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My name is James Herman and we're in the
Laboratory for Sensorimotor Research which means is the subdivision
of National Eye Institute at the National Institutes of Health in
Bethesda,Maryland.
We study the brain. We
try to understand how large groups of brain cells
function; which brain cells contribute to which
functions that an animal does. Both of my parents were English professors.
My father always used to say, "A life of the mind is what it's all about." My name is
James after James Joyce.
So you know just some small shoes to fill there; nothing crazy.
When I was young I was extraordinarily curious
all the time. I've loved trying to sort understand the world around me and
explain everything that I see from a very young age. In the first grade
when my formal mathematics education began,
I was hooked instantaneously on math and I loved it.
I was looking at the back to one is marble notebooks that everyone
has as a first grader; probably the first epiphany
that I ever had as a young man was realizing that this was the times table
that was printed on the back of this marble notebook.
This grid of mysterious numbers
turned out to have some meaning and reason behind it. So for me science is
really an extension of that.
I record from
one brain cell at a time; but the brain has between 10 and 100 billion
cells it it. Recording from one at a time is a very very slow way to work
things out. I need to
carefully measure and calibrate all the equipment that I use every day so that
involves
inspecting these electrodes that I'm going to use to record the
the brain activity and their really really small. Oh, that one's no good.
I'm looking at a microelectrode. It's a
small piece of tons-tin wire and its coded in Epoxy
and right at the tip I need to make sure that I have a perfect little point
but moments like this one,
I do not. So I'm going to have to get rid of it and
look for another one.
3.0 megan;
excellent!
I have whole bunch of other equipment that I need to measure and align and
just carefully set up before any of this can go on. I sit in front of
a bank of maybe ten computer screens
where I'm carefully trying to monitor everything from the animals.
Be aware to how much juice they're getting to
the position at my electrode and what the electrical activity that's coming
off from there is
where the animal is looking; that is the
sound of brain activity in response to
color stimulus.
One way of looking at the brain is as a computational device is something that
does mathematical operations. And we know that the way that it performs those
mathematical operations is not the way that we would
expect, which is very strange because here's this thing that's sitting in our
head. It's our brain.
It would be really great if we could break away from
the structure we have the understanding we have about how those operations should
be done
so that we can start to make progress on understanding how this
really in some ways alien object performs all these things.
I'm incredibly lucky I get it use my curiosity
I get to follow follow up on
everything that I'm curious about.
Oh that's a good idea. I love the fact that I can
hang out with my colleagues every day and we can
bounce ideas off each other and we can talk about
you know I see this this way in no I see it's really more like this;
because you know that benefit gained from
other people's opinions and other peoples view points is just completely
invaluable.
There's a change in the amount of deficit. This is all new
territory. I don't think
that's expected. I think that's unexpected.
So you might have a group of people all hanging out
talking and you know sort of like a agreeing, agreeing, agreeing and then you
realize that no one has understood anything.
So it's incredibly important to just ask as many questions as you
possibly can.
I think that there is for some people the feeling that they're not smart
enough or that they're not good enough
to do a certain level of work or something you know that they've thought they
could never do. Oh, I can never
be a mathematician; I can never be this, I can never be that.
It's not about summer being the best it's not about being me know
the smartest
your viewpoint is unique you're the only one who has it
no one can take it away from you and it has incredible values
zone
hold on to it be proud of it making some the moral
the way the mom
when where the knife
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