she dreamed of academic freedom

★ research psychology + neuro + socio ★ researching the systems of human nature and the nature of human systems. ★ my interests; suicide science, nociception, structural and functional connectivity, social cognition, information processing, behavioural change, schema development, affective-cognition, policy, and harm reduction★

[dreamsofacademicfreedom]

ꪶ -˙*ᓚᘏᗢ. . ♡🍮 ˚◞🧷 ｡✦

This is a blog for me to talk about my research +; science, social justice, and academia.

︵‿୨♡୧‿︵‿︵‿୨♡୧‿︵‿︵‿୨♡୧‿︵

My main is @comingtoyoursenses

[nikasholistic]

Perceive yourself as a successful person. Perceive yourself as a lovable person. Perceive yourself as the person who’s worthy of all the best in life.

[cryptotheism]

"You think you're informed just because you read a bunch of grainy PDFs?"

Yeah man. Reading scholarly works on a topic informs you on that topic. That's how this works.

[dreamsofacademicfreedom]

⋆. 𐙚 ˚ Social Justice & The Future Of Psychology

Janet E. Helms, "Presently, psychologists’ research, teaching and professional practice vacillate between defining the political constructs of races as makeshift theoretical concepts, contextual factors or nuisance variables, while virtually ignoring the psychological effects of internalized racism on perpetrators and survivors. Racial identity theories instead use diagnoses of the different manifestations of internalized racism to develop and apply psychological interventions to overcome the afflictions of race and racism. Ideally, in the future, racial identity theories will become extinct because racism will no longer exist. But realistically, the question that still needs to be answered is how to encourage psychologists to use racial identity theories to understand and improve human behavior."

Thomas A. Parham, "Given our positions as caretakers of the mind, heart and spirit of the people, psychologists must challenge ourselves—like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. did when he spoke before us at the 1967 APA Annual Convention—to tell America about both the rage and hurt that simmer below the surface in black and other communities of color and to help much of white America confront and challenge the denial it seems to live in about what life is like for their culturally different counterparts who live on the margins of society. One place to start is to help America brave the question of: What allows each of you (us) to bear witness to the suffering of others, sit in silence and still maintain our humanity? Is that what integrity looks like?"

Lillian Comas-Díaz, "To enhance inclusion, psychologists will expand the diversity construct by including every group that has been perceived as 'the other.' Moreover, psychologists are required to engage in social justice advocacy"

Douglas Haldeman, "[...] psychology needs to address the issues associated with the intersection of sexual orientation, gender identity, race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status, ability status, age and who we in the LGBT communities are to each other and the mainstream world. This requires an examination of power and privilege, and how we use our influence—and our unity— to advocate for the issues that are important to all persons of diverse identity. What psychology can offer to unite us as allies will be paramount in these times of unprecedented social polarization."

Richard Lee, "How do we move beyond current narratives, theories and methods that are culturally bounded by white/ European epistemologies to answer questions that affect the majority of the world’s population that is not white? We need new ways to understand and study health disparities, transnational migrations, intergroup conflicts, and the successful adaptation and accommodations of groups of people who are subordinated, underrepresented and underserved."

Melba J.T Vasquez, "How can we empower and inspire psychologists to recognize, incorporate and utilize their knowledge and skills to promote various strategies at multiple levels to make a difference, particularly in intractable problems such as poverty, immigration, insidious bias and addiction? In today’s climate of increased oppression and antagonism, psychologists can elevate their voices for systemic change. Through the integration of science, practice and education, we have the potential to promote constructive changes to improve the immense challenges in society."

[goldcoasthoney]

by jamesclear

[cottoncandylesbo]

his scholarly nature is quite admirable

[compneuropapers]

Interesting Papers for Week 49, 2024

Psychometrics in experimental psychology: A case for calibration. Bach, D. R. (2024). Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 31(4), 1461–1470.

Cellular and circuit architecture of the lateral septum for reward processing. Chen, G., Lai, S., Jiang, S., Li, F., Sun, K., Wu, X., … Zhu, Y. (2024). Neuron, 112(16), 2783-2798.e9.

Prediction-error signals in anterior cingulate cortex drive task-switching. Cole, N., Harvey, M., Myers-Joseph, D., Gilra, A., & Khan, A. G. (2024). Nature Communications, 15, 7088.

An essential role for the latero-medial secondary visual cortex in the acquisition and retention of visual perceptual learning in mice. Consorti, A., Sansevero, G., Di Marco, I., Floridia, S., Novelli, E., Berardi, N., & Sale, A. (2024). Nature Communications, 15, 7322.

Abstract representations emerge in human hippocampal neurons during inference. Courellis, H. S., Minxha, J., Cardenas, A. R., Kimmel, D. L., Reed, C. M., Valiante, T. A., … Rutishauser, U. (2024). Nature, 632(8026), 841–849.

Dopamine biases decisions by limiting temporal integration. Gautham, A. K., Miner, L. E., Franco, M. N., Thornquist, S. C., & Crickmore, M. A. (2024). Nature, 632(8026), 850–857.

Slow ramping emerges from spontaneous fluctuations in spiking neural networks. Gavenas, J., Rutishauser, U., Schurger, A., & Maoz, U. (2024). Nature Communications, 15, 7285.

Task-specific invariant representation in auditory cortex. Heller, C. R., Hamersky, G. R., & David, S. V. (2024). eLife, 12, e89936.3.

Replay-triggered brain-wide activation in humans. Huang, Q., Xiao, Z., Yu, Q., Luo, Y., Xu, J., Qu, Y., … Liu, Y. (2024). Nature Communications, 15, 7185.

Temporal resolution relates to sensory hyperreactivity independently of stimulus detection sensitivity in individuals with autism spectrum disorder. Kaneko, A., Atsumi, T., & Ide, M. (2024). Perception, 53(9), 585–596.

Partial blindness: Visual experience is not rich, but not sparse. Kim, C., & Chong, S. C. (2024). Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 31(4), 1558–1569.

Amygdala and Cortex Relationships during Learning of a Sensory Discrimination Task. Levitan, D., & Gilad, A. (2024). Journal of Neuroscience, 44(34), e0125242024.

Slow-wave sleep drives sleep-dependent renormalization of synaptic AMPA receptor levels in the hypothalamus. Liu, J., Niethard, N., Lun, Y., Dimitrov, S., Ehrlich, I., Born, J., & Hallschmid, M. (2024). PLOS Biology, 22(8), e3002768.

How aging shapes our sense of agency. Mariano, M., Kuster, N., Tartufoli, M., & Zapparoli, L. (2024). Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 31(4), 1714–1722.

Individual thalamic inhibitory interneurons are functionally specialized toward distinct visual features. Müllner, F. E., & Roska, B. (2024). Neuron, 112(16), 2765-2782.e9.

Predictions enable top-down pattern separation in the macaque face-processing hierarchy. Nigam, T., & Schwiedrzik, C. M. (2024). Nature Communications, 15, 7196.

Signatures of hierarchical temporal processing in the mouse visual system. Rudelt, L., González Marx, D., Spitzner, F. P., Cramer, B., Zierenberg, J., & Priesemann, V. (2024). PLOS Computational Biology, 20(8), e1012355.

Dopamine Release in the Nucleus Accumbens Core Encodes the General Excitatory Components of Learning. Taira, M., Millard, S. J., Verghese, A., DiFazio, L. E., Hoang, I. B., Jia, R., … Sharpe, M. J. (2024). Journal of Neuroscience, 44(35), e0120242024.

Non-invasive stimulation of the human striatum disrupts reinforcement learning of motor skills. Vassiliadis, P., Beanato, E., Popa, T., Windel, F., Morishita, T., Neufeld, E., … Hummel, F. C. (2024). Nature Human Behaviour, 8(8), 1581–1598.

Short-latency preference for faces in primate superior colliculus depends on visual cortex. Yu, G., Katz, L. N., Quaia, C., Messinger, A., & Krauzlis, R. J. (2024). Neuron, 112(16), 2814-2822.e4.

[theambitiouswoman]

Stick to the plan not your mood. Your mind has to be stronger than your feelings. It’s okay to have odd days, but don’t let those odd days become a routine. Winning your mind is the most important part of the process.

[reasonsforhope]

A green roof or rooftop solar? You can combine them in a biosolar roof — boosting both biodiversity and power output

Growing city populations and limited space are driving the adoption of green roofs and green walls covered with living plants. As well as bo

"As solar panels heat up beyond 25°C, their efficiency decreases markedly. Green roofs moderate rooftop temperatures. So we wanted to find out: could green roofs help with the problem of heat reducing the output of solar panels?

Our research compared a “biosolar” green roof — one that combines a solar system with a green roof — and a comparable conventional roof with an equivalent solar system. We measured the impacts on biodiversity and solar output, as well as how the plants coped with having panels installed above them.

The green roof supported much more biodiversity, as one might expect. By reducing average maximum temperatures by about 8°C, it increased solar generation by as much as 107% during peak periods. And while some plant species outperformed others, the vegetation flourished.

These results show we don’t have to choose between a green roof or a solar roof: we can combine the two and reap double the rewards...

How did the panels affect the plants?

In the open areas, we observed minimal changes in the vegetation cover over the study period compared to the initial planted community.

Plant growth was fastest and healthiest in the areas immediately around the solar panels. Several species doubled in coverage. We selected fast-growing vegetation for this section to achieve full coverage of the green roof beds as soon as possible.

The vegetation changed the most in the areas directly below and surrounding the solar panels. The Baby Sun Rose, Aptenia cordifolia, emerged as the dominant plant. It occupied most of the space beneath and surrounding the solar panels, despite having been planted in relatively low densities.

This was surprising: it was not expected the plants would prefer the shaded areas under the panels to the open areas. This shows that shading by solar panels will not prevent the growth of full and healthy roof gardens.

What were the biodiversity impacts?

We used environmental DNA (eDNA) surveys to compare biodiversity on the green roof and conventional roof. Water run-off samples were collected from both roofs and processed on site using portable citizen scientist eDNA sampling equipment to detect traces of DNA shed by the species on the roof.

The eDNA surveys detected a diverse range of species. These included some species (such as algae and fungi) that are not easily detected using other survey methods. The results confirmed the presence of bird species recorded by the cameras but also showed other visiting bird species went undetected by the cameras.

Overall, the green roof supported four times as many species of birds, over seven times as many arthropods such as insects, spiders and millipedes, and twice as many snail and slug species as the conventional roof. There was many times the diversity of microorganisms such as algae and fungi.

Encouragingly, the green roof attracted species unexpected in the city. They included blue-banded bees (Amegilla cingulata) and metallic shield bugs (Scutiphora pedicellata).

How did the green roof alter temperatures?

The green roof reduced surface temperatures by up to 9.63°C for the solar panels and 6.93°C for the roof surfaces. An 8°C reduction in average peak temperature on the green roof would result in substantial heating and cooling energy savings inside the building.

This lowering of temperatures increased the maximum output of the solar panels by 21-107%, depending on the month. Performance modelling indicates an extensive green roof in central Sydney can, on average, produce 4.5% more electricity at any given light level.

These results show we don’t have to choose between a green roof or a solar roof. We can combine them to take advantage of the many benefits of biosolar green roofs.

Biosolar roofs can help get cities to net zero

The next step is to design green roofs and their plantings specifically to enhance biodiversity. Green roofs and other green infrastructure may alter urban wildlife’s activities and could eventually attract non-urban species.

Our green roof also decreased stormwater runoff, removed a range of run-off pollutants and insulated the building from extremes of temperature. A relatively inexpensive system provides all of these services with moderate maintenance and, best of all, zero energy inputs.

Clearly, biosolar green roofs could make major contributions to net-zero cities. And all that’s needed is space that currently has no other use."

-via GoodGoodGood, May 12, 2024

[selfhealingmoments]

[poleriri-deactivated20251007]

[ripempezardexerox]

[cynicist]

Somone on this website could be like yall should maybe listen to more women musicans its kinda weird that you only like men and ten thousand mcr blogs would appear out of nowhere to say that my chem counts as riot grrrl because gerard listened to bikini kill once in the ninties

[neurosciencestuff]

Discrimination during pregnancy can affect infants’ brain circuitry

Experiences of discrimination and acculturation are known to have a detrimental effect on a person’s health. For pregnant women, these painful experiences can also affect the brain circuitry of their children, a new study from Yale and Columbia University finds. These effects, the researchers say, are separate from those caused by general stress and depression.

The study was published in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology.

Previous research has shown that not only are high levels of stress and depression harmful to the person experiencing them, but they can also have long-lasting effects on their children if experienced during pregnancy. In recent years, studies have also revealed that discrimination and acculturation — or the changes that occur due to migration and the subsequent balancing of multiple, different cultures — can affect the adult brain. What’s less clear is how children might be affected by their parents’ experiences of discrimination and acculturation.

For the new study, the researchers assessed the degree of discrimination, acculturation, and distress experienced by 165 people while pregnant using established questionnaires. The participants were 14 to 19 years old, mostly Hispanic (88%), and lived in or near the Washington Heights neighborhood of New York City. The researchers then performed magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to evaluate brain connectivity in 38 of the participants’ infants after birth.

The first step, researchers said, was to determine whether discrimination and acculturation are distinct from other types of stress or depression.

“We thought that some of these experiences might go hand-in-hand or overlap, in which case it would be difficult to measure the effects of discrimination or acculturation on their own,” said Dustin Scheinost, associate professor of radiology and biomedical imaging at Yale School of Medicine and senior author of the study.

Scheinost and his colleagues from Columbia and Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles used a data analysis program that assessed all of their separate questionnaire measures of acculturation, discrimination, stress, depression, childhood trauma, and socioeconomic status, and organized them into groups by how similar the data anlaysis program determined them to be. Doing this, researchers say, helped them understand the degree to which different measures might be used to evaluate similar experiences.

“That analysis clustered measures of stress and depression and separately pulled out discrimination and acculturation measures as their own distinct variables,” said Scheinost. “That told us that while these experiences of discrimination are related to stress and depression, they are separate enough that we can look at their unique effects.”

When the research team analyzed the MRI images of the infants’ brains, they found differences in the children whose parents reported experiencing discrimination while pregnant.

The amygdala is an area of the brain associated with emotional processing and it’s very vulnerable to prenatal stress, said the researchers. Prior research has found that early experiences of adversity can have measurable impacts on amygdala connectivity in infants, children, adolescents, and adults. A growing body of evidence also suggests the amygdala is involved in ethnic and racial processing, such as differentiating faces of people from different races or ethnicities, for example.

When the researchers assessed connectivity between the amygdala and another region of the brain called the prefrontal cortex, which is associated with higher-order functioning, they found that children of people who experienced more discrimination while pregnant had weaker connectivity between the two brain regions.

“Our finding was consistent with what you expect to see in the brain of those affected by early life adversity either pre- or postnatally,” said Scheinost.

The takeaway, said Scheinost, is that while discrimination and acculturation affect the brain in ways other types of stress do, there is something unique and important about these particular experiences that should be better understood. Future research, he said, should focus on whether other populations are affected in similar ways and what underlies the effects.

“We don’t fully know why this happens,” said Scheinost. “So we need to investigate the biological mechanisms that carry these experiences of adversity from parent to offspring.”

[allthecanadianpolitics]

I know this is a bit outside your wheelhouse, but I still think it's an important article to share. It could be quite valuable for anyone who's interested in learning more about indigenous perspectives.

https://indiginews.com/vancouver-island/decolonizing-your-grown-up-bookshelf

Decolonizing your grown-up bookshelf

We’ve compiled a list of five books that feature Indigenous authors and illustrators

[daminwayne]

somehow I got 95/20 on an assignment

I hope they never fix it and leave it this way forever

[bebe-benzenheimer]

reblog the Awesome Grade picture for awesome grades

[impolitecanadian]

guys this really works i reblogged it and then got 870% on an essay

[gorillateaparty]

May your GPA rise due to clerical error.

[umpteenthstupidfeelings-blog]

this magical tumblr grade increaser comes once in a million years, reblog for good grades

[in-my-defense-i-was-left-alone]

PLEASE

[snapplecandy-deactivated2022051]

CMON MAGICAL PICTURE

[gloomymuffin]

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE

[formulatrash]

Here's what I did in 2021

I'm not very good at reflecting on what I've done professionally. So to force myself, here's a sort of digest of some of what I did this year.

In numbers terms, I wrote 569 articles for RaceFans and 321 for The Drive, as well as placing pieces in other publications. On an estimate (from average wordcount) that's about 566,100 words. I worked on 92 races and took a relatively modest 17 flights, compared to previous years.

I interviewed a hell of a lot of people but consciously tried to skew that towards women because well. Motorsport eh.

Susie Wolff knows how to get more women into motorsport: hire them

Being LGBTQ+ in racing: 'It's a very old mentality to think sponsors wouldn't support you'

Beth Paretta is on a mission to change how women race at the Indy 500

Jamie Chadwick feels the weight of representing women in motorsport

Jessica Hawkins, once for The Drive and again for RaceFans

I asked Linda Zhang how she and her team designed the F-150 Lightning to be affordable

I spoke to Sabré Cook about being an engineer and a driver

I interviewed Lando Norris during the summer, which was funny for several reasons including the fact he was wearing his swim shorts (boy, your PR officer has a migraine) but mostly that he's great to chat to. It got published in NME (my first byline there for 17 years), The Drive and on RaceFans.

Allan McNish told me, in a very foreshadowing way, at the London Eprix why Audi was still in Formula One power unit talks and rallying legend Ian Davies told me how fitting an entire off-road racing series' gear on a single pallette has to work. And Lucas di Grassi told me what was going through his mind during his audacious London Eprix black flag penalty and Nyck de Vries shared his concerns about rivals' driving standards after winning Formula E's first world championship. And then I asked Sylvain Filippi what a racing team was doing at COP26.

I wrote the season review for electric racing in Motor Sport magazine and covered Extreme E's first round for the Independent.

In terms of racing stuff, I wrote a lot of things - a lot of it pretty time-specific analysis or news but here are some of my best features:

an early assessment of F1's 2021 rookies that, I think, turned out to ring true - although by a roundabout way for them all

how F1's power unit future is divided between teams' visions

how F1 can push the world's most efficient engine even further

how Formula E's 18-way title fight finale came about

did Honda choose the worst time to leave F1... again?

why Lucas di Grassi joined Venturi to stay in Formula E

is cryptocurrency too dirty for F1's "clean" future?

the top 10 Formula E drivers of 2021

the top 10 Formula 2 drivers of 2021

how Honda went from failed pariahs to heroics

how drivers prompted the change in F1's approach to human rights concerns

I annoyed Tesla fans by pointing out its cars don't meet their range estimates even under rigorous testing conditions and that it does not have a self-driving car let alone an autonomous sex robot from Westworld.

I spent five days fighting off starvation in hotel quarantine in earlier this year just so I could get back to a race track. I'd do it again.

2021 was a year where you couldn't escape having to acknowledge ~challenging topics. And that's the point of journalism. So I wrote about how

Formula One is shockingly racist and the testimony of the Hamilton Commission needs to be heard

Climate change is going to get worse even as we have to carry on fighting it

It's ugly that the FIA had to - and only finally did - step in to ask fans to stop racially abusing Hamilton

I looked into several things to which the answer was, categorically: NO

whether it would be a good idea to invent a very inefficient form of electric car that emits CO2

whether we should frack the hell out of the Arctic for nuclear weapons

whether we should dredge some of the most unknown parts of the Pacific for battery rocks

and some more fun experiments like

what happens if you set off 24 hand grenades under the hydrogen tank of a BMW i5

turns out yep, you can make synthetic petrol out of thin air

why cat pee might be what fuels the hydrogen future

why Korea is airlifting thousands of gallons of a human pee chemical

why Pirelli tyres kept exploding around Baku

I wrote about just so many SUVs. At the start of the year, they were completely cancelling out EVs' contribution to reducing CO2 emissions. On a (semi) positive note, it's now about equal, at the end of the year. (fuck SUVs)

In another pleasing symmetry, I wrote about the Lamborghini Countach's rebirth as an 800hp supercapacitor beastie and this low-res art car version of it.

I wrote about some stuff that was just weird like a bargain bodypart mannequin heist opportunity, BMW's weird intergenerational argument advert, what happens if you let Twitch design a car and why not put a drone helipad on your rear windshield I guess.

And some stuff that was just interesting tech like AMG's new F1-inspired hybrid powertrain, JCB using hydrogen combustion in a way that's actually interesting and might make sense: diggers, why Koenigsegg and Geely think making fuel out of volcanoes might be a viable option, how you could make an electric Jeep run underwater and what's cool about racing battery-powered hydrofoils.

I ranked Nissan's EV concepts from least to most dystopian and Stellantis' green slogans from least implying that you will cook and eat people to most. I also explained - or tried to - what the hell is wrong with us here on plague island and why people keep gluing themselves to roads.

And maybe my best piece of the whole year was about how boring old BMW has somehow tuned into the manic edge of queer hyperpop's car obsession in its design language.

I went on some test drives, with varying degrees of abject failure

1881 Trouvé Electric Tricycle

1993 Renault Twingo

Mercedes EQS

BMW iX

BMW i4 M50

And I had the most interestingly varied range of hair colours across Formula E's Unplugged. Oh and for some reason made people very angry with the factual statement that Megan Thee Stallion is millions of times more famous than Martin Brundle.