Brainhack Global 18 in Finland has just started with prof. Em Riitta Hari @aivoAALTO talking about the unsolved questions in neuroscience #bhg18#bhg18fi
"how good are your data?" often theory comes before data (e.g. physics) and many labs do same experiment and results are combined #bhg18#bhg18fi
"animal models, are we using the best species out of 8M species in the planet?" #bhg18#bhg18fi
"Standard lab animal models were chosen because they were easy to breed" Yartsev science 2007
Because of our priors we are subject to (visual) illusions, mechanics are imprinted in our brains. #bhg18#bhg18fi
"The brain is never isolated brain <-> environment <-> other's brains" #bhg18#bhg18fi
"Connections in the brain are reciprocal between areas and levels and almost always bidirectional" #bhg18#bhg18fi
RH "inhibition is essential" "amongst the greatest inventions in evolution" #bhg18#bhg18fi
RH "we are good at aiming at something (motor action); selecting the proper motor action requires control" (as in feedback/feedforward I add)
(side note, check the stream @aivoAALTO 's toe writing skill is actually quite good!)
"Body and behaviour: only in fairytails the mind is independent from the body" (The Smiths: "does the body rule the mind or does the mind rule the body? I don't know") [that was my personal addition]
RH: "Complexity vs simplexity" people always say "the brain is the most complex devise in the world" "there are extremely complicated things, not just the brain" #bhg18#bhg18fi
"To cope with environmental complexity, human and animal brains rely on simplifying principles that allow adaptive behaviour" Alain Berthoz Simplexity #bhg18#bhg18fi
This is important. Yes, re-identification of de-identified brain MRIs is possible, but it is considered to be a crime under GDPR, implemented as “data protection” laws in EU (each country made their own laws and legal consequences).
Pseudo-anonymisation assumes that it is “highly unlikely” to re-identify the data. This means that for those cases in which it becomes trivial to reidentify a subject (eg rare case study subject), special care is needed and it should be the ethical committee with the researcher..
...to decide on benefit for science/society vs potential harm to the individual. Also: I believe that sensitive data can still be shared on a per request basis as done by human connectome project or ADNI, but legislators have still to finish their job as these relate...
In this study we run three web experiment asking how we perceive 100 common feelings by assessing them i) over 5 dimensional scales, ii) similarity between them iii) how they map on the body and iv) collected similar terms from @neurosynth 2/7
Results showed 5 robust clusters with DBSCAN and visualization with tSNE gave clear components related to emotional valence as well as mental saliency. 3/7
As somebody pointed out already, pyramid schemes are everywhere outside academia. I’d love to work as a (data) scientist for a non-profit NGO, but as soon as profits are involved I start to question the ethic of my work. 1/n
Academia is still one of the most ethical options (if done with integrity and transparency) as I feel I am putting my skills for the benefit of society, even if basic scientific research cannot be directly translated into applications. 2/n
In my opinion the issue is that the system supports only the rockstar PI culture: there are basically no permanent positions for staff scientists. You can only become a PI/professor or leave. 3/n
I’m a Matlab “guru” (or so they say) since 1999, but I’ve decided to switch to Python as the future for me can only be there. Here’s a nice book to do the switch enthought.com/white-paper-ma… 1/n
Don’t get me wrong, I love Matlab. I’ve done anything with Matlab from signal processing toolboxes to art installations (!). 2/n
I’ve made music with Matlab and beautiful scientific pictures. But I feel like a scientist from 100 years ago who was publishing articles in German (or French or Italian). All languages are beautiful and can be used to express anything... 3/n
Excellent educative talk based on measures from structural MRI and their correlations with for example age. See ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27103141
Chris @cMadan is now talking about fractal dimensionality: a measure how complex a structure is (a sphere has low fractal dim.) which also correlates with age.