Missing a mentoring opportunity

I was recently at a small event during which well-established faculty gave talks (over an hour a piece) to graduate students, post-doctoral fellows, and junior faculty.

Every faculty member missed the opportunity to be a mentor to these young scientists (including me). They spent the entire time “down in the weeds” of their personal science. The content of talks was engaging but they missed the unique opportunity of the room.

They could have offered a peak behind the curtain. They could have shared the patterns and anti-patterns of academic research. They could have shared how they choose their research questions or their failures (everyone in science has ’em). They could have been vulnerable. Instead, they choose to be a “sage on stage” and share only their successes. If I wanted just the information, I could read their published papers.

It is the difference between screening a film and giving the rules of storytelling.

PS In contrast, E.O. Wilson’s book “Letters to a Young Scientist” is an example of remote mentorship. He was able to find the themes from his personal journey applicable to others.

A biological psychology teaching taxonomy

Coming off a back-to-back stint of teaching Sensation and Perception, I have developed several heuristics to aid my pedagogy. One of the most powerful is a taxonomy I have developed for biological psychology instruction.

I start by outlining a conceptual understanding of the material, providing an overview and context. The students should understand the big-picture and how the topic applies to other topics and their personal lives. For example, the retina of the eye is one type of sense organ that transduces environmental energy into neural signal. The retina processes light rapidly and with great acuity.

After a conceptual overview, I outline the structure. Being able to identify and label structure elements builds a visual scaffold for latter learning. Continuing with the visual system example, the retina is a complex structure with several layers each with specific shaped cells.

Structure seamless leads into function, how the particular system works. This is where I spend the majority of my teaching time. I hope to leave the students with a deep appreciation and understanding of how  biological systems function. In the retina, the fovea of the retina has greater acuity (function) due to cone density (structure).

If time allows, I will go into the details. Often times, professors move to this level to quickly. This is where things are most interesting but also the easiest place to lose students. An example of detail in the retina is the enzyme cascade in the photoreceptors which changes neurotransmitter release. If a student does not have an overall understanding of the structure and function of eye, then the role of rhodopsin will lack "stickiness."

The last layer is the numbers. In undergraduate classes, I rarely emphasize numbers. Some students maybe able to memorize them for an exam. A majority of the numbers from a class will not be remembered in the long-term. Stories and concepts will endure. For example most humans have 3 different cones, each one has peak sensitivity at a specific electromagnetic wavelength. It is far easier to remember there are Short, Medium, and Long cones than remembering 564–580 nm, 534–545 nm, and 420–440 nm cones.

This taxonomic gives general framework to teach any biological psychology concept. It is also a fractal pattern, from nervous system level down to individual cells or from introductory to advanced topics.

Who The Brain Initiative is picking

The Brain Initiative has been the talk of my “tribe” (i.e., cognitive neuroscience researchers). Right now the field has the tools and technology to make rapid breakthroughs. A large influx of funds has the potential to catalyze those breakthroughs. 

However the funds are primarily targeted at large organizations, which makes less sense in today’s world where resources are increasingly available to smaller organizations. Smaller organization are more likely to push the edges. Smaller organizations are also more likely to fail (hand-in-hand with pushing the edges is the potential for failure). The problem is failure looks bad for funding. The point of funding should not be to pick guaranteed “winners.” It should be the chance to great work.

The Brain Initiative should think more Silicon Valley, less Detroit.

A perception professor visits The Exploratorium

I just attended the newly renovated Exploratorium in San Francisco. It is Disneyland for STEM geeks.

My favorite exhibit was an analog square root calculator. You place a ball at a numbered location on a ramp. The ball then rolls down the ramp and flies through the air. It hits a metal rod associated with the square root of the number on the ramp (e.g., a ball at the #16 ramp location would hit the #4 rod). The Exploratorium sets it up as an experiment to discover this relationship. It then offers a short story, a simple explanation, and a long story, a more complex explanation including equations. This is science education at its finest; Experiential learning with the appropriate explanation of mechanisms.

I was most interested in the perception and cognition exhibits. They covered the gambit from low-level sensation to social group dynamics. One of the highlights are different shaped bellows that mimic human vowel sounds. This is an idea I am bringing back to the classroom to better explain the uniqueness of human speech.

Despite the quantity and quality of exhibits, I felt The Exploratorium was lacking the long story in the perception exhibits. My appreciation for the wonders of the human nervous system increases by knowing more about the underlying mechanisms. In particular, there are many equations that can capture important properties of human perception but they were incomplete (or missing entirely).

The current Exploratorium overloaded me with ideas. I am already looking forward to my next “field trip” to see how it grows into its new space.

If I only know how to become a fellow …