APS Day 3

I am exhausted. Today was a very long conference filled day followed by a very long baseball game at Fenway Park. My labmate, who is a bit of a baseball freak, in a moment of sheer brilliance, bought us STANDING ROOM ONLY tickets for the game. And so we stood. For >3 hours. My feet hurt. At least the Red Sox won. Plus it was pretty cool to see Fenway Park.

So here's the tweet rundown from today. I think everything is pretty self-explanatory, so I'll go easy on the commentary. Also, have I mentioned I'm tired?

We'll start with the end - a talk by Leslie Ungerleider, an NIMH researcher, on the functional architecture of facial recognition in the primate brain.

• Leslie Ungerleider about to take the stage. She initially theorized the dual-route theory of visual cognition. #apsconv about 8 hours ago via txt
• Unilateral amygdala lesions eliminates processing of emotion expressions in faces, but not face processing more generally. #apsconv about 7 hours ago via txt

A talk by Daniel Wegner of Harvard, called "Is Anyone Home? How We Decide What Has A Mind." This was a fascinating talk, and I will have thoughts on this, probably, at a later date. It was at this talk that I met a lovely reader by the name of Chelsea.

• Daniel Wegner: how do we decide what (or who or when) has a mind? #apsconv about 10 hours ago via txt
• Wegner: no mind unless it's perceived? Do we think minds into existence? #apsconv about 10 hours ago via txt
• Humans are good at attributing minds where there are none, but also blatantly ignoring or at least discounting evidence of minds. #apsconv about 10 hours ago via txt
• Wegner: religious people want something & may think of god. Non-relig want something & think of google. #apsconv about 9 hours ago via txt

And a talk by Daniel Ansari called "The Calculating Brain: The Roles of Development and Individual Differences"

• Why study mental arithmetic? Early math skills strong predictor of later acad achievement. Dyscalculia - dev prob w/ calc & number #apsconv
• Adult lesion and fmri studies dominate this field. What about kids & indiv diffs? #apsconv about 13 hours ago via txt
• Left angular and supramarginal gyri critical for calc (for reading too! Interesting) about 13 hours ago via txt
• Fmri: Age-related increases in left temporoparietal. Decreases in prefrontal & hippocampus. Shift: online calc/encoding to retrieval. #a ... about 13 hours ago via txt
• DTI evidence also supports relationship btw angular and parahippocampal gyri about 13 hours ago via txt
• Why is temporoparietal network implicated in reading & math? Maybe symbol-referent mapping. #apsconv about 12 hours ago via txt

I also got the chance today to meet the puppeteer behind @PsychScience, and we started a good conversation about psychology in the blogosphere, which I expect will continue in coming days and weeks. Expect good things to come!