Viral and Translational Neuroscience

As my classes work continues to be shared across the internet we have to ponder what we've done. What is the role of science communication? Are we making something that is both entertaining and educational or are we losing one at the cost of the other? In the few days since we started sharing our posts the videos, infographics and buzzfeed materials have been accessed and shared hundreds of times. Probably our biggest lesson is that these creations are not static, on part of our job as scientists and creators is to continue to interact with those who consume our "viral" infotainment. Below are questions that students are considering as their work continues to be shared.

Do you think that you’ve accurately translated your research for the public? Is there any nuance that was left out or glossed over? In the process of translation, what was easy for you and what was difficult for you?

Did you include citations like you would in a research article or did you link to the research or did you leave off citations completely? Do you think there will be a difference in what is shared between how much “evidence” is included?

How much writing is a part of your project? Did you try to communicate through what you wrote, the media you incorporated or a mixture of both? Do you think the message that you tried to communicate is more easily understood through the media or what you wrote?

The most viral content in neuroscience usually is about a neuromyth (e.g., are you left- or right-brained) or attempting to explain how some part of the brain contributes to an entertaining behavior (e.g., your brain when you look at Facebook). Is your topic something that people want to share? Are we limited in what people want to learn about neuroscience?

Do you think there are any copyright issues we have to be aware of when creating these projects? Falling under the umbrella of education everything should be considered fair use, however by using sites like buzzfeed, imgur, and youtube, if we created truly viral content and sent people to these sites, I would assume they would make advertising money, is that a problem?

Considering how our brain plays a role in almost everything we do, should we require a minimal understanding of neuroscience across all fields? As we’re considering in our debates on education and law, what role does neuroscience play in your topic? Did it feel like a stretch trying to find a neuroscientific explanation?

Viral Neuroscience

This semester in Cognitive Neuroscience at Haverford College we're exploring the role of neuroscience in society. On the first day of class we participated in two experiments that had previously demonstrated that neuroscience can be seductively appealing and affect our perceptions of the quality of the explanation provided. With that as a backdrop, we then explored the history of neuroscience, in particular paying attention to a few of the major revolutions in how we understand brain functioning. These two days together tell us that our current understanding of brain functioning is tenuous and likely ready for revising once we gather more information or develop new measurement techniques. This puts neuroscientists in an odd position of explaining what we know best for now and trying to do so in as understandable or approachable way as possible.

I asked the students this semester to write a term paper on a topic of their choice within cognitive neuroscience, but for a midterm checkin to make sure that they had gathered much of their background research as early as possible, I asked them to produce viral content that took their topic and made it both entertaining and informative. Their projects took the form of Buzzfeed Quizzes, Buzzfeed Listicles, Infographics and Videos and can be found gathered on our Tumblr page. Once we get back from spring break we'll discuss the impact of our work and what it meant or did for the public. In the act of translating research to be entertaining did we lose anything? Is it the responsibility of scientists to make work approachable or the public to work to try to understand science at a high-school or college level?

Help us make neuroscience go viral by sharing our work!

Put a neuro on it!

Put a bird on it, is a sketch from Portlandia commenting on the use of something to the point of over saturation. If The Guardian newspaper is any indicator, neuro- prefixed fields and fads have reached bird trend levels. I've posted about neuroeducation (1 and 2) and written satirical ad copy about marketing (1 and 2) before, and two article about neuromarketing and neuroeducation in The Guardian show that the tides are still raising. As with many design trends, like putting a bird on it, many neuro- trends are more flash than substance. Hastily applied neuroscience used to distract lay audiences does nothing to help further the abilities of real scientists attempting to bridge neuroscience with other fields.

Two quotes, one from each article, summarize the issues of these neuro- (mis)applications:

"Much of commercial neuromarketing EEG uses cheap kit, in poorly controlled, poorly designed experiments, that often produces junk data."

"No one should be looking to neuroscience to provide quick fixes or shortcuts to effective learning..."

I'm all for combining neuroscience with other fields, but looking to do so in a way that is appropriate, measured and well-designed. If people keep trying to use colorful brains to make a quick buck, we're going to soon run into a number of problems with shoddy science meets a scientifically tested end.

 

My first experience with socialized medicine

I spent the previous year in Canada and everyone that I already knew or met asked me the same first question, "How's the healthcare?" For most of the year I couldn't say much other than that even I as a visiting American scholar was provided OHIP (the Ontario Health Insurance Program) after just three months of residency. Finally, as I was preparing to move I went to say goodbye to some friends and play basketball one last time.

It was the end of May and I was in the middle of training for a 25K trail race about a month away. So instead of biking to the court as I normally did, I decided to run there, with the 7.2 mile roundtrip giving me another 50 mile week. After I arrived at the court, we were down a few players from normal but luckily there was a man who had brought his sons to the park and was interested in playing with his. Vlado and I teamed up in a two on two game against my friends and everything was going well. Vlado seemed to warm up quickly and was a much better player than I first assumed. About 20 minutes into our first, and only game, disaster struck as I drove for a layup and came down on my defender's foot, twisting my right ankle hard to the outside. In immediate pain, I stumbled around, tried to lay down and put my foot up, and then watched as my ankle quickly swelled and started to spill over my running shoes.

At that point Vlado, the man that we had met just 20 minutes earlier offered to give me a ride to the hospital. Within minutes he left his sons in the care of my friends and had me in the front seat of his car going towards the hospital. However, he didn't really know where the hospital was. We were driving from an elementary school in the Junction towards the east, but neither of us really knew where a hospital was, so we started to ask people on the sidewalks before being directed to Toronto Western near downtown. A few minutes later Vlado was pulling up to a turn around and dropping me off with cash to take a cab ride home. I couldn't believe the kindness and generosity of this almost stranger.

As he left, I began to limp towards the emergency room. About 5 minutes of limping later I was in the emergency room and just two minutes after that I was checked in. Over the next four hours, between bouts of waiting, I had an X-Ray, spoke to a doctor and was released with instructions of how to treat want turned out to be a severely sprained ankle. In those four hours I wasn't thinking about how long it was taking or the fact that I was receiving government subsidized healthcare, I was impressed by the fact that over 30 other people with a range of maladies on one Sunday afternoon in a 4 hour window were receiving government subsidized healthcare. Overall, it was a great experience and definitely showed me the benefits of socialized healthcare.

Hitchhiker's cliff notes to a career in neuroscience 2

I realize in many of my posts I seem to lash out at something. Often its a piece of news from the realm of higher education, but recently it was the seemingly glib treatment that researchers laid out a career guide in neuroscience. They began by glossing over the oversupply of trainees and the intense level of competition both within academia and in the careers that neuroscience trained scientists could easily transition to outside of academia. They then went on to say that there are four things you need to succeed in attaining your own neuroscience research lab within academia that I summarize as, mobility- you have to go where the jobs are, networking - you need plenty of connections to succeed through the backchannels and other paths outside the traditional structures, build your CV - you need to publish a lot in high impact journals in order to chase your own independent funding, and finally engage in neuroscience and the next generation - you have to like what you do and help others like it too.

In my previous post I gave my impression of what a career guide to becoming a research professor actually looks like. Here I'll give another impression expanding the guide to wanting to work in academia more broadly.

1. Engage in neuroscience and the next generation
2. Taking your time
3. Train broadly (yet also specifically)
4. Networking and saying yes (and no strategically)
5. Reflecting and Introspecting

1. Engage in neuroscience and the public/next generation
Before starting down the path towards a career in neuroscience you really have to love the topic and the process. The reason that people with perfect GPAs and GREs but no research experience don't get into graduate school is because without evidence of having gone through the research experience and wanting more, its a gamble whether this intelligent person has the qualities that make them a good scientist. Much of the research process is a grind and filled with ambiguity and failure. You have to enjoy both being by yourself and at times with a lot of other people. You have to enjoy gray areas and trying to sort through tons of conflicting information. You have to go through the grind for few rewards, internal or external. Graduate school is hard and probably becomes nearly impossible if you don't enjoy the topic that you're studying.

Sometimes when you're down in your silo working away you can forget about the outside world. In order to have a future for you to be able to keep doing your work, its necessary to share you process with the public and school-aged children so that they can be excited and understanding of what you're doing. Without public support there will be no academia and no support for research.

2. Taking your time
In the second half of college as students start to think about what they want to do in the future, sometimes I hear students say that they're just going to go to graduate school because they're not sure what they want to do. It scares me to hear that because it seems like they're skipping step 1 above. While I realize that the road to your first position as a tenure-track is a long one (2 years masters, 4 years PhD, 2 years post-doc), it seems that most people who are in the position of giving grants and hiring professors see trainees as fine wines or spirits that need years of aging before they're ready. That means that in general many successful people put in time as a research assistant/lab manager after college and maybe pursue a tangentially related masters and maybe complete multiple multi-year post-docs. Also, within each stage the general theme seems to be hurry up and wait, where you rush to do something but then you have to wait for someone or something. Most deadlines are not even set in stone, so by taking your time to do things well, one time you can save yourself time.

3. Train broadly (yet also specifically)
The triumvirate of academic assessment includes research, teaching and service. If we visualize that triumvirate as a pyramid in terms of the expectations, the bottom of the pyramid is research with teaching in the middle and service at the peak. No matter the path you want to take in neuroscience either inside or outside academia, the foundation of your training is in research. Even if you're looking to train towards becoming a teaching focused professor or a non-profit worker, your increase in effort or experience in teaching or service cannot come at a cost to your research. Graduate schools are now recognizing that there are not enough academic positions available for all of the graduate students who are there (either as cheap researchers or cheap teachers) and have begun to provide training opportunities outside research. As much as a PhD is a ticket towards a research, teaching or service oriented career, the specific skills that you gain as a researcher set you up for success in all of the other realms.

4. Networking and saying yes (and no strategically)
Meeting people both formally and informally in academia is one of the most important aspects of success. The more people you know the better your chance to find out about opportunities that are either not advertised or only offered to select people. Knowing people can help you find jobs, publish in special issues or edited books, speak at conferences and be invited to contribute to grants or new companies. In order to meet people, you have to be open to experiences and be willing to say yes to almost every opportunity. Early in your career its important to say yes to basically every opportunity while keeping in mind that not all of them will work out. After establishing yourself, then you can start to say no strategically while at the same time reaching out to others to make connections.

5. Reflecting and Introspecting
The path to a career in academia is a long one with a number of built in check points. A number of people fall victim to the sunk cost fallacy and stick with the career long after they should. There are both formal and informal requirements depending on your career path and career stage that allow people to check-in and see where they compare. Its difficult if not near impossible to give up on something after putting 20 years into it. Its also especially frustrating when you feel that things outside your own power and effort are the reasons that your (in)formal requirements don't meet up. The path is long and life and career circumstances can change quite quickly, but by following the first four pieces of advice you shouldn't have much difficulty pivoting your career focus at any stage.

The Hitchhiker's cliff notes to a neuroscience career

Source

Both my wife and I are on a galaxy wide trek in attempt to find our path in the neuroscience academic field. While unfortunately our treks have taken us to different zip codes for another year, Neuron published a guide in a recent NeuroView to help us make sure that we're on the correct path. Interestingly, since "throngs" of scientists and aspiring scientists enter the field each year with no less that 1.7 million individual scientists worldwide actively publishing on the brain and behavior since 1996, as the authors state, "not all of these young researchers can make an academic career in neuroscience."

The authors discuss instruments and initiatives that they feel can help people (with a focus on European researchers) progress through early- and mid-career steps:

1. Mobility
2. Networking
3. Build a CV and Seek Advice
4. Enjoy Neuroscience and Engage the Next Generation

The authors are describing a career trajectory towards running your own research lab at a research university, which is important to keep in mind as I revise their suggestions:

1. Publish early, publish often, publish in "glamour" journal
2. Repeat

If you want a research career in neuroscience you need to start publishing in undergraduate with at least a first author publication from your senior thesis. You then likely need to get a "glamour" first author publication in your masters or first year of PhD so that in your second year you can obtain fellowship funding (e.g. NSF, NIH, CIHR/NSERC) from a national funding source. Then through the rest of your PhD you need to publish first author "glamour" articles and use your "networking" and "mobility" and collaboration to beef up your CV with co-authorships in specialized and field-specific journals. With over 10 publications in your PhD you can then find a post-doc and maybe even bring independent post-doctoral funding with you where ever you go (remember mobility means you get to go where ever). More "glamour" first author pubs and at least 20 author publications before you're ready to go on the market, you better make sure that you were PI or co-PI on a medium or large grant before attempting to apply for jobs.

I think any good travel guide not only includes the things you should do, but also the things that you should avoid, the "tourist traps" if you well. So I''d like to hear or see the things that young scientists should not do if they want to find a career in academia. I'd also like to see a guide that goes beyond the research lab PI role to encompass other paths in academia.

Education and Neuroscience: Friends, foes or something in-between?

Three years ago I took a course on service-learning and developed a psychology service-learning course where psychology students would work with local primary and secondary school teachers to implement the latest findings from psychology and neuroscience in their courses. In association with this proposed class I also proposed a research study in which I would assess the neuroscience literacy of teachers and their willingness to learn more about the latest in psychology and neuroscience research and how it could interface with various aspects of the classroom experience. This project was heartily endorsed and approved by the University of Iowa IRB but then soundly rejected by the Iowa City School Board.

At the end of the course, for my final project I wrote a paper that I later submitted to a special issue on ways neuroscience can contribute to education that was rejected. I rewrote the paper and submitted it it to a neuroscience and education journal and was rejected for the neuroscience being to simplified. I rewrote the paper and submitted it to a broad community engagement journal and was rejected with the thought that the community wouldn't want to know about the topic. I then most recently rewrote the paper and submitted it to a higher education and community engagement journal and was again rejected (after being in review for 9 months!) and sent back very few comments where the reviewers appeared to misunderstand the what type of article it had been submitted as.  With these three years of experiences, although I see the relationship between neuroscience and education as potentially fruitful and mutually beneficial, I don't think that sentiment is shared in either field.

Source

Recently the Guardian touched on the contentious relationship between neuroscience and education. The article beings by noting the number of nonsense neuroscience claims that make their way into the educational system. Quickly though it notes a program called, "I'm a scientist - Get me out of here" which is a public engagement initiative connecting scientists with the public, in particular children. I'm glad to see this program mentioned in the context of bringing neuroscience and education together. It tells me that I am on the right path trying to bring neuroscience and education together and taking the right tact by brining educators into the mix early, trying to see what they want to know about neuroscience rather than just telling them that right-left brain teaching and multiple intelligences are nonsense. Once I settle somewhere permanently I'll be able to form the long-term reciprocal relationships necessary to carry out this work.