Jerry Colonna on the "Good Life"

Excellent insights into modern work with a practical approach to manifesting them.

Why are you doing what you are doing?

I know my actions (including reading and responding to email) should be help me fulfill my life purpose - "Grow & Give." If I take too many actions that are not consistent with my purpose, it is time to calibrate. Sometimes I lack the awareness that I should recalibrate. Other times I lack a method to recalibrate. It is helpful to be reminded of the possibilities for both.

"Building Better Models in Cognitive Neuroscience" talks

Building better models in science is a personal passion. I think we live in a time of revolution. Our ability to understand the brain and, in turn, use those insights to understand cognition and behavior is growing at an exponential rate. Cognitive neuroscience models need to keep pace to leverage those insights. Additionally, we need to use more rigorous methods to build those models. I gave a series of talks about the approach I choose to use in "Building Better Models in Cognitive Neuroscience."

You can check out the slides for Part I here, based on Ashby and Héile, 2011.

You can check out the slides for Part II here, based on Ashby, Ennis, and Spiering, 2007.

The publication RSS water torture

Drip. Drip. Drip.

There is always something new to read inorder to keep current in a scientific field.

I could try to drink it drop-by-drop or I could let the glass fell up.

Part of my work is drawing connections between separate streams of research and design ground-breaking research, both of which require prespective. The latest and loudest of any field rarely includes prepective.

Supplemental Materials Made Easier

I am methods-based scientist. I initially seek a thorough understanding of a study's method. From that understanding, I can put the data and narrative in a context.

Journals are increasingly putting methodical materials in separate supplemental sections, but they do not make it frictionless to assess that material. Several high quality journals do not hyperlink directly to the supplemental materials for a paper. By direct hyperlink, I mean the specific figure or table hosted on its own page (not a zip file). Direct hyperlinking is straightforward for both the html and pdf versions of a paper.

Server space is cheap; Use it to reduce friction in science.

Publication: Implicit and explicit categorization- A tale of four species

I am proud to present my latest publication - "Implicit and explicit categorization: A tale of four species"

Abstract: Categorization is essential for survival, and it is a widely studied cognitive adaptation in humans and animals. An influential neuroscience perspective differentiates in humans an explicit, rule-based categorization system from an implicit system that slowly associates response outputs to different regions of perceptual space. This perspective is being extended to study categorization in other vertebrate species, using category tasks that have a one-dimensional, rule-based solution or a two-dimensional, information-integration solution. Humans, macaques, and capuchin monkeys strongly dimensionalize perceptual stimuli and learn rule-based tasks more quickly. In sharp contrast, pigeons learn these two tasks equally quickly. Pigeons represent a cognitive system in which the commitment to dimensional analysis and category rules was not strongly made. Their results may reveal the character of the ancestral vertebrate categorization system from which that of primates emerged. The primate results establish continuity with human cognition, suggesting that nonhuman primates share aspects of humans' capacity for explicit cognition. The emergence of dimensional analysis and rule learning could have been an important step in primates' cognitive evolution.

You can read more here.

Maryland Neuroimaging Retreat November 12

I will be attending the Maryland Neuroimaging Retreat in Baltimore on November 12 (Yes, that is a couple of months in the future, but I am a planner).

If you are attending and would like to meet up for coffee to discuss research, please send me an email.

Teaching Sensation and Perception Fall 2012

I am honored to be invited by the Department of Psychology at The Catholic University of America to teach Sensation and Perception for the Fall of 2012.

Sensation and perception is one of my favorite topics, sitting at the intercetion of cognitive psychology, neurosicence, cluture, and personal experience.

One of my goals for the class is reimagining the instruction of sensation and perception. Sensation and perception is a complex, inherently dynamic topic, and its instruction should reflect those properties. I am updating the curriculum and bridging the gap between the tradiational classroom and Khan Academy-style learning to best serve my students. Those aims are reflected in my syllabus. I am excited to leverage cutting-edge online resourses, such as the video below.