Our Annual Krasnow Symposium…NeuroX

This year, we’ll be bringing together thought-leaders and discipline experts to talk about the current neuroscience meme that’s become ubiquitous…from neuromarketing, to neurolaw to…..neuroX. The deep question for our audience and speakers will be simply: how much of this stuff has substance? What’s hype? What’s not?

The context for the neuroscience meme extends from the concussion problem that the NFL may or may not have all the way to the promised replacement of the polygraph by the fMRI machine. Simply put, neuroscience occupies a central piece of the cultural zeitgeist in a way that it never really has before. For many decision-makers, investors, and members of the intelligent lay-public the practicality of becoming “very smart” about this new meme will play an important role in real choices: do I allow my child to play American-style football? Should I listen to those ads for brain training on Pandora? Do I chose 100 dollars right now or 200 next week?

Our speakers will be outstanding…Caltech’s Antonio Rangel, MIT’s Aude Oliva, FT’s Gillian Tett, Jim Ecklund of the NFL players’ Mackey-White TBI Committee and Phil Rubin of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy are among them….

We’ll convene on May 8-10 in George Mason’s Founder’s Hall….located conveniently proximal to the GMU/Virginia Square Metro Station on the Orange Line in Arlington. I’m looking forward to meeting many of our readers there.

Snow day in Washington…(building a new idea factory)

So far wouldn’t qualify for anything other than a dusting in Ann Arbor where loyal readers know I spent my graduate school years. And yet, the Federal Government is shut down for a snow day…hope, but doubt it saves them some much needed money.

In the meantime, we need to raise about $20M for the next wing of the Krasnow Institute. Phase III will house research centers, classrooms, student services and a state-of-the-art auditorium. Nicknamed “The Beacon” by the architects, the design leads the eye towards the Great Room and Laboratory-wing of the Krasnow Institute.

One of my favorite aspects of Phase III is that it will bring all of our faculty, postdocs and student trainees under one roof–where the famous advantages of Bell Labs will come into play: proximity breeding creative productivity….

In this rendering, you can see the home of three of our research centers, facing across the terrace towards the existing Great Room (right of the image). Beyond the Great Room are the existing laboratories of the Institute along with core support facilities. The overarching goal here is to bring together theorists and experimentalists from disciplines spanning the Krasnow scientific program –mathematics, physics, computational sciences, neurobiology, cognitive psychology, experimental economics…and I could go on. But there is another crucial piece to the pie: the ability to embed Mason students directly into this rarified environment of advanced studies into the nature of cognition…students as scholars, indeed.

Consumption bias–US versus EU

Monica Prasad’s insightful op ed in yesterday’s NYT is here.

Money quote:

Where Europeans focused on restraining consumption, Americans saw consumption as the machine that drives growth — and we still do.

Hmmm…so what did the Europeans focus on? Apparently infrastructure and production capacity. Not sure how that worked out for them…

Meanwhile Olivier Guez has this take, here. Apparently Europeans need a culture that is more pan-European, just like in 1913….not sure how that worked out either….

Yahoo ends telework as we know it…

I’ve been reading about this development all week. Today’s NYT story is here. The argument from Yahoo’s leadership is that while work-at-homers are more productive, they are less innovative.

For me, I’m less concerned about staff than science trainees. The Net and the advent of ubiquitous pdf scientific articles have in many cases ended the 24/7 laboratory culture that used to be de rigueur as a right of graduate student passage. Now the question is what is being given up? Are the new generation of science trainees as productive but less innovative because they aren’t hanging out in the lab at 2 AM?

And for those who are, are they gaining some competitive advantage?