Over the years, I’ve accumulated thousands of notes and a personalized GTD system (with tags and notebooks) in Evernote. I use my own flavor of the Zen to Done method, where I capture pretty much everything (from recipes to articles to read, and from project notes to grant deadlines). I’ve come to heavily rely onContinue reading “Note-taking 101: from Evernote to Obsidian”
Category Archives: Research
Post-postdoc acknowledgments and sentiments
Writing the acknowledgment section of my PhD thesis felt like a reward at the end of a long journey: taking the time to highlight everyone who contributed, and appreciating the importance of humanity in science. While there is no such thing as a postdoc thesis, it feels just as significant to wrap up the lastContinue reading “Post-postdoc acknowledgments and sentiments”
Authorship: credit vs. responsibility
A long-ish Twitter thread on the dangers of conflating credit and responsibility assignment in scientific authorship.
Brain hats
I’m a long-term fan of inventor Ellen McHenry’s brain hat: print out a simple template, cut and fold, and wear neuroanatomy on your head! Ideal for those who are not as brave as Nancy Kanwisher. The photos below show me, with the brain hat I made during my studies at ENS Paris. I’ve asked studentsContinue reading “Brain hats”
NeuroMatchAcademy self-organized slow pods
Since Tweets tend to get lost/unfindable, I’m putting the links for self-organized NMA material study groups here. I’d be happy to hear back (comment on this post) if you’ve found a pod. How are your experiences going through the materials? As there is overwhelming interest in a slower version of #NeuromatchAcademy, see here: the slowContinue reading “NeuroMatchAcademy self-organized slow pods”
Being the RNG
How would you generate a sequence of random numbers, if you didn’t have a computer or calculator? Each time you typ rng default or random.randint, numbers get drawn from precise observations of some natural process or special algorithms to produce sequences of numbers with certain properties of randomness. But what if your laptop died, yourContinue reading “Being the RNG”
#ShutDownSTEM; fighting racism in academia
The last few weeks in the US have been a political and emotional tornado. As protests spread around the country and beyond, I compulsively read the news, went to a local protest and watched Ava DuVernay’s chilling documentary 13th. I also thought a lot about the different ways in which societal and systemic racism manifestsContinue reading “#ShutDownSTEM; fighting racism in academia”
Climate action for (neuro)scientists: a concrete guide
Climate change is the most urgent problem currently facing humanity – including a subset who call themselves (neuro)scientists. While many academics still consider (political) activism far outside their comfort zone, the broader scientific community is slowly waking up to the urgency of the situation and the role we can play as a community of evidence-mindedContinue reading “Climate action for (neuro)scientists: a concrete guide”
Choice history biases subsequent evidence accumulation
This post describes my latest paper: Urai AE, de Gee JW, Tsetsos K, Donner TH. (2019) Choice history biases subsequent evidence accumulation. eLife, 8:e46331, and was reposted from the DonnerLab website. To study the mechanisms of decision-making, researchers often treat individual decisions as isolated events. However, as we go around the world, our decisions canContinue reading “Choice history biases subsequent evidence accumulation”
Which direction should a brain image face?
Preparing images for a talk, I was using the great bioRender to grab some images of brains-in-heads in humans and mice. Putting them on my slides, I found the left-facing much more pleasant to look at. Why?
