Spit and Twitches: The Animal Cognition Podcast - Episode 2, The Hippocampus and Recognition Memory with Dave Mumby

I have known Dave Mumby for about 22 years now.  We first met at some conference or another when we were both graduate students.  We are now, however, much older....  Over the years we have kept an eye on each others' research and have even threatened to work together some day.  Dave's work has focussed on a number of areas, but he has arguably received the most attention for his work on the role od the hippocampus and other limbic regions in recognition memory.  We of course talked research, and we also had the questions that he did not expect, including the obligitory Ron Wiesman athletic question....  Thanks a lot for sitting down with me Dave.

 Download episode 2.

Cogito, Ergo, Sum, Multitasking?

I appeared yesterday on the great TWiT.tv video podcast Futures in Biotech.  Rather than rant on about it, I thought I would post the video here.  I was cohosting with regular host, Marc Pelletier.  We interviewed neuroscientist Adam Gazzaley.  We talked about Adam's work on the neural basis of distraction and how to train people not to be distracted using video games, it was great stuff.

(I wanted to call the episode 'Cogito, Ergo, Pwn' alas, I had no support...) 

Why Did Steve Jobs' Death Affect Me?

When Steve Jobs died the other day it affected me in an odd way.  I felt sort of empty.  I felt like something was suddenly missing.  I have not felt this way about someone I have not met for a long time.  I remember when john Candy died, and Pierre Trudeau, and Rocket Richard.  I did not know any of them either of course (though I did shake Trudeau's hand when I was 12 while on a class trip to Ottawa, alas that is another story).  

To be sure, this was nothing like losing my Dad to cancer, or my friend Duncan to the same disease.  Those two guys influenced me probably more than any two men in my life.  (When I don't know how to solve a problem at work I think 'WWDD' meaning What Would Dad/Duncan Do?  Oddly, the solutions are almost always the same...)

No this was different.  Why did I care so much about a billionaire?  I mean, I understand Trudeau, hell, when I was a kid, until I was 19, he was the Prime Minister, ok except for that brief Joe Clark thing....  So, he affected me every day, I lived in Trudeau's Canada.  The Rocket, well, I am a Habs fan, and we are big into tradition and history we Habs fans, so, I guess that made sense.  I had heard the stories, I had seen grainy film etc.  But Jobs, I mean why?  He was, by some accounts, a ruthless and arrogant businessman.  Then again, Trudeau was a ruthless politician, and often seen as arrogant.  The Rocket was ruthless on the ice, and also often seen as arrogant.  I remember when Gretzky came in the league, and the Rocket was asked how he would do in the 50s.  His reply was something along the lines of 'He would win the scoring title, if he was on my line'.  Jonathan Mak's excellent tribute logo. 

Was this arrogance though?  Trudeau had an IQ of 180.  The Rocket was, up until the arrival of Lemieux and Grezky, the greatest goal scorer ever.  They KNEW they were great.  Did everything they did in their work turn out?  No.  The National Energy plan was a disaster politically for Trudeau.  Maurice Richard was not the easiest teammate to have.  

Jobs was a visionary.  He guessed what we would like, before we knew we would like it.  He saved Apple when he returned.  He did this by doing stuff other people had done before (mp3 players, phones etc) better than they had.  He was bold enough to use UNIX as basis of OS X.  He, by all accounts, did not use focus groups.  He somehow just knew.  Oh he had his fuckups.  The iPod HiFi, the Cube, Mobile Me (oddly, I sort of like Mobile Me...)

However, he did not let his screwups get in the way.  He moved on.  He came across, to me, as a genius, but as a flawed one.  Not some fatal flaw, just flawed like all of us.  As an academic I have known/know many people with the sort of drive, vision and flaws that Jobs had.  Maybe that is why he resonated with me.  He also made geek cool.  

Strangely, I hated Macs until OS X.  I had no interest in them, when I used them they bothered me, it all seemed clunky.  OS X changed that.  I did not have an mp3 player until the iPod came out.  The first smartphone I bought was an iPhone 3Gs.  His sense of what worked usually worked for me.  Plus, it is way easy to zoom in on a Mac, and that helps me a lot what with the blind thing and all.

As he said in his famous Stanford address: 'stay hungry, stay foolish'.  Maybe that is where Candy fits in....

What the hell does 2+ mean?

Our 10 year old son Jon has autism.  He is quite high functioning, in a regular class with normal kids (yes I said 'normal', I am using that in a statistical sense, if you don't like it, get your own blog) and mostly does the same course work they do.  Indeed, his grades put him somewhere in the middle of the pack on average.  He rocks spelling, and French, he loves reading, and like a lot of kids his age, he is not much on math....  There are other classes of course, including gym and art.  Now I get the utility of art and gym.  They are important.  Physical acticivty and creative stuff are good things, and a well rounded person does these things as well as academic pursuits.  

I may be wrong (as unlikely as that seems....) but I think that part of the point of art is to express emotion.  Now if you know anything about autism you know that emotions are hard for people like Jon.  They have trouble reading them in other people, and expressing them.  Jon wants to understand emotion in others, he often asks 'what feeling do you have?' when he does not know (which, by the way, is VERY cool).  

Well, the kids had an art assignment, and it seems it was to make posters for being good people.  You know, that sort of touchy feely fuzzy stuff they do to encourage good behaviour.  Jon did a poster of two people holding hands and wrote over top of it 'Be a friend'.  When I saw it it brought tears to my eyes.  He was expressing emotion with a drawing, not just drawing plane crashes or writing up reports on plane crashes (Jon like plane crashes.....).  My poor quality photo of Jon's drawing. Drawing (c) Jon Brodbeck, 2011

So I was very proud of this work.  Hell I still am.  I then turned it over and saw a grade on it.  He got a '2+'.  I asked Jon what the heck that meant and he explained that things are graded out of 4.  (He got a 4+ on a spelling test yesterday, and that was perfect, so you get the idea).  So, apparently, according to Jon's art teacher, his work is barely a pass.  OK, look I know the kid is no Ken Danby (thought I would throw a Sault Ste. Marie reference in there) but it frankly is no worse than what I would have done at that age.  (Honestly).  Plus, it seems to me that he worked within the parameters of the assignment, he successfully is promoting being a good person.  Finally, HE IS A PERSON WIHT AUTISM WHO JUST EXPRESSED EMOTION THROUGH ART.  (I was shouting there, if you are wondering, oh and I left the word 'FUCKING' out...)  

I know this is not a big deal for him, I asked, he couldn't care less.  But, this is to me.  I wonder, what was the objective criterion used to grade his work (or the other kids in his class?)  So this is just barely a pass is it?  For a kid that has trouble expressing and even UNDERSTANDING emotion.  Seems to me this is a 4 at least.  

Now please, I am not saying that in say spelling or math or French or whatever that he should be given some special consideration if he is in the regular program.  He should be graded like everyone else (and he is).  But, in this case, let's be impressed shall we?  He did something that was harder for him than it would be for anyone else in the damned school.  

We have expressed our concerns and I am confident all will be well.  I can also tell you that I am now using this picture as my desktop and we are framing this picture, 2+ be damned.

I Don't Live In My Basement With My Mom....

You hear a lot of crap out there about how people that spend a lot of time online are, by definition, anti social and somehow addicted to the internet.  I spend a lot of time online, I like twitter, facebook, G+ etc.  I listen to a number of podcasts, and produce a few as well.  I play online games on xBox Live and the PSN.  I comment on blogs now and then, and even have this blog here where I apparently think you want to listen to my rants...

I am, however, also plugged in to my family, my job and all of that other normal stuff.  

My online life is no different than my offline one.  Indeed, I find it hard to separate them in my mind.  I use the 'net for work a great deal and for play.  Ken, Me, the Dude and Tom at PAB 2010, photo credit Bob Goyetche

I get really pissed off when I hear people say 'you should get out more' or 'this is anti social'.  That is pure bullshit.  I have met people through online interactions that are real friends of mine.  I now consider people that I have met through this medium to be friends.  I mean real actual friends, not just people I know.  Indeed, I feel more oh, let's go with kinship, with people like Bob, Mark, the Dude and Tom than I do with many people that I see every day (I typically see these guys once a year for 2.5 days, and for all I know, they can't stand me....)  

These are people I never would have met without the internet.  OK, maybe with some weird sort of pen pal thing like we used to do in school when I was little, but that seems unlikely...

A couple of months back a person I know only through their username on wikipedia announced on his talk page that he was ill.  This was pretty shocking.  Many people on there announced their hopes for him, some even said they would pray (which was a joke of sorts, as he is an atheist).  He came back on a few weeks, perhaps oh 2 months, later and announced he was in ICU, but doing ok.  I was really happy with this.  I have never met this person, I have no idea what his actual name is, but I cared enough that it made me damned happy to see an update.  Is that anti social?  

Oh and for the record, I sort of do live in my basement, as that is where the family room is and where my beer fridge lives....