Author: jlolds

Native Angeleno, professor of Neuroscience and Public Policy at George Mason University

Welcome to the the 2008-2009 Academic Year

A week from today, the Institute for Advanced Study parking lot will be jammed with parents unloading their children’s stuff–we’re adjacent to the freshman dorms here at George Mason University–and so the beginning of the academic year is unmistakable for us.

I have just returned to campus from the annual two-day President’s Council/Board of Visitor’s retreat. It’s an entirely useful exercise that informs me of the entire waterfront of activities going on at this very large public university. Beyond informing, it also is wonderful for getting into the right frame-of-mind to begin another academic year as Institute Director.
For the Institute, this marks the beginning of our eighteenth year, and our sixth since fully merging into George Mason. I count approximately 60 scientific staff, 7 administrative support folks (including myself) and two wonderful doctoral programs that fill our halls and break-out places with students. We have finished our first expansion project (we’re now approximately 35,000 square feet) and we’re going to commence the second expansion sometime during this academic year (another 12,000 or so square feet).
Most importantly, we’re doing significant science–advanced studies–at the forefront of the interface between biology, psychology and machines–“mind sciences”. Throughout my travels this past summer, I find myself reminding: I may be a neuroscientist, but I lead an institute for advanced study.
So let’s focus on the trans-disciplinary science that our illustrious founders chose as putatively fruitful–cognition across the intersection of computer sciences, neurobiology and cognitive psychology. 
Good luck for a successful year!
Jim

Scifoo rap up

This was without a doubt one of the very best meetings I have ever attended. From the “flying car” (known as the Transition) to the Tesla roadster, to meeting one Google’s founders, Sergey Brin, to some of the very best neuroscience on the brain-machine interface–I learned an awful lot. 

We had a good session on the Decade of the Mind project—I remain cautiously optimistic.

Now for the awful red-eye back to Washington and…..a regular work day tomorrow. I wish I could just teleport like they do in Second Life.
Jim

Arrival at Scifoo

So here I am at the Wild Palms Hotel lobby in Sunnyvale getting ready for the fun to start at Scifoo camp. I got up at 4:30AM this morning to catch a Jet Blue flight at Logan. And all went well for once except for losing a pair of glasses–I’m on the reserve pair.

Thinking about Science 2.0, I keep returning to the notion of provenance of the data–especially for images and movies. It’s a major issue. As important I think as metadata.

Jim

More from the Cape


A wonderful dinner last night with a former student, now a valued member of my editorial board, and her husband.  This evening sitting out under a cool, cloudy sky in Falmouth working on a new paper about the trajectory of cortical development in post-natal humans (from zero till six years old).

I’m thinking about ideas for Nature’s Scifoo Camp at Google later this week. It’s a lot of fun.
Jim

MBL Corporation meeting

Today is the high point (at least as far as activity goes) for summer bioscience in Woods Hole–the first Friday in August when the annual Corporation meeting coincides with the hallowed traditions of the Friday Evening Lectures. This morning, the campus of the MBL is pristine, the ocean deep blue and the next three hours will bring together the elected scientists who make up the MBL Corporation–I’m proud to call myself one of them.

MBL is such a unique asset for biology–the tag-line “Biological Discovery in Woods Hole” pretty much telegraphs what has been going on here for 120 years. During the summer, with the internationally recognized educational program, the summer investigators who move their labs here to take advantage of both the marine diversity but also the scientific diversity of thought, and the distinctly non-hierarchical milieu–new biological discoveries, really paradigm breaking discoveries, have happened here regularly.
Perhaps there is a lesson here for the academy.
Jim

MSU’s President: institutes detract

Here’s an interesting piece by Princeton’s Stan Katz on Michigan State University’s President Simon has concluded regarding excellence at the large public university:

MSU President Lou Anna K. Simon is quoted as saying that therefore “the university [must look] at the big picture before it considers any new program and balances societal needs with the institution’s strengths. . . . ‘You try to find areas where you can be one of the best, if not the best.’” The operational conclusion has been “the elimination of independent research centers, which have self-sustaining budgets and can create barriers to interdisciplinary collaboration.”

Forgive me, but I don’t see this logic. Seems to me, that institutes do the opposite–they in fact eliminate barriers that would naturally exist between conventional units to trans-disciplinary collaboration. Read the piece and see what you think.

Jim

Wrong phone directory

It’s a rainy, foggy morning here in Woods Hole. I woke up to the fog horn. The journal staff here played a practical joke on me: they found a copy of the 1978-1979 Woods Hole phone director (where I am listed as a student) and left it on my desk prominently displayed. I thought nothing of it until I tried to look up a number and saw the old three digit extensions.

Tomorrow is the date for the MBL corporation meeting. And then the MBL Friday Evening lecture: Sir Paul Nurse, the Nobel Laureate will talk about “Great Ideas in Biology”. Should be an interesting day.

Jim

Do I need words to think?

When I experience conscious thought, it is mostly in words (I am making a big exception for the type of conscious thought that accompanies hitting my thumb accidentally with a hammer). When I remember my dreams, for the most part, it seems to me that those remembered dreams included words. There is an old French movie L’Enfant Sauvage, directed by Francois Truffaut about a child who somehow survives in the wild to grow up without words. In the movie, the child clearly thinks. There is good scientific evidence that the Great Apes think without words. I believe my dogs think…without words. And yet, I can’t imagine my own conscious experience without the internal narrative of language. Why is that? Is it just our own species-specific experience of conscious thought that requires language?

Jim