Hey resident neuroscientist @sixpenceee, wanna explain why the strawberries look red?

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@psycholar
Hey resident neuroscientist @sixpenceee, wanna explain why the strawberries look red?
wait, so are you a neuroscience major? What do you do? I think it sounds really cool, but i'm bad at math, so.
Hi Anon,
I am in fact a neuroscience major twice. I did my undergrad degree in Neuroscience, and now I’m doing my Ph.D. in neuroscience. And I love it. Its a fantastic subject.
I am actually not completely sure what you want to know about from your ask, so I’m just going to sort of attempt to cover everything I can think of, and if you want something clarified you can come back and ask again.
Neuroscience is a really really broad field. It covers everything brain and nerve related. So topic wise that’s everything related to the brain, the spinal cord, and the peripheral nervous system, as well as how the nervous system interacts with other systems like the immune system. Neuroscientists work at every level of biology. That ranges from genetics, to how specific proteins work inside cells (molecular biology or biochemistry), to specific cells, or how cells interact (cellular neuroscience, electrophysiology), to larger networks (systems neuroscience), right up to how the brain produces thought and behaviour (cognitive neuroscience). Neuroscientists can also work on making computer models of cells or of brains (computational neuroscience). That isn’t even all the major branches, it’s really very diverse.
I specifically, am working in Neuroimaging, and investigating personality using functional MRI. Neuroimaging is one of the most multidisciplinary fields, it involves information from cognitive neuroscience, psychology,cellular neuroscience, and neurovascular physiology (the specific way the blood supply to the brain works is a field in and of itself) to design experiments and interpret data, but to actually do experiments I use techniques from computer science, statistics and signal processing. And actually using MRI involves physics, but I’m not involved in that directly, I just trust the physicists and MR techs and say thank you to them a lot. I love this and its one of the reasons I picked this field to work in.
If you want to know what exactly what neuroscientists do all day, you’re really going to have to pick a field or two though, because if I try to sum them all up I’ll be here all night. But very briefly, it can range from what I do, to focusing more on behavioural tests, and working with patients with specific illnesses or lesions, or working with animals to see the effects of whatever you’re studying on their brain, to working with individual cells cultured in dishes, its hugely variable.
And neuroscientists come from a lot of backgrounds, a lot of us started in some part of biology, or psychology and increasingly, from actual neuroscience undergrads, because they’re getting more common, but there are also engineers and physicists, and computer scientists, and in some places you can do cognitive science degrees, which are a combination of computer science, psychology, neuroscience and philosophy, centred around cognition.
In terms of what a neuroscience UNDERGRAD does, if you’re more interested in getting a first degree, you’re probably going to do a little bit of everything neuroscience related. Neuroscience programs vary a but, you’ll do intro sciences and math, then the biological sciences (genetics, cellular, biochem, organic chemistry, etc), and then a combination of specific neuroscience courses and psychology courses. The man who designed my program thought a liberal arts type background was important, so I also took some anthropology, and humanities, and a combined history/ethics course, but depending on where you are you might stay more science focused. And in terms of course type, it’ll be a combination lectures, lecture/lab combos and some discussion classes, where you read and analyze current research, in all likelihood. I also had pure lab courses. You’ll essentially finish with a crash course in each of the neuroscience related fields.
Its a really great degree. I went into it planning to go into a neuroscience Ph.D. which worked well, but it will also set you up well to go to medical school, or into clinical psychology, or physiotherapy/occupational therapy, if you’re interested in health care. Not to mention any number of research adjacent careers. If you want specifically, to know about the mechanics of a research career, come back and let me know, I’ll make a separate post, its kind of involved.
I want to specifically address you’re comment that you’re bad at math. PLEASE DO NOT LET MATH SCARE YOU AWAY FROM NEUROSCIENCE!!!
Its a little hard to give specific advice about this because ‘bad at math’ can cover everything from intimidated, to having a disability like dyscalculia.
At undergrad level, I took 2 math courses, calculus, and linear algebra. And an introductory statistics course. Outside of my math specific courses there was a few basic calculations in chemistry and genetics, and in my research based courses I used the stats I’d already learned in my stats course. But it isn’t a math heavy degree.
If mostly you’re just intimidated, or have trouble keeping up with math and the undergrad math is what’s frightening you off, most universities have a LOT of tutorial resources for intro math, because a lot of people have trouble with them (and they mostly get through them and go on to do very well). If you’re concerned about statistics, don’t be, the actual math involved in statistics is incredibly straight-forward, it looks complicated, when you write it out, but its essentially all the y = mx + b equation you learned in 7th or 8th grade, with some fancy clothing on. Also, a lot of stats is done using statistics programming. That doesn’t involve doing the math yourself, it involves understanding what to tell the computer.
That’s pretty much how I do math too. I use really complicated math (I spent all today on independent components analysis), but I don’t actually have to be able to do it, just understand how it works, and how to interpret the results it gives me.
If you do have dyscalculia or some other math-related learning disability I can’t really give a lot of specific advice, but there is plenty of neuroscience you can do that doesn’t involve math, and you can almost certainly work around it in courses if your instructors are cooperative (the majority of professors are nice and will help, they just don’t know what you need until you explain, unfortunately).
But please, please, whatever you do, don’t buy into the obnoxious idea that struggling with math in school permanently shuts you out of STEM!
I hope this at least moves in the direction of what you wanted to know, I will happily answer any other neuroscience or brain related questions you may have :). Neuroscience is wonderful and I totally recommend it.
I just wanted to add to this great response:
I’m doing a neuroscience PhD as well (computational neuroscience), and I did no math past my second year of high school, none in my undergrad (I did art first, and then went and did psychology) and didn’t do any maths courses during my PhD. I am bad at math. I can’t calculate in my head and I don’t understand how people do. And I get along fine in my PhD. Maybe it would be easier if I was good at math - who knows? - but I find that i’m not any further behind than anyone else here.
So I would 100% agree with everything said above! Don’t worry about it!
Hey, Did you go straight to a PhD program after undergraduate? I’m a senior in Undergrad and I’m also interested in Cognitive Neuroscience, but I’m not sure whether to go through a Master’s program or just shoot straight for PhD. I wanna delve into Cognitive Neuroscience and work in a clinical setting performing psychological batteries and neurological tests, and I also want be a professor in my field one day. I’m in the United States and I know post undergrad schools are competitive. My GPA will probably be around 3.3 when I Graduate this fall but my Psychology GPA is a 4.0.a nd I have great clinical experience. Please any advice will be greatly appreciated💜💜
@soravagemecrazy Are you asking me, or @dendritic-trees?
I went straight from undergrad to PhD. It was a long shot, but I applied because the Masters course cost so much money and I figured I had nothing to lose. Worked out for me!
What specific advice are you looking for though? If it is simply whether you should apply or not, I would say apply and see what happens! However I know there are high application fees to some schools in the US (in the UK applying to funding bodies and graduate schools is free, as far as I know), so that may limit you.
Hello there, if you don't mind me asking, what is the education requirements to be a Neuropsychologist? Can you please give me an insight on what to expect? Is it worth it? Thank you.
Hi there,
I’m not a neuropsychologist. My understanding of that term here is that you work with patients, either in a clinical or experimental setting? Perhaps it’s different where you are, or I am wrong...
I’m currently doing a PhD in cognitive neuroscience. The only education requirement I had to get into this programme was to have an undergraduate degree in a relevant field (I did psychology). I didn’t do a Masters because it wasn’t a requirement here in the UK, so that was about it.
Currently I do research, but I’m not sure if that’s what you are interested in. If it is, let me know and I can elaborate.
Thanks!
Hey! I didn't know you studied psychology. I'm a psychology undergraduate student aspiring to do masters and p.h.d in neuroscience. My concern is that I don't really get a job, since I live in Panama, a country where research is not really promoted
Hi there anon,
I wouldn’t really worry too much about research not being promoted in Panama. Your PhD really is a global qualification, and you can apply for jobs anywhere in the world with it. Unfortunately all research institutions have few jobs available, and it is a shame that in your country the state of affairs is worse if you say so, but remember you can go anywhere!
Also, you might not end up in research after your PhD, so you wouldn’t be looking for a research job anyway. People’s preferences change as you go through graduate school (I’ve seen it countless times), so I wouldn’t let that the lack of research job opportunities put you off. Some say there isn’t any point doing a PhD if you don’t want to stay in research ultimately but I 100% disagree; If you want to do a PhD, you should do one, and see where that path takes you :)
That’s my advice anyway, other people may think differently!
Thanks!
wait, so are you a neuroscience major? What do you do? I think it sounds really cool, but i'm bad at math, so.
Hi Anon,
I am in fact a neuroscience major twice. I did my undergrad degree in Neuroscience, and now I’m doing my Ph.D. in neuroscience. And I love it. Its a fantastic subject.
I am actually not completely sure what you want to know about from your ask, so I’m just going to sort of attempt to cover everything I can think of, and if you want something clarified you can come back and ask again.
Neuroscience is a really really broad field. It covers everything brain and nerve related. So topic wise that’s everything related to the brain, the spinal cord, and the peripheral nervous system, as well as how the nervous system interacts with other systems like the immune system. Neuroscientists work at every level of biology. That ranges from genetics, to how specific proteins work inside cells (molecular biology or biochemistry), to specific cells, or how cells interact (cellular neuroscience, electrophysiology), to larger networks (systems neuroscience), right up to how the brain produces thought and behaviour (cognitive neuroscience). Neuroscientists can also work on making computer models of cells or of brains (computational neuroscience). That isn’t even all the major branches, it’s really very diverse.
I specifically, am working in Neuroimaging, and investigating personality using functional MRI. Neuroimaging is one of the most multidisciplinary fields, it involves information from cognitive neuroscience, psychology,cellular neuroscience, and neurovascular physiology (the specific way the blood supply to the brain works is a field in and of itself) to design experiments and interpret data, but to actually do experiments I use techniques from computer science, statistics and signal processing. And actually using MRI involves physics, but I’m not involved in that directly, I just trust the physicists and MR techs and say thank you to them a lot. I love this and its one of the reasons I picked this field to work in.
If you want to know what exactly what neuroscientists do all day, you’re really going to have to pick a field or two though, because if I try to sum them all up I’ll be here all night. But very briefly, it can range from what I do, to focusing more on behavioural tests, and working with patients with specific illnesses or lesions, or working with animals to see the effects of whatever you’re studying on their brain, to working with individual cells cultured in dishes, its hugely variable.
And neuroscientists come from a lot of backgrounds, a lot of us started in some part of biology, or psychology and increasingly, from actual neuroscience undergrads, because they’re getting more common, but there are also engineers and physicists, and computer scientists, and in some places you can do cognitive science degrees, which are a combination of computer science, psychology, neuroscience and philosophy, centred around cognition.
In terms of what a neuroscience UNDERGRAD does, if you’re more interested in getting a first degree, you’re probably going to do a little bit of everything neuroscience related. Neuroscience programs vary a but, you’ll do intro sciences and math, then the biological sciences (genetics, cellular, biochem, organic chemistry, etc), and then a combination of specific neuroscience courses and psychology courses. The man who designed my program thought a liberal arts type background was important, so I also took some anthropology, and humanities, and a combined history/ethics course, but depending on where you are you might stay more science focused. And in terms of course type, it’ll be a combination lectures, lecture/lab combos and some discussion classes, where you read and analyze current research, in all likelihood. I also had pure lab courses. You’ll essentially finish with a crash course in each of the neuroscience related fields.
Its a really great degree. I went into it planning to go into a neuroscience Ph.D. which worked well, but it will also set you up well to go to medical school, or into clinical psychology, or physiotherapy/occupational therapy, if you’re interested in health care. Not to mention any number of research adjacent careers. If you want specifically, to know about the mechanics of a research career, come back and let me know, I’ll make a separate post, its kind of involved.
I want to specifically address you’re comment that you’re bad at math. PLEASE DO NOT LET MATH SCARE YOU AWAY FROM NEUROSCIENCE!!!
Its a little hard to give specific advice about this because ‘bad at math’ can cover everything from intimidated, to having a disability like dyscalculia.
At undergrad level, I took 2 math courses, calculus, and linear algebra. And an introductory statistics course. Outside of my math specific courses there was a few basic calculations in chemistry and genetics, and in my research based courses I used the stats I’d already learned in my stats course. But it isn’t a math heavy degree.
If mostly you’re just intimidated, or have trouble keeping up with math and the undergrad math is what’s frightening you off, most universities have a LOT of tutorial resources for intro math, because a lot of people have trouble with them (and they mostly get through them and go on to do very well). If you’re concerned about statistics, don’t be, the actual math involved in statistics is incredibly straight-forward, it looks complicated, when you write it out, but its essentially all the y = mx + b equation you learned in 7th or 8th grade, with some fancy clothing on. Also, a lot of stats is done using statistics programming. That doesn’t involve doing the math yourself, it involves understanding what to tell the computer.
That’s pretty much how I do math too. I use really complicated math (I spent all today on independent components analysis), but I don’t actually have to be able to do it, just understand how it works, and how to interpret the results it gives me.
If you do have dyscalculia or some other math-related learning disability I can’t really give a lot of specific advice, but there is plenty of neuroscience you can do that doesn’t involve math, and you can almost certainly work around it in courses if your instructors are cooperative (the majority of professors are nice and will help, they just don’t know what you need until you explain, unfortunately).
But please, please, whatever you do, don’t buy into the obnoxious idea that struggling with math in school permanently shuts you out of STEM!
I hope this at least moves in the direction of what you wanted to know, I will happily answer any other neuroscience or brain related questions you may have :). Neuroscience is wonderful and I totally recommend it.
I just wanted to add to this great response:
I’m doing a neuroscience PhD as well (computational neuroscience), and I did no math past my second year of high school, none in my undergrad (I did art first, and then went and did psychology) and didn’t do any maths courses during my PhD. I am bad at math. I can’t calculate in my head and I don’t understand how people do. And I get along fine in my PhD. Maybe it would be easier if I was good at math - who knows? - but I find that i’m not any further behind than anyone else here.
So I would 100% agree with everything said above! Don’t worry about it!
These are dark times for science so we asked hundreds of researchers how to fix it.
The article is super long, so here’s the summary:
Academia has a huge money problem
Too many studies are poorly designed. Blame bad incentives.
Replicating results is crucial. But scientists rarely do it.
Peer review is broken
Too much science is locked behind paywalls
Science is poorly communicated to the public
Life as a young academic is incredibly stressful
About 6 months ago, I sat at work, watching a robot vacuum cleaner glide confidently across the floor—until it dove off a ledge. “Well,” my co-worker remarked, “that's not good,” as he entered the result into a spreadsheet. Observing such product failures is just one part of my job as the senior scientist for a consumer product testing website, where anything even tangentially related to science ends up on my plate. On any given day, I could be tweaking a data model of smartphone battery life, thinking about how to test the temperature consistency of charcoal grills, or writing a consumer safety article about defrosting a turkey. I love rising to these delightfully unpredictable daily challenges, which I never could have anticipated when I was working on my Ph.D.
Hey! Love your blog! What I want to know is what subjects do you need in order to study psychology and succeed?
Hi,
So I can’t really answer that question because I don’t think there is a specific answer! To study psychology in undergrad I’m assuming the subjects needed are all different. I came to do my B.Sc. degree in Psychology having never studied psychology or any science subjects at school. I learnt everything I need to know during the course.
I would imagine that studying psychology and statistics before that however would have helped!
Does that answer your question? Thanks! :)
Brain scanners can detect the brain making a decision 7 seconds before the person is aware of the choice, casting doubt upon the concept of “free will”
This isn’t true.
I know the paper this is coming from (here if interested) and even the paper doesn’t make such bold claims. Although they do make some statements I wouldn't agree with, and there has also been some work questioning the statistical methods and inferences used in the paper.
Despite that, it's an interesting paper and a good study from a respected lab, but as with all neuroimaging interpretations need to be made VERY carefully.
Research Methods.
As a programmer, I am more concerned when my code works perfectly the first time than when it doesn’t
when an undergrad who doesn’t know any better calls me “doctor”
(Image caption: T4 cells in the fly brain become particularly active when the eyes perceive a slowly moving bright edge. Credit: © MPI of Neurobiology/ Ammer)
Neuronal calculations consider expectations
Our visual environment is incredibly complex. The smallest of spaces contain innumerable colours, structures and contrasts. Despite this we are able to identify objects and movements with high accuracy. Even the fruit fly, which only has a fraction of our neurons, can manage these distinctions. Researchers from the Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology in Martinsried have now found evidence that the visual system of the fruit fly has adapted optimally to the features of the environment over millions of years. The unequal distribution of bright and dark regions in nature is reflected in similarly asymmetric processing by the fly brain.
Without us being aware of it, our visual system tackles incredibly difficult tasks every second. For example, to be able to reach for a pen, our brain must distinguish its form and texture quickly and accurately from dozens of other – often very similar – objects in the environment. This process works under a very wide variety of light conditions and against almost any kind of background. To facilitate the processing of such visual information, the visual system incorporates expectations of typical features of the environment into its calculations. Alexander Borst and his team at the Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology have investigated how these expectations factor into neuronal calculations in the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster.
Course correction in a virtual environment
In their experiments, the researchers made use of an innate behaviour of flies. The animals steady their course with the help of what is known as the optomotor reaction. For example, if a fly is blown off course to the left by a gust of wind, the entire world rotates to the right from its perspective. To get back on course, flies reliably rotate in the same direction as the perceived image, in this instance to the right. To study the principles behind this course correction, the researchers built a virtual environment for the animals. Three computer monitors led the fly to believe that it was navigating through different natural environments while sensors followed its movements on an air-suspended polyurethane ball.
“I crawled through the woods around the institute for days with my smart phone, to record the panorama images we used in these experiments,“ reports Aljoscha Leonhardt, one of the study’s first authors. The researchers occasionally simulated a virtual gust of wind by briefly rotating the environment on the screens to the right or left. As in nature, Drosophila skilfully adjusted to this optical drift: within a fraction of a second, the insect was moving straight again through the virtual world.
The researchers then used a genetic trick to suppress the activity of the neurons that calculate the direction of movement in the fly brain and ultimately trigger the fly’s rotation. In a similar way to vertebrates, this computation is performed in two parallel channels in the fly’s optical system: once for increases in brightness (ON channel) and once for reductions in brightness (OFF channel). The former is carried out in T4 cells and the latter in T5 cells. When both types of neurons were switched off, the animals were no longer able to see the movement of their environment and could not correct their course. However, if only one of the channels was switched off, to the astonishment of the neurobiologists, the flies continued to compensate for the virtual gusts of wind rapidly and efficiently. Hence each of the two channels appears to respond optimally to environmental changes.
Parallel but different
However, further tests revealed that considerable differences exist between the two channels. For example, while the T4 cells of the ON channel responded very strongly to slowly moving bright edges, the T5 cells of the OFF channel were mainly active in the presence of rapid dark edges. To test whether this asymmetry represents an adaptation to nature, the researchers simulated the network on the computer. They trained virtual T4 and T5 cells to estimate the speed of moving natural images as precisely as possible.
The result showed a very similar asymmetry to that observed in the earlier physiological tests. “We assume that the functional differences between T4 and T5 cells developed as an adaptation to the different distribution of bright and dark in the natural visual environment,“ explains Georg Ammer, the second first author of the study. Incorporating expectations of the natural environmental conditions makes the visual processing more reliable and efficient. Because people and flies live in similar visual environments, it is conceivable that this insight into visual processing in the fly brain is also applicable to the human brain.
HOW I FEEL WHEN I FINALLY GRADUATE
Brain integrates features directly to patterns
Does our brain perceive objects initially as a conglomeration of shapes, colours and patterns or does it instantly recognise the entire structure? An article by RUB philosopher Prof Dr Albert Newen provides the answer.
A laptop or a cluster of shapes?
There is a thing on the desk. It is open, grey on the outside and black on the inside, has many small square bumps on its horizontal side, and on its vertical side a smooth, reflecting surface. A laptop. But do we really see that thing as a laptop? Or do we see shapes, colours, edges etc., while our brain completes our perception by making use of rational inferences to reach the conclusion that the thing is a laptop? In other words: how intelligent are our perception processes? Prof Dr Albert Newen from the Institute for Philosophy II investigates this question in his latest article which was published in the journal “Synthese”.
Features produce a pattern
His conclusion: our perception processes are organised in such a manner that they can construct complex contents. Accordingly, we do not initially perceive a laptop as a conglomeration of shapes and colours, but instantly see it as the object that it is. Newen’s explanation: the lack of certain features in a drawing, for example, does not prevent us from seeing the item. During the perception process, our brain is able to integrate a few typical features to a complex pattern. “This takes place immediately when the object is spotted. Consequently, if an individual is trained in recognising patterns, their perceptions may become richer and richer,” says Newen. A chess expert would see the chessboard in a different way than a beginner, because he activates relevant structured patterns automatically as background knowledge, and that knowledge affects the perception process. This also takes place during social perception of other people.
Perception of complex patterns makes evolutionary sense
But where is the evidence that we actually see complex contents as such and that they are not merely an element of our linguistic judgement? Newen: “Perceiving certain contents is of such vital evolutionary importance for us that it is even present in infants who lack concept formation and language.” Such contents include emotions such as fear and anger. The ability to quickly perceive emotion patterns based on the facial expression and body language of another person is crucial for social animals like humans. Prof Newen described further evidence indicating that complex contents are perceived as such in neuroscientific studies. “The structure and speed of information processing suggest that they are aspects of perception rather than aspects of a judgment,” concludes the philosophy professor.
I was just wondering if you had time to grab a coffee and discuss how busy we are.