Name:Psychedelic Location: Boston, Massachusetts, United States Birthday:9/23/1981 Gender:Female
Interests:violin, reading, all things musical, drawing, friends & chillage, being amused Expertise:The psychology of music perception and cognition Occupation:Research and development Industry:Education/Research
Perhaps to commemorate such major changes in life, it may be time for this blog to acquire a new address. Xanga has served me well, but henceforth I will be migrating to Neuraljumpingjacks.blogspot.com for informal blogging activities, and myname.com for professional activities.
So exciting. To think that I was the only one who cared, and now there is a serious cult following, with even official endorsement from Max Mathews, widely known as the father of electronic music. My bio is here and my abstract here. The talk went extremely well; now I'm ready to sit back and watch awesome people play awesome otherworldly music. This past weekend was an eventful and very good one. Played in an opera, drove to New Haven and back, gave two talks at two conferences in two cities, made new contacts, hung out with old advisor, saw my name in the news, and importantly, got our absolute pitch paper accepted by Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience! Yay.
Many thanks to the following performers: Elizabeth R superbly imitating the infamous Marilyn Monroe rendition of 1962, The Beatles, Dave M, Adam M from DC, Betty N from Hong Kong, Cecilia P from Shanghai, Charles L, Charles T, Christine F from the Netherlands, Emilie K from CA, Jenny S, Joe D, Cate B in Québécois, Jon E, Kwanie from CA, Larry and Laura from Atlanta GA, Liz P-G while gargling a mouthful of water, Lynn L (third time lucky) Mabel C, Margaret S, Mattie P en Franglais, Rob G having been kicked in the balls in DC, Saleemian and Maureenium, Susan Y famously tone-deaf, Casey and Rose from St Louis, Anand J, perhaps? Véronique I. playing an electronic birthday card, John Doe with poor cellphone coverage, Vincent C., Whitney G. from MD, Wah L., Xin Z., Yang Z. from CA, Emilie K. take 2, Chris L. from CA, Anja H. from Germany, and, of course, Dr. Richard W for the ingenious idea, the artistic direction, arrangement, organization, sound editing, and technical support, and the final solo.
Two neurons meet at a synapse. One neuron says hi. The other one doesn't care. The first neuron keeps trying, and suddenly, bam! The second neuron goes crazy and henceforth it keeps going crazy whenever the first neuron fires. This wonderful process of long-term potentiation is broadly thought of as the basis for learning and memory. But how far does it go? Can one develop LTP for riding a bike? For recognition of the boss's footsteps? For the seventh chord in the fourth movement of Brahms's Fourth Symphony? For coding in Python? The point of this post is that I've been aching to learn some new skills for a while. All this paper- and grant-writing business is rapidly becoming the rule rather than the exception, and aspirations of discovering the neural experience of music is giving way to salesmanship and politics. Perhaps a few spurts of late-night productivity will help. It has been an interesting summer; perhaps too busy to really feel the relaxation, but the traveling schedule was all booked and I did see many a novel sight. Photos are now up:
Innovation is how I measure my own productivity. As that is quite different from the ways the world measures productivity, conflicts do result occasionally. For a few months I had been simply churning things out at a predictable, nine-to-five kind of way (well, more like 10-to-6:30). And while there have been results to show, data acquired and analyzed, Powerpoints presented and so on, the very essence of creativity and coming up with innovative solutions to the problems, which drew me to this field in the first place, has been replaced by the need to be mentally stable and all-inclusive in terms of time management and lab politics. I want to learn new stuff and come up with new ideas; but when I'm busy doing I have no spare time or mental resources to be innovating on a large scale. On the other hand, so much sweat is required to maintain a lab and carry a project through from inception to completion, that most of the necessary work is not part of the snazzy algorithm or the brilliant neural jumping jack, but to the stick-to-itiveness, the hours of proofreading and double-checking, or the whip-holding ability if said work requires supervision. Now that several projects are on the brink of completion, there remains only a home stretch of resubmitting. And I am impatient to hit the proverbial last nail before moving on to the next wave of scientific interest, but I hope I am becoming increasingly sensitive towards the balance between maintaining old turf and breaking new ground. Perhaps that is just part of growing up: acquiring the ability to combine level-headed mainstream work with the ideas that motivate. It is only with a combination of both that one can consistently and convincingly bring forth good ideas to the world. And that is why we do what we do, isn't it? On a related note: congratulations to the lovely graduates of 2009!
