Adler interviews Wilf Nelson on his PhD, the thesis that was produced and the journey he had learned to conduct, design and analyse experiments.

Episode 4 brings you the first of Wilf's episodes that were designed from conception by himself. His work leads him to try to understand how inhibition works when we have multiple competing senses active but now we are going further. This episode explores how the brain uses inhibition when it both knows something is coming up and when it doesn't. Wilf's research lead him away from using EEG and fMRI but instead to using a machine called magnetoencephalography or MEG. Wilf talks about why he had to train with this machine and what new data this brought to his expanding collection of research.

The next episode in the series on Wilf Nelson's PhD thesis is brought to you like season 5 of WaterCooler Neuroscience. In this episode, Wilf talks about this first experiment that just didn't work the way he wanted. Jordana and Wilf talk about their experiences running EEG experiments and tests and what experiments that don't work can tell us in science. In fact, this experiment not working the way it was supposed to be even more interesting because it is the same experiment as chapter 2 but this time is done with an EEG cap instead of an fMRI machine.

In this episode of WaterCooler Neuroscience, we discuss Wilf's first experimental chapter of his thesis. This is when a scientist prepares an experiment and in their dissertation will write a chapter to explain and describe that experiment to other scientists. This experiment is looking at how the brain can decide to inhibit or 'turn off' regions that are competing with what we want to be doing. In reality, the brain can't turn anything off, it is more like putting a state where it is just ticking over but ready to go if it needs to. Wilf talks about his experience of designing the experiment while Jordana Adler is the host and brings her insight from the world of neurofeedback.

This episode is a special one because it is the first part of a five-episode series of WaterCooler Neuroscience on Wilf Nelson's, the host's, PhD. In this episode, Jordana Adler from BTAB is the host and interviewing Wilf on his PhD from starting through to all of the experimental chapters of his thesis. The first episode covers a lot of the questions that scientists get asked when they start their PhD and probes what it means to be trained as a scientist. Listen now to learn about Wilf Nelson going from Wilf Nelson to Wilf Nelson, PhD.

Think Fast is continuing its deep dive into Prof. Teachman’s lab to better understand how multiple different research projects are run at the same time and give you a better look at what a proper academic lab is like. In this episode we are talking about some of the data analysis that goes on behind the scenes looks like. For any lab, the analysis of data is just as important as acquiring it but instead of having a set pipeline up and running data analysis can take many forms. We talk with one of the lab’s researchers to see what their day-to-day looks like and how they turn anonymised data into useable findings.

Over December Jordana and Wilf have been talking about what science fiction and more specifically last episode SOMA can show about modern psychology and neuroscience. In this episode, we wrap up this mini-series and talk about how an organic AI would work. What are the bounds of an AI and how in SOMA do begin to see what a very non-human, very hard to understand AI looks like? On top of this Wilf thinks this is one of the best representations of AI to date.

Think Fast is doing a deep dive into the lab of Professor Bethany Teachman who has been on the show before and we are talking about how her lab studies anxiety. Normally on Think Fast, we will talk about only one research project or one show but labs regularly work on multiple projects at a time once they are established. The next four episodes are going to be an expose on what Prof. Teachman’s lab is doing and how it is really very similar to a large commercial lab in its day-to-day running.

Mind-uploading has been one of the great visions of science ever since the boom of cyberpunk science fiction and with it has been the belief that since 'brains are like computers' (they aren't) that moving our consciousness from our brains to a computer is just a matter of moving some software around. In this episode, Wilf and Jordana continue to talk about science fiction throughout December but this time focusing on a game called SOMA. SOMA is a video game that provides an in-depth discussion into mind uploading and according to the hosts is one of the best representations of where it can go right, and very very wrong.