Ask a Neuroscience Professor

[Mark1031]

How does Impact Factor affect a professor's ability to run a lab? If someone is getting out one paper per year, would it be better to have a primary (or last) authorship on a low-impact journal, or a middle-authorship on a really prestigious journal?

(For our audience, here's an example. I've brought up the publications for Susan Lindquist, a dynamo researcher. You'll notice that one some articles, her name comes last. This tends to mean that her laboratory is the one that performed the majority of the work and that she was responsible for getting everyone together to do the work. First author tends to be the person who did the majority of the actual bench-work and writing. Middle authors are people who helped.)

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=lindquist s

You'll see that in 2012, she got a 'middle' authorship in the Journal of Neuroscience (a really prestigious journal), but in 2011 she got 'first' authorship in PLoS (the public library of science), which is an awesome journal but not regarded as highly as J. Neurosci.

The only thing that matters in running a lab is getting the $$ to do it. Now of course that requires that you produce results and a have ideas and is highly competitive but there are different strategies. It is best to have both high numbers AND high impact papers. This does not mean all papers need to be high impact but having just a few High impact and nothing else (me pretty much-I just finished a grant renewal and have 3 Science papers in the period but only 7 total) is not great however in the current funding climate you can no longer just churn out reams of stuff no one reads or cares about (at least in my field) it is just too competitive and there will always be people who are highly productive and have some high impact to win the grants over you these days.
As far as authorship order it is most important to be senior (last) author for a PI. I would rather have a senior paper in a lesser journal than a middle in a higher journal. It does depend on how low you go. You do have a reputation and you don’t want to be known for publishing crap. Of course crap can be in high impact journals as well.

 

[Mark1031]

When neuroscientists talk about free will (and many don't), they seem to believe that their field disproves it's existence. Often, their arguments seem entirely uninformed by several hundred years of philosophical consideration of the issue (i'm thinking about people like this guy). Do you think there are any results in neuroscience that substantively disprove the proposition that we possess free will? If not, why do you think so many neuroscientists believe that there are?

Here is my experiment in free will: see http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=99183&highlight=George+Bush+sexually for more detailed discussion.

Raise your right arm. You can do it, great you must have free will. Or are you simply responding to my stimulus.

Now, if you're an atheist-- believe in God. Just do it for the experiment, you can will yourself back to being an atheist after that. If you're religious deny God.
Can you do it? I mean really do it so that you believe it not just that you activate the motor program to cause the appropriate statement to come out of your mouth.

You're in a bad mood. will yourself to be happy in the next five minutes.

You're a straight man, will yourself to find George Bush indescribably sexually attractive.

I think you'll find that there are really a lot of things that we quite clearly have no free will over.

 

[Mark1031]

Are you interested/following developments with the enzyme PKM-zeta that relate an enzyme to memory function?

I'm well aware of the PKM-zeta story. I used to work down the hall from Todd Sacktor. There are some funky things in the whole story and I am waiting for the definitive genetic experiment (knockout of the gene) before I make a final decision of what I think about it. If the KO supports it I will probably start working on it in my own system as it would be an amazingly important molecule.

 

[Mark1031]

That's implanted electrodes, not MRI, but still pretty funky. I'd rather have implanted electrodes that walk around with an MRI wrapped around my head.

You really do not want implanted electrodes in your head. However you can certainly tell a lot from that level of recording. I use the Halle Berry neurons (google it) in my talk and work on trying to directly put a thought into an animals head by stimulating the right neurons in the right pattern.

 

[El_Machinae]

I might not want modern electrodes, but I assure you that I'm rarin' for electrodes, eventually!

 

[El_Machinae]

Holy crap, congratulations, mate.

I was really impressed with your middle-authorship in Science last year, but another primary authorship? Jesus.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/03/120322161251.htm

This is basically drug-induced flashbacks, AFAICT. Fear-conditioning is a pretty easy thing to measure. I think the coup-de-grace would be to train them to salivate when they hear a bell, and then replicate the hearing of the bell with the drug, as a shout-out to Pavlov

 

[Mark1031]

You noticed. We and a competing group just came out with papers on implanting and activating memory in mice that might have some general interest and have gotten some press.

Summary here http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/339302/title/Making_mouse_memories

here: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/n...lly-label-new-memories-for-easy-reactivation/

 

[caketastydelish]

As someone that studies the brain, what would you recommend to someone with Schizoaffective disorder? Besides the most obvious thing, which is take medicine and don't do drugs.

 

[Heathcliff]

Hi,

I've got a question about neurosurgery.

As I have understand it:
Neuro surgeons drill into peoples head and cut off part of the brain.
Is that a common operation at hospitals nowadays and what's the mortality rate of such an operation?
What diagnosises do get threated with surgey.
Also what parts of the brain is it possible to cut off.