As I return from vacation, my second term as Krasnow Institute director begins. This is probably as good a time as any to reiterate my overall vision for the Institute over the next five years and my scientific management philosophy.

When I step down as Institute Director in 2012, it’s a primary goal that my successor will assume leadership of a tightly-knit scientific community focused on the problem of understanding mind. The Krasnow Institute’s scientific program will span across many complementary disciplines ranging from cognitive science to molecular neurobiology and including a strong emphasis on engineering the mind computationally and embodied robotically. The Institute will have an international reputation for bringing together scholars across these multiple disciplines, under one roof who will distinguish themselves by reaching across their fields to collaborate scientifically. And the productivity of the Institute will have been made manifest by a track-record of the highest impact publications which will delineate a significant series of discoveries concerning the nature of mind.

My scientific management philosophy has been a learning (and memory) process developed over the past twelve years that I’ve been in leadership roles. Simply put, that philosophy is a “light touch” combined with a (virtual) open door. What this means is that, as a rule, I’ll use my authority minimally and that I will attempt to respond rapidly to any concern or query from Institute scientific or support staff. I’ll guard confidences and I will do my utmost to fulfill any commitment made by myself or on my behalf.

I’m looking forward to getting back to work.

Jim

Today the broadband was finally hooked up and I can send you the view out my window, looking north-west across the Shenandoah Valley. I’ve been working on the book and my talk for Austria, but I’ve also found time for the pool and a PD James Novel, The Lighthouse (which was excellent by the way).

But all vacations have to end, and so does this one. I’ll be back at the Institute on Monday.

Jim

Margaret Talbot’s piece is still behind the firewall, but it’s a good read in that she clearly understands the hype that’s currently behind the notion of using fMRI to build a better lie detector. She interviews some very credible cognitive neuroscientists and does some appropriate digging into who the potential customers for such technologies might be.
Nevertheless, I think she misses the key point I’ve made here before: namely that the most valuable lie to detect really is something much more complex than a lie: namely a hidden altered state of consciousness. A hidden altered state of consciousness may be as simple as hiding one’s state of inebriation, but it might also be as complex as one’s true job as an espionage agent rather than one’s cover story.

So vacation has begun with diving into a book project I’ve been thinking about for some time, dealing with the national conversation we need to begin having about neuroethics. My co-author and I have been talking about this idea for so long that the words pretty much flowed easily today. It’s an interesting idea that writing is easy when you’ve had enough time to really think through an issue. Conversely (at least for me) when I just jump into writing about an issue, it can be difficult going. All of this is potentially an argument against blogging.

Also took some time to work on a consulting project that I’ve been at for the past two years in the area of integrating translational research into mental health delivery.

So where’s the vacation time? Well the other day on the road down to Wintergreen we listened to Doris Kearns Goodwin’s book on Lincoln’s cabinet, Team of Rivals. It was one of those “books on tapes” which are now on CD’s. Driving through the heartland of the Commonwealth of Virgina where the Civil War was decided, made the characters come very much alive…across the century and a half.

Jim

I’ll be on vacation for the next two weeks at our house in Wintergreen Virginia…somewhat near Charlottesville at the very top of the Blue Ridge. It will be at least ten degrees cooler at 3000 feet than the valley floor below and the views from the glass windows extend some 60 miles. While I’m there I hope to begin work on a new book and to finish off my slides for my trip to Austria in about four weeks. All of this of course depends on Verizon successfully bringing in broad-band and my resurrection of an old Apple Airport wireless router. If worse comes to worse, I’ll just hang out on the Appalachian Trail I guess…it’s about 1000 meters away from the house.

I hope to continue blogging from the mountains.

Jim

From this week’s SCIENCE: Harbaugh et al.

Money quote:

However, consistent with warm glow, neural activity further increases when people make transfers voluntarily.

I’ll be out of touch for the next two days at an NSF review panel for the IGERT program which stands for Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship. Unlike most of my colleague panelists, however, I wont be traveling out of town. The National Science Foundation is just a bit down Glebe Road in Arlington from my house, closer than the Krasnow Institute. I’m seriously thinking of taking the local Arlington bus, if I can figure out the schedule.

Jim

For those outside university library firewalls, I’m linking to the Faculty of 1000 link. Here’s the direct link the the Nature article. The key point is that in a mouse model of Parkinson’s disease, the calcium channel blocker, isradapine, acts to protect pars compacta dopamine neurons. In my opinion this discovery may have real significance for patients.

Jim

Here’s a wonderful article from the American Scientist On-line about all those strange spam subject lines that seem to be immune to our University spam filters. Turns out it all comes down to bio-mimetics. The spam evolves with the anti-spam software: essentially co-evolution.

Jim

Cnet news has a great story about the upcoming new DARPA Urban Grand Challenge. Here at the Krasnow Institute, we’re very interested in machine intelligence as part of the larger cognitive issue.

Money quote:

Now comes the hard part: a race on mock city streets that will raise the bar for artificial intelligence in the 21st century.

A team of officials from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) visited a parking lot here next to Google headquarters to test Stanford University’s autonomous passenger car, Junior, in what was its first big qualifying test for the upcoming Urban Challenge, DARPA’s third Grand Challenge competition for driverless vehicles.