I know what I want to study and research, but it's taken a while to find out exactly what it's called. There are a lot of disciplines and pseudo-disciplines that feature the word "neuro" in their name. Anyway, the field I'm focusing glories in the handle "cognitive neuroscience". It probably sounds like gobbledegook for most people but for me it's full of promise.
"Cognitive Neuroscience--With its concern about perception, action, memory, language and selective attention---will increasingly come to represent the central focus of all Neurosciences in the 21st century."
Now that's what I call right up my street. Let me at it!.
Friday 23 July 2010
Friday 9 July 2010
"You don't wanna do that, mate"
Last Friday at my wife's graduation ball I was chatting with Marianna, one of her fellow GEPs (Graduate Entry Programme) - intense, off-the-scale brilliant with a degree in Chemistry from MIT and chosen to compete for the medicine Gold Medal in London this year. She asked about my plans, I told her about my thinking on the PhD research project and she practically whooped on the spot. She picked up the idea and ran with it. Very energizing.
The following day I was at a BBQ and found myself in conversation with a guy who turned out to be a retired consultant psychiatrist. He too asked about my plans, so I told him. The response was very different. If he had been a less elevated professional, he would have sucked through his teeth, shaken his head and said, "you don't wanna do that, mate." As it was, he tilted his head back, raised his eyebrows and said "you'll have quite a lot of reading to do....." I found his response quite discouraging at first. Then talking further, I was surprised to find out that he didn't know the difference between PET scanning and fMRI scanning, two techniques for mapping brain activity. I came to the conclusion that either he was way behind the curve or else his area of speciality was different from what I'm looking at.
So far I've had four types of response to my idea.
1."What?"- (meaning "I don't understand and I'm not interested in understanding"
2. "Sounds interesting" - meaning "let's talk about something else"
3. "You'll have to do XX and have you read YYY?" - meaning "I already know loads about this subject"
4. "Wow - so you could do this thing and maybe that thing and how will you approach ZZZ?" - meaning "I understand and I'm interested"
The following day I was at a BBQ and found myself in conversation with a guy who turned out to be a retired consultant psychiatrist. He too asked about my plans, so I told him. The response was very different. If he had been a less elevated professional, he would have sucked through his teeth, shaken his head and said, "you don't wanna do that, mate." As it was, he tilted his head back, raised his eyebrows and said "you'll have quite a lot of reading to do....." I found his response quite discouraging at first. Then talking further, I was surprised to find out that he didn't know the difference between PET scanning and fMRI scanning, two techniques for mapping brain activity. I came to the conclusion that either he was way behind the curve or else his area of speciality was different from what I'm looking at.
So far I've had four types of response to my idea.
1."What?"- (meaning "I don't understand and I'm not interested in understanding"
2. "Sounds interesting" - meaning "let's talk about something else"
3. "You'll have to do XX and have you read YYY?" - meaning "I already know loads about this subject"
4. "Wow - so you could do this thing and maybe that thing and how will you approach ZZZ?" - meaning "I understand and I'm interested"
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