Really interesting work at Brown University (John Donoghue)published in Nature and reported on in today’s New York Times–click on the link above.

Money quote:
“But the paper in Nature is the first peer-reviewed publication of an experiment in people with a more sophisticated implant, able to monitor many more brain neurons than earlier devices. The paper helps “shift the notion of such ‘implantable neuromotor prosthetics’ from science fiction towards reality,” Stephen H. Scott, professor of anatomy and cell biology at Queen’s University in Ontario, wrote in a commentary in the journal.”

The last twenty-four hours were spent at the Great Apes Trust learning about an incredible research facility–one focused on generating rich cognitive data from Orangutans and Bonobos that live, not in a Zoo, but an a truly enriched environment. This facility, designed by a talented group of primatalogists including Krasnow’s own Rob Shumaker and led by board chair and founder Ted Towsend lies on some 230 acres of forest and meadowland along the Des Moines River. Suffice it to say, I was impressed. The pictures are of a sculpture that was actually just completed yesterday of Azy, the male organutan, who appears in the next image (next to another female) with Rob Shumaker. My colleague in the sculpture image is Professor Ann Palkovich of Krasnow and the Mason department of anthropology.

Following the site visit, the dinner yesterday evening at Ted’s beautiful house was spectacular.

In the meantime, I’m back for a while. The construction seems to be progressing well and we are looking forward to the excitement that will commence in August with the new academic year.

Jim

Tomorrow afternoon, I’m off to visit a new research effort called The Great Apes Trust–some five miles from downtown Des Moines. We’ve had a long history at Krasnow of interest in the cognitive capabilities of these magnificent animals that share so much biology with us. I’ll hopefully be able to report from the road on what I see (including some pictures). In the meantime, do click on the link above.

Jim

This is the summer of planning with a relatively long time horizon. Part of the reason for that is my reappointment to a second five year term as director; another component has to do with the enormous about of change that is happening this summer as a result of construction and turnover in scientific staff (we have lost two valued PI’s and gained three new ones). Certainly with the new space and the magnet, there are opportunities to recruit individuals that simply weren’t possible before.

One aspect of this long term planning that comes to mind this morning is how to take the vision for what we want to be, as an institute, to the next level. By this I mean, how do we take the areas in which we excel and subsequently take actions to become great in those areas. And as a corollary, how do we decide on what areas we excel in?

This line of thought leads me to think of sustainability, particularly in what is increasingly clearly a challenging federal funding environment. We are going to have to be qualitatively more entrepreneurial to sustain our research in the current biomedical federal funding climate.

Along the same lines, there is the need to continue to take risks. Risk averse institutes for advanced studies are an oxymoron. George Johnson, the science journalist, has called that sensibility a “fire in the mind”. How do we keep that fire burning?

Jim

In contrast to the typical university department, the scientist leaders of Krasnow are termed “principal investigators”. This term of course derives from the world of grants, where a PI is the legally accountable spender-in-chief for the direct costs associated with an award (and also for her laboratory, the “decider”). At Krasnow however, the term means something considerably more complex. For one thing, it reflects the seniority (based upon research) to participate in the decisions that reflect the direction of the Institute as a whole–such has recruitment of new PI’s, selection of seminar series speakers and mentorship issues. On another level, it reflect the independence of the PI as far as their research is concerned. Thus, crucially, the PI initiates research at Krasnow.

Every semester, the Krasnow PI’s gather for lunch, as a group, to discuss the direction of the Institute. At the last such gathering, we dined at a small Turkish restaurant in Fairfax, I was struck by how collegial this group has become over the years. And this is also an important component of what it means to be a Krasnow PI: to be a colleague of ones fellow PI’s. Krasnow PI’s collaborate with one another, and when they aren’t collaborating, they serve as scientific sounding boards for one another.

Most of Krasnow’s PI’s are also university faculty members at George Mason. These two roles are distinct from one another, although they are very complementary: research is a crucial criterion for promotion and tenure. So very often, a Krasnow PI is also a professor in some academic unit of the University (Krasnow isn’t an academic unit by-the-way). Thus a Krasnow PI usually has to balance teaching and departmental service obligations with a life of scientific research at the Institute–and this isn’t always trivial.

An odd item: there are no titles on the office name plates at Krasnow. So PI status is a bit murky. But I think in whole, that ambiguity on the door labels makes for a more open scientific atmosphere here at the Institute. Students and postdocs wander in with new ideas, and ultimately those ideas are the engine of science.

Happy 4th of July,

Jim

Be sure, if you can,  to check out Evan Ratliff’s very interesting article in today’s Sunday New York Times magazine. I’m more inclined towards the mini-seizure theory than anything else.

Money quote:
“Could ordinary déjà vu be a minor version of the same thing, a brief misfire in a temporal-lobe circuit that sets off the feeling of remembering? “Somebody like A.K.P. shows that there is this sensation that is separate from memory,” Moulin told me. “If his can go chronically wrong, ours can go momentarily wrong.”

It’s good to be home although the city is still recovering from its unprecidented bath–something on the order of 12.5 inches in four days at Reagan National Airport. Our house, near the Potomac’s Chain Bridge, seems to be fine. For the Fourth, we’ll be joining friends who have chartered a boat to cruise the River past the monuments as the fireworks illuminate them. I hope for good weather.

I’m very pleased that the June  issue of The Biological Bulletin is out and we’ve made it free. It’s a special “virtual symposium” on marine invertebrate models of learning and memory–the notion being that if we can understand the mechanisms of learning in a simple system of say, 10,000 neurons, perhaps we’ll get insight into the mechanisms that subserve learning in our own brains with one hundred billion nerve cells. Kudos to issue editors Donna McPhie and Mark Miller for a spectacular job!

I’m at a meeting sponsored by Sandia National Labs here at the famous La Fonda hotel in Santa Fe. Last night I had dinner with two colleagues from the Santa Fe Institute where the discussion moved broadly across disciplines from Dennet’s views on religion to Jeff Hawkins new view of how the neocortex works. At the meeting itself there was a really interesting set of talks on the new quantum dot technology, which just now seems to be maturing to where it can be of practical use in cellular neuroscience. All of this in the absolutely unique milieu of Santa Fe–another place (like Woods Hole or La Jolla) where science is the lingua franca.

Today back across the country via Chicago to Washington where the rain storm of the last two hundred years has finally ended.

Jim

I’ll be on the road for the next couple of days and probably wont be blogging (it’s possible but not enjoyable to blog from a blackberry). Here in DC we had the most rain in a 24 hour period since 1871! So it’s a small miracle to find the Institute intact and dry this morning. In the meantime, I bring your attention to a very useful article addressing one of the major risks facing high-achievers as they go on the job market.

I had the honor of participating this afternoon in a joint venture of Howard University and University of Texas El Paso–the 3rd Preparing Future Faculty (PFF)Institute here in DC on the campus of Howard. My talk was on the value of multidisciplinary research but in discussions with the students, we covered everything from mentoring to potassium channels and then on to social complexity models. Kudos to Terrolyn P. Carter who has been coordinator of the Alliance for Graduate Education and the Professoriate and the Preparing Future Faculty Programs at Howard and to Orlando Taylor, Howard’s Vice Provost for Research and Dean of the graduate school there.

To the students I met, thank you for your great feedback and I look forward to continuing the dialog virtually.

Jim