Joan Baez

i got the proofs for our neuroimage paper a couple of days ago, and was slightly disgusted with the number of errors that remain in it even after the copy editor had (supposedly) done his job. i may not have mentioned this on here, but after i gave the thumbs-up to the final version, one of our co-authors (who shall remain unnamed) took it upon himself to make a few "improvements" just before making the submission. there's nothing egregious -- a few omitted and extraneous words, and some stylistic clunkers -- but it annoys me that i should still have to make those corrections at this late stage of the game. there should be a rule in collaborative writing where one, and only one person is the grammar guy, and that person gets to be the last guy to touch anything before the final version is locked down. and by 'one person', i mean not the native chinese speaker who doesn't believe in indefinite articles.

aargh

the aargh page

decisions

von's post yesterday reminded me a little of a talk i attended recently by brian knutson, who studies neuroeconomics and how decision-making is instantiated in the brain. through various studies over the last decade or so, we've shown pretty convincingly that there are certain areas in the reward pathway and frontal cortex that give us the power to predict decisions a person will make above and beyond their stated preferences. it also seems that the more difficult the decision is, the more incremental validity the neural information gives us. in other words, in cases where we have trouble a lot of making up our minds, it may be that having direct access to neuronal activity in these regions of interest may tell us what we "really" prefer (i.e. laceration, or broken phone). so, von, for $500 and a trip to philly, you can have your answer. i'll even throw in a couple drinks of scotch.

erdos number = 8

more than a year after first trying to figure out what my erdos number, is, or if i even have one, committee member geoff has come to the rescue by posting his on his lab profile. in 4 days, i'll officially have an in-press co-authored paper with dr. detre (hold your applause), which means the chain goes thusly:

Step 2: John Detre with Eric Zarahn: Aguirre GK, Detre JA, Zarahn E, Alsop DC. 2002. Experimental design and the relative sensitivity of BOLD and perfusion fMRI. Neuroimage. 2002 Mar;15(3):488-500.

Step 3: Eric Zarahn with Karl J. Friston: Friston KJ, Zarahn E, Josephs O, Henson RN, Dale AM. Stochastic designs in event-related fMRI. Neuroimage. 1999 Nov;10(5):607-19.

Step 4: Karl J. Friston with Michael Breakspear: Breakspear M, Terry JR, Friston KJ. Modulation of excitatory synaptic coupling facilitates synchronization and complex dynamics in a biophysical model of neuronal dynamics. Network. 2003 Nov;14(4):703-32.

Step 5: Michael Breakspear with Jalal M. Fadili: Bullmore E, Fadili, J, Breakspear M, Salvador R, Suckling J; Brammer M. Wavelets and statistical analysis of functional magnetic resonance images of the human brain. Stat Methods Med Res. 2003 Oct;12(5):375-99.

Step 6: Jalal M. Fadili with David L. Donoho: Bobin J, Starck JL, Fadili JM, Moudden Y, Donoho DL. Morphological component analysis: an adaptive thresholding strategy. IEEE Trans Image Process. 2007 Nov;16(11):2675-81.

Step 7: David L. Donoho with Charles Kam-tai Chui: Chui, Charles; Donoho, David Special issue on diffusion maps and wavelets. Applied and Computational Harmonic Analysis. 21 (2006), no. 1, 1-2.

Step 8: Charles Kam-tai Chui with Paul Erdős: Borosh, I.; Chui, C. K.; Erdős, P. On changes of signs in infinite series. Anal. Math. 4 (1978), no. 1, 3-12.

Yes! One more thing to strike off the bucket list!

halloween. i sat on the stoop with wh (and assorted friends) at his house, and we gave out candy as the sky slowly turned dark. one of the girls had dressed up as an age-inappropriate word search, and had to conceal the word VAGINA circled in orange every time a kid of elhi age came past. the reese's pieces went first, and the stragglers got horrible tootsie rolls and mini lollipops that tasted like codeine, and then we went inside and had cheese, and pot pie, and roasted brussel sprouts, and a quite-fantastic chocolate torte, and finished off a languishing bottle of clos du bois. it started raining, and the phillies lost game 2 of the world series, but it's ok because no matter what people say to me i still hate baseball. there may be riots this week, though, so stay indoors if you're in the city.