/sci/ - Science & Math

Two academics in Neuroscience, one who measures awake behaving animals, the other who works only on one neuron in a dish

What is the hypothetical 'holy grail' of neuroscience experimental techniques? What would it be capable of, and what would it measure?

Outside of the obvious academia, I've heard of Ph.D mathematicians getting jobs in physics, software development, and at hedge funds. A Ph.D is primarily an advanced R&D degree, and your specific career prospects have a lot less to do with the field of study on your degree and a lot more to do with the papers that have your name on them.

In other words, by the time you're on the market, you'll know exactly what kind of jobs you can get. Bear in mind that there's a very very low unemployment rate for Ph.Ds.

Any psychologist that's concerned with psychodynamics or psychotherapy is not going to be doing studies that have enough rigor for you guys to accept them as science (read: they're doing partial correlations on likert scale responses).

Although I'm not familiar with any studies myself (as this is very far from my interests), the most "scientific" approach to studying this problem with the tools of psychology that *I* can think of would be having your subjects rate IAPS pictures of cigars/swords/other phallus pictures and then do a word completion task. You could compare the number of penis-related word completions these people give to a control group that sees IAPS pictures of scenes of mountains or something neutral.

Whichever school you choose, make sure that it has opportunities for undergraduate research or career-related internships. One of the most critical factors determining your entry into post-bachelor's schools, especially Ph.D programs, is your extracurricular competence.

>>4627623
4 is the most correct answer. Most neurons in the mammalian nervous system communicate with one another through paracrine signaling at synaptic junctions.

1 could be potentially correct if we're talking about electrical gap junctions (like those present between cardiac muscle cells), but those aren't typically called "synapses." 2 could also be an early step in signaling, but an action potential itself is not intercellular communication. 3 is involved in the action potential (K+ diffusion outward), but again is not intercellular communication.

congrats on your qual, dude. was it harder/easier than you expected?

Control?

As far as LSD goes, that you tripped is evidence that your body isn't "rejecting" the chemical. If you are larger than your friend, you would necessarily need to take a higher dose in order to experience the same effects.

Also, note that what constitutes a visual hallucination may not be the same for any two individuals.

>>4560203
It would certainly come with much heated debate. I just think that it'd be a cool way around confusion due to people who assume that there isn't a biological basis for the sex binary, or that sex and gender are two unrelated things.

Fewer than an hour. 4th year undergrad neuro is largely review.

I'm all for gender equality, but it always tickles me to imagine how much clearer things would be if people talked about genotype rather than phenotype as it pertains to sex/gender.

"You may not participate if you have a Y chromosome with a functional allele of the SRY gene."

>>4448846
This is a fun one to answer. It depends on the type of modeling you want to do. If you want your models to be biophysically realistic (e.g. to model the passing of current between neurons with biologically accurate rate/decay), you would be interested in a physics major or even an electrical engineering major (NOT a pure mathematics major). If you are interested in something more general, a computer science major with a neuro minor is best (or vice versa, or double major, but don't skimp on neuro classes). Comp neuro is about building brain models, so you need to think like both a scientist and an engineer.
>>4448851
Well there goes this thread.

>>4448796
take care! Good luck!

>>4448782
Arbitrarily! I figured that I'd like psychology going into college, so I took a class and stuck with it. Eventually, I found that my interests were more biological than behavioral, and that my preferred methods were more quantitative than experimental. You can get whatever experience you want doing whatever major you want if you're diligent enough.

If you're running out of time and have to decide, try to assess what your academic beliefs/interests are and find a major that aligns with them. Also, try to figure out if you want to be more general or specific - If you like modeling but don't know what you wanna model, go into applied math or computer science. If you really know that you love molecules but don't know what you love about them, go into the physical sciences. Personally, I believe that undergrad is the best time to learn a wiiiiiiide range of useful pieces of information and skills, and that specialization can happen later.

>>4448762
Motivation is a tricky problem! It helps to find hobbies that are fairly productive (e.g., being an autodidact) because that mindset translates well into your actual work. I also found that it's easier to get work/studying done when I'm doing it somewhere that isn't home, like a library or a cafe
>>4448775
I don't know much about tDCS, and I've never heard of anyone using it while studying. I don't think that grossly activating one surface-level region of your brain is going to miraculously improve your ability to retain information, but I could be wrong.

>>4448752
One of the better SUNY schools in NY. I don't want to say which one because there aren't many seniors going to neuro Ph.D programs at my school.
>>4448753
I can't explain this at a neural level. There's some great psychological work done on this idea of "ego depletion," which is a cheesy name for getting mentally exhausted after doing draining things. Check that out.
>>4448758
Thanks a lot! The brain rules and I'm excited to keep working with it. =)
>>4448759
I worked in a mathematical psychology/neuroimaging lab for two years studying decision making in humans (neuroeconomics). Most of the work I did was conducting EEGs on humans, analyzing EEG data, and doing quantitative modeling of behavior.

I also now work in a bioinformatics lab studying the evolution of ionotropic glutamate receptors in the central nervous system. We're developing a dual-substitution rate matrix model for describing different selective pressures on different regions of the amino acid sequence.

Both labs require copious amounts of programming in Python, R and Matlab.

>>4448734
I should also mention that there's still a ton of time to get a good GPA.

>>4448709
Immediately begin searching for a way to get wet-lab experience and, unless your major is novel, begin searching for non-terminal master's degree programs related to medicine or biology. A B can get you into a medical school iff you have some amazing accomplishments (scholarships, grants, etc) or a really novel major (music w/ premed requirements met), but it will not be enough to get you into an American med school if you're just another biology/chemistry/psychology major.

>>4448661
I'm assuming that "successful" means that you're meeting your post-college goals. Anyone with a textbook and a mountain of time can ace classes, but your A in advanced circuits tells me nothing about your ability to solve a novel electrical engineering problem.

To get the job of your dreams, you HAVE to do things outside of class time. You should be involved with preprofessional student-run organizations on campus and you should be working internships in areas of interest every summer that you can. My GPA had very little to do with my admissions, it was entirely due to my copious amount of lab experience (and all of my experience programming).

>>4448615
>>4448632
I'm going straight from B.S. to Ph.D. I have no master's degree, and will never have one.
>>4448626
A lot of my close friends were premed, and many got accepted into med school for the fall. The best advice I can give you is to get basic labs/science classes out of the way immediately and aim to begin working in a research lab during your sophomore year. All of your competition will be doing this. Any math is nice but for most medical research you'll be working less with differential equations and more with inferential statistics, so make sure that you take those classes and comprehend them.

Of course, talk to your academic advisors straight away and start setting goals for yourself. Things like summer research scholarships and student leadership (vice/president of a non-recreational club, like an honor society) will set you apart from the rest of the bio/premed drones.

>>4448608
I mean, synaptic plasticity is the only candidate mechanism I know of that could change a given sensory -> motor mapping (which I'm going to call learning, because I'm a behaviorist at heart). I think that changes in the amount of transmitter in vesicles, available vesicles, postsynaptic receptor density, and phosphorylation of receptors, and formation of synapses all act to change the weight between presynaptic and postsynaptic neurons, which ultimately creates a change in behavior patterns of muscle contraction (behavior).

I don't think it makes sense to point to any one of these mechanisms and say that it's responsible for "formation of memories," because they're all interacting to change how our brains are wired at any given moment. I think that there are specific regions of the brain that take advantage of these mechanisms to induce changes in synaptic weight on a macroscopic scale (i.e., they affect more neurons), and that's probably what's responsible for forming whatever memory you're referring to. That region is probably also in or around the temporal lobe.

>>4448578
-21
-Male
-New York
-major Psychology, minor Bio/3.7/a SUNY school
-I have literally never taken any "objective" intelligence measure. People tend to tell me I'm smart, though.
-Hetero i guess
-American
-White

I should mention that the neuro program I'm in is a track in the school's biology program, not psychology. I'm also not doing imaging work.

>>4448535
That sounds fun and interesting. I assume this means that you're doing research under the close supervision of some faculty? That's exactly what I mean by "work in labs."

If that vein of research turns out to not be too interesting to you, working in one lab makes it easier to get into others. You'll also learn a bit about how research is conducted.

>>4448532
By "endogen drugs" I assume you mean endogenous chemicals. I don't know of a way to upregulate production of any chemical (or agonization of its receptor) that makes you feel good without eventually changing receptor density in your reward circuits.

If you wanna feel good often, just eat right and do fulfilling things.