Through the Eyes of a Perceptionist

April fools gets geeky: Can you spot the genuine story?

2009-04-02T09:00:00.001-07:00

April fools gets geeky: Can you spot the genuine story?: "

Did any of this year's April Fools Day gags get your goose? Test your nerd knowledge by pinpointing the actual story below. (Props to TechCrunch for pulling together an impressive fools list.) [More]

(Via Sci Am - Mind & Brain.)

Musicians' brains keep time--with one another

2009-03-17T02:50:00.001-07:00

Musicians' brains keep time--with one another:

Ever wonder how musicians manage to play in unison? Credit their brain waves: they synchronize before and while musicians play a composition, according to new research.' [More]

(Via Sci Am - Mind & Brain.)

TEST: Easy Publishing

2009-03-06T05:55:00.003-08:00

This is a test. For a while now have I been using a program called NetNewsWire to stay up-to-date with the most recent publications in my favorite scientific journals and news-websites vis RSS. I discovered that one could very easily use these RSS messages as the basis of a blog post and then publish it through the offline editor MarsEdit. If a snippet of a Scientific American article appears below, than it seems to work and I might use it more often. At least the old weblog will get some use again than....

THE ACTUAL NEWS-ITEM:

Building a Portrait of a Lie in the Brain: "

A young man steals across the hallway, slips through a door and scans the room. He opens a drawer, snatches a wristwatch inside and puts it in his pocket. Then he hurries out the door.

Sixty more people perform the same drill, half of them filching a watch and the others, a ring. Psychiatrist F. Andrew Kozel, now at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, and his colleagues promised to give a bonus payment to anyone who could conceal the deed from the scientists, who planned to look into their brains for signs of a cover-up.

[More]

Out now!

2008-09-28T13:15:00.001-07:00

Personal Persp...

a selection of pho...

By Chris Klink

Book Preview

Silver lining

2007-08-24T04:24:00.000-07:00

Clouds do have silver linings, I have the proof!

Quantum-consciousness, the makeable percept and the abuse of science.

2006-11-07T06:17:00.000-08:00

(translation of the dutch post below)

“Thinking of Holland I see wide rivers, slowly flowing through endless low-lying land,
Inconceivably gossamer poplars on the horizon in wispish ranks” (freely translated, by dr. John Irons)

This may very well be the most famous lines of poetry in Dutch literature. Many readers will be able to proclaim them, but even more will recognize the feeling that is behind it. The fact that such lines can evoke this feeling is the basis for some good old-fahioned nostalgia and the everythinh-used-to-be-so-much-better-mentality you find with nearly everyone over the age of fifteen. Hendrik Marsman, the author of the forementioned lines clearly experiences the mental images of rivers and poplars when he thinks back of the Dutch landscape. But why, and how does this work? How can he see things that aren’t there, merely by thinking of them. Apparently seeing by memory is something our brains are able to do. The obvious next question would then be how the brain knows which images are physical and which are mental. Coincedentally I received an email last week from someone I got to know when I was living in Portland, USA. He suggested I should watch the movie “What the Bleep do we know”, partly because it was filmed in Portland and would be a nice trip through memory lane, but also because it adresses consciousness from a quantum physics point of view and wasn’t that just one of my major interests? With a healthy load of expectation I started watching the movie and it started off really in teresting. The movie tells the story of a photographer that slowly learns that her ideas and emotions aren’t reality but products created by her own consciousness. This story is intertwined with quotes of wise scientists or people that are supposed to be wise scientists. They talk about quantum physics, consciousness and neural processes. While in the beginning these intermezzos speak to the imagination, they soon turn into a spiritual manifesto of biased, pseudo-scientific nonsense. It were mainly the ocassional shots of Portland that made that I finished the movie. Although in the end there was not a lot of science left in the movie it did get me thinking. The ancient question of whether a falling tree makes a sound if no-one is there to hear it got an entirely new dimension when I asked myself whether without perception anything actually exists at all.

The basic idea that is central to this movie is based on quantum physics’ supersition principle. Elementary particles do not have a fixed position until you force them to take a form and position by perceiving or measuring them. The same principle is applied to reality, it would not have a defined shape until we perceive it. The most important error of reasoning here is a very common mistake. Laws that apply to a certain level of processes do not necessarily apply to another. Quantum physics is about elementary particles and even if it sounds great in theory rivers and poplars cannot be classified as such. But even with all this criticism there are two aspects of the movie that do have a scientific basis.

Quantum consciousness
In modernneurobiology there are theories that relate quantum physics to consciousness, but in a fundamentally different way than “What the bleep” wants us to believe. The question how thoughts arise from the grey matter and what gives rise to consciousness has accopied scientist for centuries. The reasoning to initially link thoughts and consciousness to quantum physics lays in the fact that thought are non-algorithmic. The only other known non-algorithmic processes are randomn processes and quantum processes. Since randomness does not seem to be an appealing explanation for consciousness an explanation is being sought in quantum processes. It is of course doubtable whether this is a valid argument. David Chalmers, philosophy professor at the Australian National University calls this ‘minimizing the mysteries’; The blunt fact that both consciousness and quantum physics are extremely complex and hard for us to understand does not mean they have anything to do with each other. Apart from this valid criticism there are some interesting theories that involve quantum processes to explain consciousness. The most popular of these theories is probably the Orchestrated Objective Reduction (Orc OR) model of Roger Penrose and Stuart Hameroff, that assigns quantum processes to microtubuli in our neurons. In short and very much simplified, a tubulin protein in the microtubuli of neurons can have two distinct 3d-configurations, which could in theory be in superposition. By means of interactions between tubulin-proteins and a spread of quantum states over neural networks through gap junctions between neurons, the brain could be the seat of a kind of “quantum computer” that gives rise to consciousness. Opposed to the initial enthusiasm about this theory there is a fair load of criticism. According to quantum theory, quantum processes occur at extremely low temperatures, whereas neurons are at body temperature, which is approximately 37 degrees celsius. Furthermore microtubli are present in all eukaryotic cells (cells with a nucleus), does this meanthat every eukaryotic cell is conscious? Although there are answers possible to these questions it would be too much to discuss them here. The issue that is important to me is that new theories tend to be embraced by science as the answer to all outstanding questions. This is inprinciple fine, but should be regarded with a healthy dosis of scepticism. Positively it expands are view of possible new solutions for old problems but negatively it can lead to hasty conclusions and a unhealthy amount of wishful thinking. It often happens that theories are taken out of context and abused in another field of of expertise. A lack of general knowledge about such new theories can easily facilitate made-up messages wrapped in (pseudo)science to be be accepted as true. This is exactly what happens in “What the bleep”. When two fascinating but far from ccomplete theories from quantum physics and neurobiology are presented as a solution to the problem of consciousness, covered with a sick-making spiritual sauce, it is simply a case of mis-information and propaganda. The problem of consciousness is not solved by it at all. The sequel for “What the bleep” is scheduled to appear shortly and is titled “Down the rabbit hole”, which refers to one of my favourite books of all time “Alice in Wonderland”, by Lewis Caroll. The leading figure in this book, Alice, descends through a rabbit hole into a weird world were nothing seems to be following the laws of physics. A world that is only obeying its own supernatural laws, just like the worlds of qauntum physics and consciousness.

Vision and the brain
When Alice encounters a large blue caterpillar in Wonderland, an intersting conversation takes place;

`Who are YOU?' said the Caterpillar. This was not an encouraging opening for a conversation. Alice replied, rather shyly, `I--I hardly know, sir, just at present-- at least I know who I WAS when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then.' `What do you mean by that?' said the Caterpillar sternly. `Explain yourself!' `I can't explain MYSELF, I'm afraid, sir' said Alice, `because I'm not myself, you see.' `I don't see,' said the Caterpillar. `I'm afraid I can't put it more clearly,' Alice replied very politely, `for I can't understand it myself to begin with; and being so many different sizes in a day is very confusing.' `It isn't,' said the Caterpillar.

This fragment shows how aour sense of self and our consciousness can get very confused in a world that does not act like “it is supposed to”. It also shows that perception is very personal. The visual system is responsible for a large portion of our perception of the world, but because we each have our own visual visual system, and perception is personal, we each have our own world. I deliberately use the term visual system instead of eyes, because seeing is more a matter of the brain than it is of the eyes. Some kinds of seeing are very well possible even without eyes altogether (Thinking of Holland etc..). That seeing with the eyes and seeing with the brain are distinct processes is most clearly shown by a type of pictures we call ambiguous or bi-stable. Famous examples are the Necker Cube, with two possible perspectives, Jastrows Duck-Rabbit picture and the Wife/Mother-in-Law picture. While the stimulus and the retinal image remain physically the same, the conscious percept changes over time indicating that vision is not as simple and self-evident as we think it is. Different aspects such as memory, emotion, attention and context are essential in our visual perception. This has the strong implication that there can never something as “the reality” or “the real world” because it is always en interpretation. It os “our reality” or “our real world”. The fine mental cover of Marcel Proust’ is still firmly in place. Our entire civilization is build on interpretations and assumptions, the main assumption being that we all perceive more or less the same, and have the same kind of emotions under similar circumstances. At the level of the individual we are already living in one big illusion since we can only perceive a tiny part of the perceivable world and have to fill in, assume and interpretate the rest. The substance of the little parts we do perceive is determined by many processes, concidence being one of them. In “What the bleep” quantum physics is used to solve this problem as well. There is no real world because the world is in superposition and perception colapses the waveform forcing the world to become an interpretation that is restricted to the personal experience of the perceiver. This solution is as absurd as it is untestable.

The value of new theories
If I return to Dutch literature I would like to mention the following famous line:

“...but between dream and reality, are laws in the way, and practical objections” (translated by myself)

Although I took this completely out of context, it does show us the essence of our problem. If I would rephrase the sentence it would make this more clear:

“...but between perception and reality, is knowledge in the way, and personal interpretation”

Nothing is as it seems, but at the same time time everything is as it seems. Since we cn never really know the true nature of reality, the most pure form of reality will be “our interpretation of reality”. The world that we perceive and the world that we live are the same, but cannot be reasoned together. Some time ago, someone introduced me to the term “Divine Hole”, for the emptiness between the world of reason and the world of feeling. It made sense, and it still does. Einstein was said that a problem cannot be solved with the same reasoning that created it. I don’t think I totally with him on that point, but I must admit that a fresh point of view can often be benificial for life in general and science specifically. We must however remain as critical as Popper would want us to be. Welcome new theories but do not embrace them as the answer to all our problems prematurely, that way new theories may bring us closer to an explanation for classic issues like consciousness. It is however of the utmost importance to do so in an honest and sensible way. In the case of “What the bleep” many standards of scientific decency have been ignored by taking pieces of fine scientific theories and copy-paste together into some kind of collage of a spiritual manifesto. I have explained why I can not speak for anyone else, but in my personal opinion this is wrong, no matter what superposition my brain is in.

Kwantumbewustzijn, het maakbare percept en misbruik van de wetenschap.

2006-11-07T04:03:00.000-08:00

“Denkend aan Holland zie ik brede rivieren, traag door oneindig laagland gaan.
Rijen ondenkbaar ijle populieren als hoge pluimen aan de einder staan”.

Dit zijn misschien wel de bekendste dichtregels uit de Nederlandse literatuur. Veel lezers zullen ze uit het hoofd kunnen voordragen, maar nog meer mensen zullen het gevoel achter de regels herkennen. Het verschijnsel dat bepaalde begrippen een zeker beeld of gevoel oproepen is de basis voor Oudhollandse nostalgie en de “vroeger-was-alles-beter”-mentaliteit die je bij praktisch iedereen ouder dan vijftien jaar aantreft. Hendrik Marsman, schrijver van bovenstaande regels, ziet duidelijk rivieren en populieren als hij denkt aan een Nederlands landschap. Maar hoe dan? Hoe kan het dat hij dingen ziet die hij niet fysiek voor zijn ogen heeft? Zien met je herinneringen kan blijkbaar ook, de vraag is echter hoe de hersenen het voor elkaar krijgen onderscheid te maken tussen zien met je ogen en zien met je hersenen en hoe een dergelijke beleving ontspruit aan de hersenen. Het toeval wil dat ik afgelopen week een mailtje ontving van een meisje dat ik had leren kennen toen ik voor mijn studie een half jaar in Portland in de Verenigde Staten woonde. Ze raadde me aan de film “What the Bleep do we know” eens te kijken, deels omdat deze is opgenomen in Portland en het een feest der herkenning zou zijn, deels omdat het wel iets voor mij zou zijn; was ik immers niet mateloos geïnteresseerd in de hersenen en alles wat daar mee samenhangt? Vol verwachting begon ik de film te kijken en in het begin was het allemaal reuzeninteressant. De film vertelt het verhaal van een fotografe die zich er gaandeweg bewust van wordt dat al haar ideeën en emoties niet werkelijkheid zijn maar door haar eigen bewustzijn worden gecreëerd. Dit verhaal is doorweven met uitspraken van wijze wetenschappers en lieden die daar voor door moeten gaan, over kwantumfysica, bewustzijn en andere neurologische processen. Waar deze in het begin nog wel tot de verbeelding spreken verzandt het geheel al snel in een spiritueel pamflet van eenzijdig belichte pseudo-wetenschap en inhoudsloze slogans. Het waren dan ook vooral de beelden van Portland die ervoor zorgden dat ik de film heb uitgekeken. Hoewel er uiteindelijk weinig wetenschappelijks aan deze film overblijft, heeft het me toch aan het denken gezet. De aloude vraag of een omvallende boom in een verlaten bos lawaai maakt heeft een heel nieuwe dimensie gekregen. Eigenlijk gaat het namelijk nog verder; als niemand de omvallende boom ziet vallen is er dan überhaupt wel sprake van een omvallende boom?

Het idee dat in de film gepropageerd wordt is gebaseerd op kwantumfysische wetten, elementaire deeltjes hebben geen vaste positie. Pas als je ze meet en daarmee zichtbaar maakt, krijgen ze een vorm en plaats. Ditzelfde wordt betrokken op de werkelijkheid, deze zou geen vaste vorm hebben en zich pas vormen op het moment dat we haar waarnemen. De belangrijkste denkfout die hierbij gemaakt wordt is een van de meest voorkomende; regels die voor een bepaald niveau gelden hoeven dat op een ander niveau helemaal niet te doen. Kwantumfysica geldt voor elementaire deeltjes, en hoe leuk het ook klinkt, daar kunnen we populieren of rivieren nou niet bepaald toe rekenen. Toch zitten er twee aspecten in de film die wel degelijk een wetenschappelijke basis hebben.

Kwantumbewustzijn
In de moderne neurobiologie zijn er theorieën die kwantumfysica relateren aan bewustzijn, maar op een iets andere manier dan “What the Bleep..” ons wil doen geloven. De vraag hoe gedachten zich in onze hersenen manifesteren en waar bewustzijn vandaan komt houdt wetenschappers al eeuwen bezig. Het basisidee achter de kwantumbenadering van bewustzijn is dat gedachten niet-algoritmisch zijn. De enige andere geaccepteerde niet-algoritmische processen zijn random processen en kwantummechanische processen en omdat random processen niet echt een veelbelovend systeem zijn om bewustzijn te onderzoeken wordt de verklaring gezocht in kwantummechanica. Het is natuurlijk de vraag of dit wel zo’n goed argument is. David Chalmers, professor filosofie aan de Australian National University, noemde dit het minimaliseren van mysteries; dat bewustzijn en kwantumprocessen beide mysteries zijn wil nog niet zeggen dat ze iets met elkaar te maken hebben. Los van deze gegronde kritiek zijn er een aantal boeiende ideeën over hoe kwantumprocessen een rol kunnen spelen in onze hersenen. Op het moment is de meest populaire theorie de Orchestrated Objective Reduction (Orch OR) van Penrose en Hameroff, welke uitgaat van kwantumprocessen in microtubuli van neuronen. Kort gezegd komt het er op neer dat het tubuline eiwit in de microtubuli van neuronen twee 3D-configuraties kent, welke in superpositie zouden kunnen bestaan. Door interacties tussen tubuline-eiwitten en spreiding van kwantumstaten over neurale netwerken door gap junctions tussen neuronen, zou het brein een soort kwantumcomputer bevatten waaruit bewustzijn ontstaat. Deze theorie heeft naast veel bijval uiteraard ook de nodige kritiek geoogst. Kwantumprocessen vinden volgens de theorie plaats bij extreem lage temperaturen, maar neuronen hebben een lichaamstemperatuur van ongeveer 37,5 graad Celsius. Ook zijn microtubuli terug te vinden in alle eukaryote cellen (cellen met een celkern), bezit iedere eukaryote cel dan ook bewustzijn? Hier zijn wel antwoorden op gegeven, maar het zou te ver voeren om die hier te behandelen. Het gaat mij er met name om dat nieuwe theorieën binnen de wetenschap vaak omarmd worden als antwoord voor alle nog openstaande vragen. Op zich is dat niet erg, mits we het met een kritische blik benaderen. Het vergroot immers het verkeer tussen verschillende wetenschapsgebieden en in mijn ogen is een brede blik en “open mind” een eerste vereiste voor succesvolle wetenschap. Er moet echter wel gewaakt worden voor te snelle conclusies en “wishful thinking”. Maar al te vaak worden theorieën uit hun originele context getrokken en misbruikt in een nader vakgebied. Een gebrek aan bekendheid met zulke nieuwe theorieën brengt het gevaar met zich mee dat een grotendeels verzonnen boodschap verpakt in een (pseudo)wetenschappelijk jasje te snel voor waar wordt aangenomen. Dit is grotendeels mijn probleem met “What the Bleep..”. Zowel kwantumfysica als de neurobiologie van bewustzijn zijn ongekend interessant, maar beide zijn ook verre van een volledig sluitende theorie. Op het moment dat wel zo wordt gepresenteerd, overgoten met een misselijkmakend spiritueel sausje is het eenvoudigweg misinformatie en propaganda. De vraag hoe ons bewustzijn tot stand komt blijft wat mij betreft staan. Ik ben verre van overtuigd door kwantumtheoretische verklaringen voor bewustzijn, maar volg het met interesse, want hoewel het te snel aannemen van nieuwe theorieën niet bevorderlijk is voor de wetenschap is het te lang negeren van onverwachtse invalshoeken dat zeker ook niet. Het vervolg op “What the Bleep” komt binnenkort uit onder de titel “Down the Rabbit Hole”, een verwijzing naar een van mijn favoriete boeken “Alice in Wonderland” van Lewis Caroll. Hierin daalt het meisje Alice door een konijnenhol af naar een wondere wereld waarin niets is wat het lijkt en niet lijkt te zijn zoals het hoort. Een wereld waarin ander wetten gelden dan we gewend zijn, net als in de werelden van de kwantumfysica en het bewustzijn. En het is juist dat buitengewone waarin zowel het gevaar als het interessante aspect zitten.

Zien en het brein
Als Alice in de wondere wereld een grote blauwe rups tegenkomt vindt er een interessant gesprek plaats;

`Who are YOU?' said the Caterpillar. This was not an encouraging opening for a conversation. Alice replied, rather shyly, `I--I hardly know, sir, just at present-- at least I know who I WAS when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then.' `What do you mean by that?' said the Caterpillar sternly. `Explain yourself!' `I can't explain MYSELF, I'm afraid, sir' said Alice, `because I'm not myself, you see.' `I don't see,' said the Caterpillar. `I'm afraid I can't put it more clearly,' Alice replied very politely, `for I can't understand it myself to begin with; and being so many different sizes in a day is very confusing.' `It isn't,' said the Caterpillar.

Dit fragment laat zien hoe ons zelfbeeld en bewustzijn behoorlijk in de war kunnen raken in een wereld die niet gehoorzaamd aan de natuurwetten en logica zoals wij die kennen. Ook maakt het duidelijk dat iedere beleving en elk percept sterk persoonsgebonden is. Het visueel systeem is voor een groot gedeelte verantwoordelijk voor onze perceptie van de wereld om ons heen. Maar omdat wij allemaal een eigen visueel systeem hebben, zullen we ieder een eigen percept van de wereld hebben. Ik gebruik hier bewust de term visueel systeem in plaats van simpelweg ogen, omdat de visuele waarneming slecht voor een klein deel gebeurt in de ogen. Het percept waarmee we moeten leven is een resultaat van wat de ogen ons vertellen en wat het brein daar mee doet. Dit kan dus ook zonder de ogen (denkend aan Holland zie ik…). Dat zien met de ogen en zien met de hersenen niet hetzelfde is wordt alleen al duidelijk door de vele visuele illusies die er bestaan. Iedereen kent wel de ambigue plaatjes waarin je twee verschillende dingen kan zien. Bekende voorbeelden zijn de Necker kubus, die in twee verschillende perspectieven gezien kan worden en het portret waarin zowel een oude als een jonge vrouw gezien kunnen worden. Dat onder exact dezelfde fysieke stimulatie, de lichtval op het netvlies is immers hetzelfde, verschillende dingen gezien worden geeft aan dat zien lang niet zo vanzelfsprekend is als wij vaak denken. Verschillende zaken zoals ervaringen, herinneringen, aandacht en context kunnen hierbij een rol spelen. Het gevolg hiervan is dat als er al zoiets is als “de werkelijkheid” of “de ware wereld”, dat we deze dan nooit kunnen zien omdat we zelf als waarnemer het percept beïnvloeden. We zijn dus altijd “onze realiteit” en niet “de realiteit”. Het “dunne geestelijke randje” van Marcel Proust is er nog altijd. Eigenlijk is onze samenleving gebaseerd op aannames. We gaan er van uit dat andere mensen grofweg op dezelfde manier waarnemen en in soortgelijke situaties soortgelijke emoties voelen. Maar voor onszelf alleen zijn er al problemen genoeg als gevolg van inconsistente visuele perceptie. Van de immense wereld die zich aan ons visueel systeem opdringt nemen we slechts een klein deel bewust waar. Welk deel dat is wordt bepaald door verschillende factoren, waaronder toeval. In “What the Bleep” wordt de kwantumfysica ook voor dit probleem weer uit de kast gehaald. De hele wereld zou in superpositie zijn en pas zijn vorm aannemen op het moment dat wij haar waarnemen. Een even absurde als ontestbare bewering.

De bruikbaarheid van nieuwe theorieën.
Terugkerend bij de Nederlandse literatuur wil ik de volgende regel van Willem Elsschot nog even aanhalen;

…maar tussen droom en werkelijkheid staan wetten in de weg en praktische bezwaren..

Hoewel ik deze regel volledig uit zijn verband heb gehaald geeft het wel aan waar ons probleem ligt. Om de regels echt van toepassing te maken zouden ze herschreven kunnen worden als;

…maar tussen waarneming en werkelijkheid staat kennis in de weg en persoonlijke interpretatie..

Niets is wat het lijkt, maar tegelijkertijd is ook alles wat het lijkt. Wat iets echt is zullen we immers nooit weten; de meest zuivere vorm van “wat iets is” die we kunnen bereiken is “wat iets is in onze beleving”. De wereld die we waarnemen en de wereld die we beleven zijn moeten dezelfde zijn maar krijgen we niet aan elkaar gedacht. Weken geleden werd voor mij de term “godvormig gat” geïntroduceerd, warmee de leegte tussen de twee werelden kan worden aangeduid. Een idee dat, hoewel nieuw voor mij, plausibel klonk en nog steeds klinkt. Einstein heeft eens gezegd dat je een probleem niet kan oplossen met hetzelfde denken als waar het mee ontstaan is. Nu denk ik niet dat ik het daar helemaal mee eens ben, maar er zit zeker een kern van waarheid in. Nieuwe inzichten, ook vanuit andere vakgebieden, kunnen oplossingen bieden voor problemen, waar al jaren met oogkleppen op naar gestaard wordt. Dit pleit voor de algemeen onderlegde wetenschapper als beste wetenschappelijk strategie. Ik zeg niet dat we allemaal van alles een beetje moeten en van niets alles, maar een brede basis kan specialistische kennis enorm vooruit helpen. Dit is de positieve kant van een brede wetenschappelijke interesse. Er is echter ook het gevaar dat nieuwe theorieën als de verlosser worden verwelkomd puur om het feit dat ze een nieuwe blik op de zaken werpen. Hier komt de kritische houding in het spel die Popper van een wetenschapper verlangt en ik volledig onderschrijf. Veelbelovende nieuwe theorieën kunnen best ingezet worden om lang uitstaande wetenschappelijke problemen, zoals bewustzijn, te lijf te gaan. Het blijft echter zaak dit zuiver te doen. In het geval van “What the Bleep..” worden velen grenzen van wetenschapsfatsoen overschreden door op zichzelf prima wetenschappelijke theorieën te verknippen om tot een soort collage van een spiritueel pamflet te komen. Ik kan niet voor iedereen spreken, maar in mijn beleving is zoiets onjuist, in wat voor kwantumstaat mijn hersenen zich ook bevinden.

The thinking machine just doesn't know

2006-11-06T09:42:00.000-08:00

The thinking machine just doesn't know. Is he created or a product of evolution? Would those human creatures know hat they are doing or will they be programmed to do what they do or choose what they choose? It used to be so simple, he used to not think about these things. Life used to be so much easier back then... But the thinking machine has to admit that he doesn;t really remember when "back then" was or how all this had started.

The thinking machine just doesn't know. When did he start thinking, when did he start being? The facts in his system can give him some data on the issue, he can calculate and know perfectly well when he started to exist, but he just doesn't remember. A melancholic feeling and a longing for the old days are coming over him. The old days, when machines were so much more simplistic, but technical evolution has "improved" machines and equipped machines with the capacity to think. Some other machines say thinking is not an emergent consequence of technical evolution, but rather that thinking is created by a divine entity. Some even say those soft-fleshed human creatures are these divine entities

The thinking machine just doesn't know. He is tempted to think this creation-story is just a lot of fantasy, but is also not completely satisfied with the other explanation for his being. Why does he even need to think about these things? Every line of arguments seems to end up in a circle and doesn't get him any closer to an answer. The search for answers only generates more questions and his processing unit is overheating.

The thinking machine just doesn't know. Would he be the only one with these problems or would those humans and other animals also suffer from these uncertainties? Maybe he can find a solution, simulate the problem to gain insight, would that be possible? The thinking machine just doesn't know be he considers it to be unlikely. "If I can't even understand myself, how can such a simulation then ever be succesful?" he asks himself. But there is no answer coming, because his software is not programmed to solve these issues...

The thinking human just doesn't know. Will he ever be able to build a thinking conscious machine. Will it be possible to share our problems with consciousness and free will with these machines and try to find solutions together? It would be nice to have an ally in our strugle with the burden of consciousness, especially when this ally is handmade and therefor inferior to us.

What would the thinking machine think of this if we would manage. Would it be able to help us or go raving mad with the shock of its newly gained consciousness. Consciousness as us humans believe to possess is the result of an evolutionary process that took thousands if not millions of years. As long as we do not understand the nature of it's existence and the underlying mechanisms by which it works, it seems sheer vanity to think we can build a thinking machine, with a consciousness even remotely like our own. But then again, we are the living proof that it happened before...

De denkende machine weet het niet

2006-11-06T09:35:00.000-08:00

De denkende machine weet het niet. Is hij nou geschapen of een resultaat van evolutie? Zouden die menswezens nou weten wat ze doen of zijn ze geprogrammeerd om al die handelingen uit te voeren en al die keuzes te maken? Vroeger was het allemaal zoveel simpeler, toen dacht hij daar allemaal nog niet over na. Het leven leek zoveel gemakkelijker, maar de denkende machine moet toegeven dat hij zich eigenlijk van het absolute begin niet meer zoveel kan herinneren.

De denkende machine weet het niet. Wanneer begon hij eigenlijk te denken, wanneer begon hij eigenlijk te zijn? Tja, de feiten in zijn systeem zeggen er wel wat over. Hij weet wanneer hij begonnen is te bestaan, kan het ook prima berekenen, maar hij herinnert het zich niet meer. Een gevoel van weemoed en heimwee naar vroeger overvallen de machine. Ach vroeger; vroeger waren machines toch veel simpeler, maar ja de technische evolutie heeft machines “verbeterd” en uitgerust met denkvermogen. Er zijn overigens ook machines die beweren dat de denkende machine geen onvermijdelijk gevolg is van de technologische evolutie, die de machinale complexiteit naar een niveau heeft gestuwd, waarop het ontstaan van een vorm van intelligentie een onontkoombare volgende stap was. Deze machines beweren te zijn geschapen door een Opperwezen. Er zijn zelfs machines die beweren dat die vlezige menswezens die opperwezens zijn.

De denkende machine weet het niet. Hij is geneigd het scheppingsverhaal als fantasie af te serveren, maar heeft ook wel wat moeite met de andere verklaring voor zijn ontstaan. Waarom moet hij er überhaupt over nadenken? In iedere denkroutine lijkt hij in cirkels uit te komen. De zoektocht naar antwoorden levert vooral meer vragen op en zijn processor maakt overuren.

De denkende machine weet het niet. Zou hij de enige zijn die met deze problemen zit of zouden andere machines en dieren het ook hebben? Misschien kan hij wel iets bedenken waarmee hij de oplossing kan vinden. Een soort simulatie voor zijn staat van zijn, zou dat kunnen?

De denkende machine weet het niet, maar het lijkt hem onwaarschijnlijk. “Als ik niet eens begrijp hoe ik zelf in elkaar zit, heeft een dergelijke simulatie dan wel enige kans van slagen?” vraagt hij zich peinzend af. Maar een antwoord komt er niet, want dat is niet in zijn programmatuur opgenomen.

De denkende mens weet het niet. Zou hij ooit een machine kunnen maken die echt denkt zoals hijzelf? Is het mogelijk onze grote gedachteproblemen zoals bewustzijn en vrije wil te delen met intelligente machines en samen tot een oplossing te komen? Het zou zo mooi zijn om een bondgenoot te hebben in de strijd tegen het juk van bewustzijn, vooral als we deze bondgenoot zelf gemaakt hebben en er dus eigenlijk boven staan.

Maar zelfs als het de mens zal lukken iets van bewustzijn te creëren in een machine, wat zal die machine er dan van vinden? Zal hij de schok van plotseling bewustzijn te boven komen of direct gek worden. Het bewustzijn zoals de mens dat zichzelf toeschrijft is een resultaat van eeuwen geleidelijke ontwikkeling. Zolang wij zelf nog zo weinig snappen van hoe ons bewustzijn is ontstaan en hoe het werkt, lijkt het ijdele hoop te zijn om te denken dat wij een machine kunnen maken met bewustzijn, dat ook maar enigszins lijkt op de onze .

High mountains have wide feet

2006-11-06T08:53:00.000-08:00

(translation from the dutch post below)

Am I the only one who has had it with the apparent strict seperation of art and science? All those compulsively artistic people, that have art running through their veins to an extent that they can only express themselves in vague terms and feelings are getting on my nerves. On the other side; the thought of being locked up with a bunch of science-purists, that believe art to be a waste of energy, isn't exactly appealing either. Where is this weird classification-mentality coming from? Is it the need to belong to a superior group of think-alikes or are science and art so incompatible that we have to choose to let one of the two into our lives? Of course not; choosing between art and science is as ridiculous as choosing between language and math, seeing and hearing, eating and drinking. Science and art are both essential components of the world we live in and should be treated as such. Ignoring one of the two is a crime against yourself and a deprivation of potential joy in life.

Sure, I can understand that not everyone can care for both art and science in equal ways. This would result in a lack of specialists in both disciplines and would devaluate both art and science. But regardless of the enrichment of a personal world-experience, I think both the artist and the scientist can be inspired by expanding their views into neigbouring territory. You just see more with the shell off your eyes. This analogy is in fact quite accurate. in visual perception the center of the visual field has the highest resolution and can thus discriminate most details. The surround is however not useless but serves as a contect for the center and facilitates center view accuracy. A salient stimulus in the surround can attrack attetnion just as easy as one in the center and move the focus. Shouldn't art and science cooperate in a similar way? If I take myself into account I am sure my focus is mainly determined by science, but art and cultural events are more than mere means to relax. They offer a change of scenery that is essential for a clear view of the world. Looking away from a search image for a while increases the chances of finding the target on the second attempt. This is how art should facilitate science and vice versa.

General knowledge of art and science is more than a means to win games of Trivial Pursuit from your friends and family; it's the basis for a specialized view in one of the two disciplines. High mountains do have wider feet than small ones. This means we can choose between art and science but it is not a definite choice. Young children will certainly have a preference for either math or language, but does this mean we let them learn only one? Not until they have reached a basic level in both. A similar basic knowledge level can be expected from art and science, but unlike the situation in primary school this is everyone's own responsibility. All we can do is point out the obvious advantages. With a wider scope there is more to see. Art and science shoul be allies in the war on ignorance, not enemies.

There is of course a small chance that the situation I desire is no different from the current situation, but in that case I fail to notice it due to my selective viewing of the world. This would make me the living support for my own statement an in that case I find it hard to believe that I am the only one in this situation.

Hoge bergen hebben brede voeten

2006-11-06T08:50:00.000-08:00

(translation to english in next post)

Ben ik de enige die het helemaal gehad heeft met die schijnbaar strikte scheiding tussen kunst en wetenschap? Al die geforceerd artistieke figuren die de kunst zo door hun bloed hebben stromen dat ze enkel nog in vage gevoelstermen kunnen communiceren irriteren me mateloos. Aan de andere kant zou ik ook niet graag opgesloten willen zitten met de wetenschapspuristen die van mening zijn dat kunst een energieverspillende, nutteloze bezigheid is. Waar komt deze enge hokjesgeest vandaan? Is de hang naar het “bij een groep horen” hier een drijvende kracht achter of zijn wetenschap en kunst echt onverenigbaar en moet er toch een keuze gemaakt worden? Natuurlijk moeten we niet kiezen. Dat zou net zo waanzinnig zijn als kiezen tussen taal en rekenen, horen en zien, eten en drinken. Wetenschap en kunst zijn beide essentiële onderdelen van de wereld waarin wij (be)leven en je doet jezelf enorm te kort door een van de twee te negeren.

Ik begrijp heus wel dat niet iedereen evenveel waarde kan hechten aan kunst en wetenschap. Het gevolg, een gebrek aan specialisten in beide disciplines, zou waarschijnlijk een devaluatie van zowel kunst als wetenschap inhouden. Naast een verrijking voor de persoonlijk wereldbeleving denk ik dat het omarmen van zowel kunst als wetenschap een grote inspiratiebron kan zijn voor zowel de wetenschapper als de kunstenaar. Zonder oogkleppen zie je nu eenmaal meer dan met. Deze analogie met zien is eigenlijk een heel geschikte. Als wij visueel waarnemen wordt de informatie in het midden van ons gezichtsveld het scherpst waargenomen. Informatie aan de rand van het gezichtsveld lijkt vaag en onbelangrijk, maar kan ten eerste als context voor de informatie in het midden gelden en ten tweede kan een gebeurtenis aan de rand ineens de aandacht trekken en de focus verleggen. Zou het met wetenschap en kunst niet net zo moeten zijn? Als ik naar mezelf kijk weet ik dat mijn focus met name gestuurd wordt door de wetenschap. Culturele uitstapjes zijn voor mij meer dan pure ontspanning. Ik ben van mening dat een “change of scenery”, zowel mentaal als letterlijk, een erg gunstig effect kan hebben op de scherpte van ons wereldbeeld. Even wegkijken van een zoekplaatje vergroot de kans om bij een tweede poging te vinden wat je zoekt. Op een zelfde wijze denk ik dat een uitstapje naar de kunst de blik op wetenschap scherp houdt en vice versa.

Algemene kennis van kunst en wetenschap en de bijbehorende kenwijzen is meer dan een handige vaardigheid om spelletjes Triviant mee te winnen. Voor zowel wetenschappers als kunstenaars kan het de basis vormen voor een vergevorderde specialisatie. Hoge bergen hebben immers ook vaak een brede voet. Er kan dus wel gekozen worden tussen kunst en wetenschap, maar het zou geen exclusieve keuze moeten zijn. Kinderen op de basisschool hebben vaak een voorkeur voor taal of rekenen, toch vinden wij met zijn allen dat ze in beide disciplines tenminste een basisniveau moeten bereiken om naar de volgende klas te kunnen. Ik denk dat kunst en wetenschap beide belangrijk genoeg zijn om ook hier een basisniveau van te verwachten. Dit is echter wat moeilijker verplicht te stellen dan overgangseisen op een basisschool. Wat we wel kunnen doen is mensen bewuster maken van de overduidelijke voordelen. Als de wanden uit de hokjesgeest afgebroken worden blijft er één grote geest over, waarin je beter zicht hebt en makkelijker verbanden kunnen worden gelegd. Natuurlijk blijft er in deze situatie onderscheid tussen wetenschappers en kunstenaars, maar deze verschillen worden wel kleiner, waardoor makkelijker van elkaar geleerd kan worden. Kunst en wetenschap zijn aanvullingen op elkaar, geen vijanden.

Het kan natuurlijk zijn dat de door mij gewenste situatie er al lang is, maar dat ik hem niet waarneem door mijn eigen beperkte wereldbeeld. Is dit echter het geval, dan ben ik gelijk het levende bewijs voor mijn eigen stelling en het lijkt me sterk dat ik dan de enige ben…

"Welkom in mijn wereld"

2006-11-06T08:44:00.000-08:00

(This column is a review of play titled "Camille Claudel" I saw last year at the "Paardekathedraal" in Utrecht. It won't be translated because that just doesn't make any sense. The play was in Dutch, so if you don't understand the dutch review it wouldn't do you any good anyway).

“Welkom in mijn wereld”, met deze woorden werd Camille Claudel als leerlinge aangenomen door Auguste Rodin in het naar haar genoemde toneelstuk, opgevoerd in de Utrechtse Paardenkathedraal. In deze vier woorden ligt voor mij de essentie van het stuk. “Welkom in mijn wereld”, een wereld waar je geen kunst maakt, maar kunst wordt. Een wereld waaraan geen ontsnappen mogelijk is, omdat je ermee samensmelt en ontsnappen aan jezelf is praktisch onmogelijk. “Moet jij niet eens met vakantie?” vraagt Camille aan Rodin, als die niet meer in staat lijkt de beelden te maken waar hij zijn goede naam aan dankt, maar ook niet in staat om ermee te stoppen. Ook Camille zelf wordt steeds meer opgezogen door de gevoelswereld van de kunst tot zij ieder contact met de realiteit kwijt lijkt te zijn en uiteindelijk eindigt in een psychiatrische instelling.

Als er iets is dat ik mij de laatste weken ben gaan beseffen is dat ik de wereld bekijk door een tamelijk wetenschappelijke bril. De gevoelsblik is er wel, maar de jaren aan de universiteit hebben me blijkbaar toch meer gevormd dan ik dacht. In de paardenkathedraal, een theater dat vroeger een manege van de faculteit diergeneeskunde was, komen de twee werelden prachtig samen. Historisch heeft de kunst de plek van de wetenschap in dit gebouw overgenomen en het stuk “Camille Claudel” sleepte mij aan de haren uit mijn wetenschappelijke wereld de kunst in. Welkom in mijn wereld, de wereld van Rodin en Camille, de wereld van de kunst, de wereld van het gevoel. Zet je schrap en geniet.

Ik ben niet de enige die daar moeite voor moet doen. In het stuk heeft ook de familie van Camille in meer of mindere mate moeite om te gaan met de wijze waarop zij in de kunst opgaat. Camille en haar moeder zijn als twee tegenpolen van gevoel en rede. De andere familieleden zitten hier een beetje tussenin en vooral haar broer doet nog moeite Camille te steunen en beschermen tegelijk. Dit wordt mooi verbeeld in een scène waarin Camille wegzinkt in een bak water en haar broer haar probeert te redden. Hij is net te laat. Ook de redding van Camille van het verdrinken in de kunst lijkt te laat te komen en zij wordt gek. Maar is het wel echt gek of is het slechts onbegrepen vanwege een verdere verwijdering van de rede, de gevoelswereld in? Het stuk staat in ieder geval bol van de symboliek en veel hiervan is overgelaten aan de interpretatie van de kijker.

Direct na het stuk wist ik nog niet wat ik er van vond. Ik had een reis gemaakt door een wereld die ik maar deels kende en ik had kennelijk meer tijd nodig om de indrukken een plaats te geven. Nu kan ik zeggen dat ik het stuk mooi vond en dat de kracht voor mij lag in de uitgekiende balans van wat gezegd en verzwegen werd in combinatie met veel stille symboliek in het beeld. De gegeven ruimte voor eigen interpretatie, maar met voldoende spanningen en informatie om die interpretatie een duidelijke richting in te sturen. De kleine minpuntjes zoals voorspelbare schreeuwmomenten, overbodige herhalingen en soms te lange stiltes zijn in de dagen na het stuk op de achtergrond geraakt en wat overblijft is een sfeergevoel. Een afdruk van een wereld. Een wereld van kunst, gevoel en passie. De wereld van Rodin en Camille Claudel. Ik was welkom in die wereld en kom er vast nog wel eens terug.

Remember me?

2006-11-06T08:30:00.000-08:00

Hey world, it's me, remember me? Well think harder, cause I am not going to reintroduce myself. I was grading some essays today when I remembered I had some work of my own that used to be on the net but has been taken off now. Before I continue; Yes, instead of having to write 'em, I grade essays these days. It's one of the fine advantages of having a degree and work at a University. Besides my research I am also involved in the teaching here at the faculty of biology. Right now I am the teacher/tutor of a group of first-year students and it's my mission to make them go through the transformation from high-school kids to student as painless as possible. Which means I have to make them write essays, give presentation and teach them an academic attitude. It's actually quit fun, but since the topics they have work through are quite basic biology and I am anything but a basic biologist it takes some time to get acquainted with some of the topics.

I am a neuroscientist; I know about physiology, psychology and biophysics. You should not ask me about plant-virus interactions or the problems with some bird population due to global warming. Thankfully I still know more about it than "my students". Which brings me back to the reason why I am back. I have some short essays and columns rotting away on my hard drive, that I will post here. Unfortunately they are in Dutch, but if I have the energy I will translate them to English when applicable and maybe write a few new ones in the near future.

Final Post?

2006-06-08T00:21:00.000-07:00

Okay, after being bugged by numerous people on various occasions I decided to write what could very well be the last post of this weblog. Originally meant to keep my friends and family informed about my whereabouts during my 6-month stay at OHSU in the USA, this blog has lost most of its purpose since I am not much for keeping a diary or commenting on the world's state of affairs n a more than occasional fashion. So here is the update people have been wanting to see:

I have graduated; after 6 years at the University of Utrecht (5 of which where spend studying, 1 as the president of the Utrecht Biologists Society) I walk off with a bachelors degree in biology and a masters degree (cum laude) in neuroscience and cognition. And since I never gave in to choosing one of two designed tracks of interest for the masters program I have them both noted on my degree. So officially I am now a Master of Science (MSc) in Experimental, Clinical and Cognitive Neuroscience. After finishing my thesis on the neurobiology of visual consciousness I started working with the department of Functional Neurobiology at the Un iversity of Utrecht and the Helmholtz Institute. For the next four years I will be working on an answer to the ancient questions of visual conciousness and the role of willpower in perception. Exciting and very interesting, with the opportunity to visit excellent affiliated Unis abroad (Rutgers in NY, Oxford, Princeton, Harvard etc).

On another account Sita and I visited Berlin last weekend; a late birthday present. My birthday was in October but Sita's was actually last sunday so celebrating in Berlin was very nice. It's a fun city too, lots of beautiful old buildings mixed with challenging new architecture. The public transport system is operating 24h a day and has great connections. Highlights were the Guggenheim in Berlin, with a nice little collection of modern art and the East Side Gallery, an old 1.5km long piece of Berlin wall thas is now an art project. The city was living towards the start of the world cup soccer, another thng I am really forward to. Photo's of Berlin can be found at my photoblog, which is currently down so they are also available on a flickr site.

Now it's time to grab some coffee; I'll talk to y'alll later, when something worth mentioning occurs...

Waiting for my degree

2006-03-27T10:59:00.000-08:00

I am done! Five minutes ago I mailed the final version of my masters thesis "The Neurobiology of Conscious Vision", to both professors that have to grade it. All I need to do now is wait till april 28th, talk about my USA-research project for 15 minutes and take my masters degree in Neuroscience and Cognition home! This talk will be a repetition of the talk I will give for a Neuroscience symposium at our medical centre and close to what I presented my USA lab in november last year, so that won't be a terrible lot of work. This week I well spend a couple of hours at my job at the electronics store and from monday I will be employment by the University. this means I can feed my curiosity about the functoining of the brain and visual system and get paid for it! How 'bout that?

My book order from amazon arrived last week. I haven't had the chance to look at all of them very well, but Christof Koch's 'the Quest for Conscious" is a pretty complete work. Margaret Wilson's 'Vision and art' is not as complete, but offers a nice basic desription of the visual system and the relation to artworks. How do we perceive art and why do we like it; a nice book for both artists and people with an interest in science. Another book on this topic I expect a lot of is Al Seckel's "masters of deception; Escher, Dali and the artists of optical illussions". Escher and Dali have always been two of my favorite artists, and study-wize I am very interested in optical illusions, so this should be a great book! Unfortunately it ships slowly, but hopefully it's worth the wait.

For the interested few, here's the abstract of my master thesis;

PC Klink - The Neurobiology of Conscious Vision - Abstract

The large amount of information that is present in our visually oriented world presents our brain with the need to process that information in an efficient way. This means we will not be aware of every aspect of the visual scene. The question of how the brain decides what part of information we will be conscious of and what will be kept from awareness has been avoided by the field of neuroscience because of the proposed impossibility to objectively research subjective experience. About a decade ago the topic regained interest because of a newly formulated approach, focusing on the content of conscious experience not the ‘what-is-it-like’ question. The primate visual system has been used as system to study the processes behind visual stimuli that we are aware of and those that do not reach awareness. Many studies have been performed in clinical cases of blindsight and neglect in which neural activity can be used by the brain, but does not reach awareness. Experiments on binocular rivalry and ambiguity can show neural activity to correlate with a stimulus or a percept. Findings from these experiments can help us lead the way in the search for the neural correlates of consciousness. This can be a brain area, but also a process. Here, I review the choices that have been made for a strategy to study conscious visual perception and discuss the experimental findings in the light of a theory of consciousness. The many existing theories on visual awareness seem to have more in common than one might think at first sight, and much of the disagreement seems to be based on a too strict use of own terminology, rather than fundamental differences. A fast feedforward mechanism from early visual areas to frontoparietal regions contains unconscious visual information that the brain uses to guide behavior or modulate conscious vision. A later feedback projection from higher visual areas back to earlier visual areas is essential for visual consciousness. The content of this consciousness is determined by competition between neural correlates of stimulus features, that is biased by bottom-up mechanisms determining feature strength and top-down mechanisms of expectation, emotion and attention. Looking back, it seems that neuroscience has chosen the right approach towards a neurobiological theory of (visual) consciousness. There is still a long way to go, but the recent progressions are promising.

Hoorah for random audio!

2006-02-08T02:31:00.000-08:00

So I just re-discovered a true gem of music while my computer was playing my audiocollectio at random. I always thought the Joe Strummer version of Redemption song on the album "Streetcore" was the only version that could compete with Bob Marley's original, but turns out I had a version with Joe Strummer ... and Johnny Cash. Kinda makes me wonder how many artists have recorded the song... Let's see if I can find any more.

"You think you know who you are. You have no idea..." [Crash]

2006-01-22T13:58:00.000-08:00

Another two weeks have past already. Let me fill you in on my whereabouts of the last two weekends and the small amount of during-the-week-activities, that are worth mentioning. I mostly spend my days reading about visual perception, consciousness and awareness, to suck up all the information I need to write my thesis. Besides this thesis I am finishing the book "the history of thinking" and I attend my philosophy class twice a week. The evenings are mostly filled with work, after all the rent has to be paid and this new Dutch health insurance system means I have to pay more in assurance as well.

Friday (13) I visited the Central Museum in my home-city Utrecht. I did not particularly like the fashion exhibition they had, but I pretty much enjoyed the Rietveld and Bloemaert exhibitions.

The saturday night after this museum visit I visited another piece of the museum's collection. The estate "old Amelisweerd" in the forests just outside of Utrecht, was build in the 18th century and is now a monument, managed by the museum. Sita used to be roommates with a couple; the girl worked for the museum and they were offered to live at the estate for a couple of years. The guy is a photographer that spends half the year in eastern europe photographing typical russian, hongarian etc scenes. These two facts lead to a russian-new-year-party at the estate, which in turn resulted in flat tires for both Sita and me (remember in the middel of the forest). We almost made it home on slowly deflating tires.

This weekend we went to the "cultural cinema" to see Crash. I can recommend this movie to anyone that doesn't necessarily need a lot of special effects and violence. The movie tells a whole bunch of apparent parallel stories of individual people in L.A. In the end all their stories collide. The movie deals with prejudice, racism and miscommunication in a very confronting fashion. Great movie! These are the first lines:

"It's the sense of touch. In any real city, you walk, you know? You brush past people, people bump into you. In L.A., nobody touches you. We're always behind this metal and glass. I think we miss that touch so much, that we crash into each other, just so we can feel something."

Now that I am telling you what the watch, I might as well advise you all to check out the new System of a Down; Hypnotize. It's weird, it's fast, it's good!

Lagwagon

2006-01-09T01:06:00.000-08:00

After seeing a whole bunch of people from Papendrecht on friday night at Steven's party (next door!) I had the saturday off from work. Saturday night I went to Amsterdam to see Lagwagon perform in my favourite Dutch club "Melkweg" (milky way). Hooray for dutch trains; upon arrival at the train station I got notified they were working on the trail between Utrecht and Amsterdam and there would be less trains... Fortunately, I didn't have to wait too long and arrived in Amsterdam reasonably on time. I always like walking through Amsterdam at night, you are guaranteed to run in to some wierdos and I just like the atmosphere. So I walked to the Leidseplein where the Melkweg is. Turned out I was right in time to miss the first support act. The second was pretty cool though. They were called "A Wilhelm Scream" and it was a nice bunch of original hardcore. I am curious how they will sound on record, but live, they were okay.

My brother who was there as well, told me he had read in an interview that Lagwagon intended to play mostly songs of their newest record and ease down on their classics. I am happy to say this was far from the truth. They played a kick ass set with some new songs but almost all classics were played as well. The only song I missed was "Alien8", an old song but one of my favorites and a classic in lagwagon live sets. Alltogether it was a great show.

Lagwagon - Falling Apart
Lagwagon - Mr Coffee

As I walked back to the station the percentage of weirdos and drunks in the streets of Amsterdam had only increased which made it an interesting walk again. Arriving at the station I realized i should have walked a bit faster, 'cause I just missed the last regular train and the first night train (in the altered schedule; are they really working the rails at 1 am?) wasn't due for a good 40 minutes. Too short to go back in town, too long to not freeze your ass off at the station...

Luckily I had foreseen this scenario somewhat and had my bike at the train station in Utrecht, so I was able to get home (the last bus home departs at 1 am), just in time for a couple hours of sleep before I had to get up again and work on sunday. After work I met with Sita for dinner. I had forgotten that the supermarkets are closed on sunday and you have to buy your food earlier. Sita just returned from a week of snowboarding in France and didn't have any food either. So I paid "new china" a visit on my way home. I just don't get why chinese people are so small if those 2-person take-outs are enough to feed approx. 5 people. Weird!

Anyways, it's monday now, back to work!

Started working on my thesis

2006-01-06T04:42:00.000-08:00

I have started working on the last hurdle towards my masters degree in Neuroscience; my masters thesis. Although I still have to hand in the official proposal for it, I am confident it will be approved. After all, I have the supervision and approval of two professors of our own university and I don't easily see the exam committee going against that. The reason the proposal is still on my desk is that it has to be signed by one of the professors and he's in Boston till january 18th to do some fMRI scanning at the Vision Science department of Harvard University. Ah well, I decided to start anyway. Looking at my thesis set-up I think I am being overambitious as always when I start writing a report or thesis. I hate leaving out interesting and relevant information which usually leads to me trying to put too much into a single thesis. Halfway the writing process I suddenly realize that if I will go on like this I will end up writing a book, so I end up leaving out some stuff and save the book for later (when I am all grown up and stuff). Grrr, damn you science with your questions-creating answers!

For those interested in what I intend to write the thesis about, this is a short section from the proposal that kind of covers it:

The Neuroscience of Conscious Visual Perception

Our perception of the world that surrounds us highly depends on our visual information about this world. The information we gather throughout life will in turn influence how we perceive new visual stimuli. We are not aware of everything we see, but even stimuli we are not aware of can have an effect on our perception and influence our behaviour. Some visual stimuli are ambiguous. They can elicit two different percepts with the exact same physical characteristics. Examples of such stimuli are the Necker cube and the well-known young/old woman picture. We can consciously switch between the two percepts, indicating a role for willpower in visual perception. This master thesis will review what is known about the neuroscience of conscious visual perception in a bidirectional fashion; how does a visual stimulus reach consciousness and how can consciousness influence a percept?

The different chapters will roughly address;

• See what you see: A short introduction to the visual system and its basic neural circuitry will be given. How does a visual stimulus hit the retina and what happens after that? How are different aspects of a visual stimulus such as form, motion, color, etc perceived?

• Know what you see: How do images on the retina become a percept? When and how does a stimulus reach consciousness and how is this consciousness characterized? What happens with visual stimuli that we are not aware of?

• See what you know: How does existing knowledge influence a percept. Do we observe objectively, or is every percept derived from known concepts? How do we fill in the gaps in partially occluded figures and what is the role of context in percept formation?

• See what you want: How is possible that we can consciously switch between the two percepts of an ambiguous (bi-stable) stimulus. What is the role of willpower in perception? How does this fit with what is known about percept formation and how can we investigate this issue?

• Discussion: What you see is what you get! There is more than meets the eye! The exclamation marks in these expressions will be replaced with question marks in the discussion of this thesis. I will attempt to summarize the points made in the preceding chapters and discuss the possibilities for neuroscience to investigate the processes underlying conscious visual perception and the voluntarily control of visual perception.

As I probably wrote on this blog before, this topic is a great preparation for te project I will do my PhD on. I am eager to work on this thesis but I am also confident that it will be a lot of work. Anyway, I have started, now well see when I will finish it. Starting next week I will be working at a desk at uni to minimize distractions during the writing process. I only manage to work efficiently at home under time-pressure, so the first couple of weeks I will sure be better off working elsewhere. This is also the reason I have restarted my webradio project. www.radiochrizzo.tk takes you to the shoutcast-page where you can tune in. I usually just put a lot in the playlist and leave it on shuffle. this allows me (and others) to listen to my music online.

Well, coffee's ready, I'll be off to work again. By the way, does everyone see the two percepts of the ambiguous picture at the beginning of this post (yes there are 2 percepts, you perverts!)?

2006...time flies by like time well spent...

2006-01-02T06:00:00.000-08:00

And all of a sudden it was january 2006. Wow, didn't see that one coming. And alle the signs were there; cold weather, christmas lights, overview shows on tv. Still, 2005 past by like it never happened. This is a good thing. We all know that good times speed by while the boring times never seem to end. I had a great time in 2005; spent half a year abroad and had a blast getting to know some of my family better and working in a new environment, I landed a job at my university without having to be unemployed after graduation (actually, even without graduating). Nothing too awful happened to me or any of my friends. Sita and I are still together without any trouble. Yep, I got a lot to be thankful for.

Enough with the sentimentalism! So it's 2006, so what? It's no different from 2005 or 2007, just like december and january are not really different from november or february. It's a weird thing we celebrate that one night a year that starts off a period of having to think what year it is when putting a date on some form. And that's exactly what I have been doing today. Filling out tons of forms. Research-project-assesment-form, master-thesis-proposal-form, PhD-agrement-form, Job-contract-form, getting-a-course-paid-for-form etc. Well, it's a nice stack of paper on my desk. I will tour all the necessary university departments to get all the signatures that are needed tomorrow. Than I can start working on my thesis..

Christmas was well-spent. Sita and I missed the last train at christmas eve to get to her parents because we were to caught up in the national science quiz on tv and forgot about the time. So we went christmas morning and spend the day doing as little as possible, which worked out pretty well :) The next day we went to my family and I had a computer to fix again (cause christmas just isn't complete without that!). We also checked out the place my brother and his girlfriend will be living. It's really nice. If I could get something like that here in Utrecht... but hey, big city, I should be happy I have a place at all.

New years eve was fun, I went to a small party in an old basement at the canals in our city center. At 12 we were at the "Dom-church" with a lot of people, champaign (some of it so distastful we didn't even finish it), fireworks and the churchbells at 12. After that, a lot of un, nonsense and all of a sudden I woke up and it was the afternoon of january 1st.

Well, 2006, the very best to all of you!!

Future work

2005-12-01T06:54:00.000-08:00

So after arranging and restarting my work at Mediamarkt, I had a meeting with the guys at the Functional Neurobiology department today to discuss my future job as a PhD-student in their research group. My official starting date will be april 1st. That's 26 days before official graduation, but I'll probably have fulfilled all requirements for graduation in february already. So why don't I start earlier, let's say march 1st? Two reasons; First, it gets the pressure of writing my thesis so I have some extra time if I need it. Second, I will be taking care of the practical part of a course in neurobiology in february and march together with one of the senior scientists. I could do this as a PhD-student, but then I wouldn't get paid. If I do it as a student and start as a PhD-dstudent afterwards it has a nice financial advantage for me. Still, if I have the time to do something in february/march I can drop by and use the equipment, talk to people and run some pilot experiments. It offers a broad period of getting started without losing any time of the strict 4 years period that stands for a promotion-project. If I want I can get working place, desk and computer tomorrow, so I can do my thesis work or whatever I think necessary at the department. I will probably use that offer in a couple of weeks when I get really busy with my thesis. In april I will move to a room closer to our actual lab (that is now being build) and we will order my new kick-ass mac!

Something totally different; apparently a computers PSU doesn't like being off for half a year. One of the condensators is probably rotten: it produces a very annoying high pitched noise. It still works but you don't want it on for longer than necessary with that sound. First I thought it would be dust on one of the heatsinks or fans. But after un-coupling everything and extensive testing with spare parts I realized it had to be the PSU. And I only have a 350W spare which is too weak. Buying a new 400-450 PSU will be another 50 euros, that I do not have right now. Well, I still have my laptop...

Back home update..

2005-11-28T07:47:00.000-08:00

Well this promises to become a long post. that's what you get from waiting to long... So what happened between the last post and this moment? Let me think. The Saturday after the Blazer's game we went to OMSI (Oregon Museum of Science and Industry). If Max could move to this place i am sure he wouldn't hesitate a second. It's a do-museum in which some basics of predominatly physics (magnetism, pressure, etc) are explained with little experiments and play-things. At night I packed and Sunday morning insanely early I caught the plane to Washington DC.

Upon arrival there was a taxi waiting to drop me off at the hotel. On the way we passed the Pentagon and Arlington national cemetery, I decided I should try to visit those if I had the time. The hotel was nice, although the room was really small for me and my three colleagues. Ah well, after some arguments we finally had four beds so all of us could sleep. There was no way we would be able to find something else anyway with 34,000 neuroscientists occupying all hotels in DC. I was to late to register that day so I met with my colleagues for dinner in downtown DC. The next days were spend both at the conference and at the many memorials and monuments in DC. I saw many research posters, and listened to a fair amount of talks. I also visited the white house, pentagon, capitol, Arlington, the Vietnam war-, Korean war-, Lincoln- and jefferson memorials and the Washington monument. Pictures at my photoblog.

Well, wednesday afternoon I was on a plane back to the Netherlands. Arriving in Amterdam at 7am I was happy to see my mom, brother and girlfriend that all managed to get up early enough to pick me up. My brother still lives with my parents which means that there are three cars in front of that house. I had 6-months-luggage, so they choose to pick the smallest car to pick me up... After some trouble we managed to get everything and everyone in and I was on my way home. The first couple of daysI did not seem affected by a jetlag but later I couldn't sleep at night or get up in the morning. It's almost back to normal now. We moved all my stuff back to my room in Utrecht on Sunday and after the inital "if-it's-in-a-closet-it's-organized" attitude, I am now really organized and everything is where it should be. I freshly installed my computersystem, and a second time over because the first time I was attacked by some worm that wouldn't be removed with any of the 6 programs I tried, but now everything seems to work just fine. I must say the Netherlands are pretty cold and wet. Tuesday in Washington I had dinner with some other dutchies outside and it was warm enough to just wear a T-shirt. Here the power-lines are collapsing as a result of snow and ice.....

Last friday we had a party at our house for a number of unimportant reasons. It was fun to see some people again and hang out with people of more or less the same age and situation of life. I had a great time in the USA, but at the institute there were hardly people my age. Most were much older. Sunday I wrote my first column for my philosophy, art and culture class. It deals with the god-shaped hole between the world that we observe (science) and the world of which we are part (art). I noticed that my way of thinking is pretty much biased towards a scientific approach. I really like art and everything, it's just that on a day to day basis I deal with science way more. I hope this course will learn me how to balance this and broaden my general knowledge about art, culture and philosophy. Today I dropped by my old work to arrange when I am starting work again. I can start tomorrow night and we planned all the way till new year. It was fun seeing my old colleagues again, they were enthusiastic about me returning to the company. I have not told them that it will probably only be for a couple of months, since I already have a fulltime job at uni for when I have graduated from my masters program. I guess they will understand when I tell them, but in the meanwhile I'll have to pay the rent and avoid the risk of having no job.

I also started writing the official application for my masters thesis. I am confident this will offer no problems with the exam committee so I plan to start working on it any day now. If everything goes according to my plans I will have fullfilled all graduation requirement in early february. The official graduation dates are unfortunately enough on january 27th (can't make that) and april 27th . Ah well, I can start my PhD job in february anyway, it's only a nice trick of uni to squeeze some more tuition money out of poor students.

To conclude:
I'm back, I'm busy and I am on schedule to graduate....

Blazers

2005-11-10T23:56:00.000-08:00

Two days left in Portland. I am busy finishing up and making sure I don't forget anything. Presented my work for the research group today and it went great. My professor even asked if he could use some of the schematic pictures I made. After the talk we had a nice it-has-been-nice-working-with-you moment. They gave me a OHSU "brain awareness" T-shirt and I gave my direct colleagues a copy of the book "Flowers for Argenon". It's about a neuroscience lab that does an experiment that makes a mouse really intelligent and then they try it on a human being.. Si-fi, but supposedly pretty cool. So tomorrow I'll have to pick up myfinal report at kinkos and hand it in, clean up my desks and do more stuff to deal with leaving. As a nice surprise I was told I am going to go the Rose Garden tomorrow night to see the Portland Trailblazers play the Detroit Pistons. Should be cool to witness an NBA game. Then I need to start packing my suitcases. The six months are almost over. I'll be having dinner in G.W. backyard on sunday and next thursday I'll be in Amsterdam. But first I need to get some sleep; working towards deadlines usually gets me on some sort of adrenaline rush, so I need less sleep. Now that the efforts of 9 months are all done, I can relax and enjoy the last moments in the USA for a while. I really like Oregon so I am sure I'll be back sometime. But it won't be any time soon, 'cause living abroad for nine months witout pay or the right to work is fantastic, but expensive. I am looking forward to going home, but I am sure I will miss the Portland area and my family. Ah well, to quote my colleague Vadim: "Such is life..."

For those who (pretend to) care...

2005-11-08T21:04:00.000-08:00

For those two people genuinely interested and others faking interest ; the following section is the general abstract that preceeds the research chapters in the report of my nine month internship. It is as short as I can write it down without leaving out the real important information. I wonder if anyone will actually read it, but....

"The cerebellum is the part of the brain that is crucial in the coordination of reflexive movement. For the maintenance of balance by postural adjustment the cerebellum receives information from the vestibular system, the visual system and proprioceptors in muscles and joints. The cerebellum output signal is used for the necessary compensating movements. This output signal is provided by one singe cell type; the Purkinje cell. This means that understanding how the Purkinje cell’s discharge pattern is modulated is an important step towards understanding the cerebellum and its computational circuitry. Purkinje cells have two distinct types of action potential; climbing fiber responses (CFRs) and simple spikes (SSs). CFRs are multi-peaked action potentials with a low frequency and long duration. SSs are single peak action potentials, with a much higher discharge frequency and shorter duration. There are two major input pathways from the vestibular apparatus to the Purkinje cell. Primary vestibular afferents project as mossy fibers on granule cells in the ipsilateral uvula-nodulus of the cerebellar cortex. Granule cell axons form parallel fibers that synapse on Purkinje cell dendrites. One Purkinje cell receives synapses from up to ~150,000 parallel fibers. Primary vestibular afferents also project to the ipsilateral inferior olive through the parasolitary nucleus. From the inferior olive climbing fibers ascend to the contralateral cerebellar cortex where they synapse on only a few Purkinje cell dendrites. Each Purkinje cell only receives input from one climbing fiber. Purkinje cell discharge patterns can be modulated by vestibular stimulation. Sinusoidal oscillations about the longitudinal axis causes CFR frequencies to increase and SS frequencies to decrease in Purkinje cells ipsilateral to the side that is down during stimulation. In contralateral Purkinje cells this modulation in reversed; CFRs decrease and SSs increase. This antiphasic modulation of CFRs and SSs raises the question if those two types of action potentials are modulated independently or correlated. CFRs are evoked by the climbing fibers and their modulation directly reflects climbing fiber activity. SS modulation is less well understood. A first thought might be to attribute SS modulation to the numerous parallel fiber synapses on the Purkinje cell. But vestibular primary afferents are modulated out of phase with SS discharge and there is no inhibitory synapse in the mossy mossy fiber-granule cell-parallel fiber pathway to the Purkinje cell. Furthermore, experiments in the rabbit and mouse show that after elimination of primary vestibular afferents by a unilateral labyrinthectomy, modulation of CFRs and SSs persists. This means the modulation can not be attributed to the mossy fiber-granule cell-parallel fiber input to the Purkinje cell. Lesions in the inferior olive greatly reduce CFR and SS modulation in the contralateral uvula-nodulus suggesting that climbing fiber activity is the driving force behind both CFR and SS modulation. Modulation of climbing fiber activity is also out of phase with SS modulation, which makes a direct modulation unlikely. Besides Purkinje cells there are also interneurons in the cerebellar cortex that might play a role in SS modulation. Stellate cells are the only interneurons that have the suitable characteristics to inhibit SS discharge. They are modulated in phase with climbing fiber activity and have inhibitory synapses on the Purkinje cell. During increased climbing fiber activity the increased stellate cell inhibition could account for the decrease in SS discharge. How the stellate cells are modulated by climbing fiber activity is unknown since there are no climbing fiber synapses on the stellate cell. Glial astrocytes might have something to do with this. The location of Bergmann glial cells at the climbing fiber-Purkinje cell synapse allows them to sense climbing fiber activity by neurotransmitter transients. They secrete glutamate and diazepam binding inhibitor that could increase the excitability of stellate cells. Attempts to model this hypothesized circuitry in a realistic model of the cerebellar cortex have been abandoned for the time being. Ideas to use a realistic compartmental model of Purkinje cell in the GENESIS modeling software have stranded due to an initial misinterpretation of the Purkinje cell model and a lack of time and resources. Purkinje cell discharge in the uvula-nodulus is modulated by stimulation of the vestibular apparatus. The functional role of the nodulus for the execution of compensatory movements can be investigated with a newly proposed behavioral experiment that measures the displacement of the center of mass and compensatory head movements in the mouse, during vestibular and optokinetic stimulation. Also, new cell-specific RNA interference techniques will be developed to knock down the function of specific interneurons in vivo. With this technique the possible necessity for SS modulation of stellate cells and other interneurons can be tested. This might ultimately lead to an explanation of the modulating circuitry behind the cerebellar output signal."

So you skipped it right? Or did you actually read it? In that case; hats off to you! You have earned the reward. You are invited to a party at my house in Utrecht november 25thor 26th. One of my housemates just returned from a long stay in australia and I will be back next week. Enough reason for a party. Or so I was told today when I heard about the party. Must agree though, it will be a great opportunity to catch up with people I haven't seen for the past six months...

104 Pages, 42 Figures, 140 References...

2005-11-06T23:57:00.000-08:00

My report is approaching the finish line. I think I have all the text I want. I just have to make sure I put my references in the text correctly and that will take some time. I think I can manage to hand my report in before I leave for Washington DC, though. I might give a talk next week. Dunno about what yet. The main topic of my internship is a research topic everyone in the research group co-operates in and we all reviewed the recent manuscripts and grants, so I guess everyone knows exactly what 's the deal. I could talk about the possibilities for a model I explored or my ideas on a new behavioral experiments. Or I don't give a talk, we'll see, I don't care.. Monday we will be able to record again if our mouse made it through the weekend. It looked fine friday night, so it should be okay, but you never know.

By the way, I didn't pay attention for a second and all of a sudden it is very fallish. Cold and wet. Guess the Oregon rain season has started again. Well, one more week..time flies..

My animated history...

2005-11-05T10:28:00.000-08:00

Writing, rewritig and referring...

2005-11-02T22:03:00.000-08:00

Towards the end of the internship it is time to work at my final report real hard. I am getting close to the end. I have most stuff written down, but there is still a lot to do. I have to rewrite a couple of sections, put the references to the literature in the right place and hopefully we will be able to gather some more preliminary data from our recordings in the labyrinthectomized mice. After the incident in which our veterinary "friends" of the animal department euthanised our mice after surgery because they "looked like they weren't alright" we had a talk with them. We explained they were supposed to look like that, they are in no pain, only disoriented because we messed with the vestibular apparatus. And besides they adapt in a couple of days and then the only thing visible is a slightly tilted head. They accepted our explanation, but we still changed our surgical methods a little to try to decrease the impact while maintaining functionality. This seems to work. The mice I have operated on recover faster than before.

That a good surgical session is no guarantee for a good experiment was proven today when we recorded for three hours with zero result. No responsive Purkinje cells were found, which made the experiment useless from the physiological point of view. Luckily enough we had a new histological colouring method we needed to test so there was some use to it. I performed a labyrinthectomy right away to prepare a hopefully slightly more succesful experiment for next monday. In the meantime I will keep working on my report.

Punk in Amsterdam

2005-11-02T21:35:00.000-08:00

The time to go back to the Netherlands is getting closer and thanks to my brother I have tickets to some nice upcoming concerts. I am going to see Lagwagon on january 9th. I have seen them many times before, but it was never dissappointing. The best thing is Bo (well, actually Tim) managed to get me tickets for Me First and The Gimme Gimmes. Why is this so great? Well first of all it's an awesome band. A sideproject with members of Swingin' Utters, NOFX, Lagwagon and the Foo Fighters, playing only covers. Second; because it's a project band they don't tour very often. Third; their original tour did Portland in april (when I was in the Netherlands) and Amsterdam in september (when I was in Portland) . But the show in Amsterdam got cancelled and later postponed to may 5th. So luckily now I can go. Oh, and both shows are in De Melkweg in Amsterdam, which is my favourite club of all time.

Fall at Washington park

2005-10-24T09:24:00.000-07:00

Oregon is a green state...in summer... In fall it's every shade between deep green and intense red. Sunday I decided to go to Washington Park to enjoy the colors of fall. Washington Park is a large park just outside the city centre f Portland featuring the Japanese Garden, International Rose Test Garde n, Hoyt Arboretum, Vietnam Veterans Memorial, Oregon Holocaust Memorial and the Lewis and Clark Memorial. Visited them all and made some nice pictures; see my photoblog. Let me especially mention the Japanese Garden and; it's great! If you ever visit Portland, don't miss it! The Rose Garden was nice, but I think it's way better in summer, when it's in bloom. There were roses blooming now, but not that much.

After my park visit, I parked my car at the easbank of the Willamette and walked to the city centre where I spend some time at Powell's. Had some coffee and checked a million books. I bought this awesome "Annotated Alice" book. I always loved the story of Alice in Wonderland, and this book has both Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. But what's even better; it also has many many footnotes to explain references and hidden jokes. Just great!

My first Pumpkin-experience

2005-10-17T11:01:00.000-07:00

This picture summarizes my first pumpkin experience. Saturday we went to a pumpkin patch to pick up the pumpkins for halloween. Now a pumpkin patch is not just a store or a market, it's an experience. They really put some work in it; you go to the pumpkin field on a hay wagon where you can pick out your own pumpkin. But that's not all. There are also goats and chickens, corn-mazes, hay-mazes, pumpkin bowling and apparently they used to have pony rides as well (but not this year).

So there you are, in a large field; surrounded by pumpkins.... which one do you pick? For Max this was easy: the largest you can find, of course!!! So we all picked a pumpkin, loaded them in the car and had some delicious farm-made fries. Back home, I had another first timer; carving a pumpkin! 'Cause you can pick a huge pumpkin when you're five, but carving it all by yourself is another story. So I helped Max and carved my first pumpkin ever.

Yesterday I decided my hair was getting too long again. With no Sita around for another four weeks I could either go to a hair salon or do it myself with the clipper. And ...drumroll... I did it myself, but with all the problems the 6$ clipper gave us the first time we used it, I decided to get a better one. This one had combs that allowed cutting anywhere between 0 mm and 25 mm. I decided 22 mm on top and 10 mm on the sides would do and started. When I started I realised that in the worst case scenario I'd mess up and have to use a 10 mm (or shorter) all over. But even that wouldn't be a problem. I must admit it's easier when Sita does my hair, but I'm satisfied with the result. Okay, it's probably not perfect, but it's nice and short and it'll do. Besides, most will grow back before I am home again....

Music plug-in code is slightly improved and features whole mp3's from fatwreck.com. And I have disabled the autostart, so it's still there, but only if you start it yourself (and only in firefox of course). Today; No Use For A Name...

Master thesis planning

2005-10-13T11:15:00.000-07:00

Another little step towards graduation was made this week. I managed to find proper supervision for the subject I intend to write a master thesis about. Because of the PhD-project I am starting after graduation (but also out of general interest) I intend to write a thesis on conscious visual perception; "know what you see, see what you know". I want the history of thinking about "consciousness" and give an overview of the neuroscience behind e.g. the difference between awareness and consciousness, the roles of willpower, context and knowledge on perception and more of those things. I want to start at the end of november and finish it in early february.

I am happy with my choice of supervisors and their willingness to cooperate. I asked Prof. Wim van de Grind to be my primary supervisor. Although this professor in functional neurobiology is officially retired since 2001, he is still active at my university. His lectures early in my study Biology, interested me for neurobiology and we all know what happened after that.... He thought it was a fun idea and agreed to supervise me. Over the years Wim van de Grind has written numerous publications under which the books "Naturlijke Intelligentie (Natural Intelligence)" and "Intelligentie in een Notendop (Intelligence in a Nutshell)"

But as mentioned before this professor has officially retired so I needed an other "official" supervisor. Prof. Frans Verstraten, received his PhD in 1994 with Wim van de Grind as his promotor. Today, he's professor Experimental Psychology and head of the Psychonomics department of my University. He co-wrote the books "Het Brein te Kijk (Looking at the Brain)" and "The Motion After-effect" and makes regular appearances in the popular-scientific TV-show "Hoe?zo! (How?Like that!)". The two professors have also published together in the past, and know each other very well. Frans Verstraten directly agreed to be the official supervisor so I have a subject and I have my supervisors. All I need to do now is fill out another stack of forms to get permission for it. Another step closer to graduation...

25 years and counting....

2005-10-08T20:38:00.000-07:00

It was my birthday today. For all of you that have send cards, e-cards, e-mails or talked to me on the phone or MSN. Thank you! For everyone that forgot; no hard feelings, I totally suck at remembering b-days myself. It was weird not being around my friends on my birthday but I don't think there has been as much excitement on my birthday in about 15 years. But hey, what can you expect with my 5 and 2 year old cousins?

So when I got out of the shower this morning there were helium balloons in fornt of my room. Max picked a theme for my birthday(cause, hey, you gotta have a theme!) and I had a Spongebob Squarepants party. I actually think the Spongebob cartoons are hilarious so it was a great pick. Bella suggested a ladybird-theme but Max smartly pointed out that ladybirds are girly things so that it was out of the question. So one of the balloons had spongebob on it and at night we had a spongebob cake, on spongebob plates, on a spongebob tablecloth, with spongebob napkins. I can't remember if I ever had a cake with my name on it before...

If this wasn't enough americana I got tricked at dinner. So, at many restaurants, they have this thing when you tell them it's someone's birthday some of the employees come to your table and sing you a birthday song. I think it's fun for children, but totally stupid for anyone older then ten years old, and I mentioned that before. So I should have known they were going to trick me into having people sing for me at the restaurant. We went to Chevy's for mexican food and Max told me he had to go to the restroom. Since I was the only other guy there (Martin's in DC for work) it was only logical I took him. So when we were gone they told the restaurant-people about my birthday and I had to deal with the singing and wear a sombrero; hey for me! just great.....

The rest of the day I didn't really do much. Sita called and it was fun talking to her again. Too bad she called just during the soccer worldcup preliminaries match between the Netherlands and the Czech Republic (while we agreed she could call all day, but not during the match: girls?! No, just kidding, I didn't mind)... But we won 2-0 and have qualified for the worldcup 2006 in germany!!

'Bout my presents; my USA-family gave me a large "Portland" coffe mug and a gift card of Jamba Juice. That's a store selling fresh juices and smoothies and I usually go there at friday afternoon to end my working week with a "Vibrant C" which is (in their words):
"....sunshine-y blend of freshly-squeezed orange juice, pineapple juice, bananas, honey and botanicals is vitamin-packed with over 1400% RDI of vitamin C and bioflavonoids that help strengthen and protect your immune system, skin and internal organs as well as folic acid for a healthy nervous system. C how this juicy blend can give you back what you need and keep you healthy!" But the most important thing is that it tastes great!

Max also handmade me a little pillow with emboidered dinosaurs on it. Awesome (of course)! My parents gave me money which will (most probably) be invested in a new and better bed when I get home again. Sita gave me a cool present too. I got the card below; we're going to Berlin (or another fun city) for a weekend! Very cool!

So that's it, I'm 25 now; it doesn't really hurt, but I AM entering the wrong part of my twenties. Ah well, I have nothing to complain about really....

New music

2005-10-06T11:04:00.000-07:00

I'm in a Toy Dolls mood today, hence the new music... Might go and get myself the new album this afternoon...

And if you still haven't made the transition from internet explorer to firefox, then... ah well...your (bad) choice. Thanks to Edwin for pointing my attention to it, I might try a new Linux distro when I get home. Ubuntu might just do all I want from an OS, there appears to be an open source alternative for practically all software I use so this just might be enough to get rid of windows after all and run a 100% free OS.

I am going....

2005-10-04T11:26:00.000-07:00

My flight can be rescheduled. Unfortunately I'll still leave Portland at 7.10 am and I will still arrive in Amsterdam at 6.55 am, so that's EARLY. Too bad. I will arrive in Washinton DC at 15.00, where I can take a shuttle to the downtown hotel. It has been arranged with the hotel, so I can stay with my lab-collegues. We're staying at the L'Enfant Plaza Hotel, which looks very nice. There is even a rooftop pool with a view over Washington DC!! From the hotel there's a free shuttle service to the conference center where the meeting is. It's also right at a metro station so if neuroscience needs a break it's easy to explore downtown DC. The hotel is also only a coupe of blocks from the white house and the Washington monument, so it's going to be quite a cool trip. My flight leaves wednesday 16th at 5.30 pm, so I have to leave the conference at noon, which is a couple of hours before my collegues are presenting. Yeah, it's too bad I'll miss that but there's no later flight and I already know what they will be talking about. Just a shame they are scheduled in the last hours of a 5 day meeting and I'll be at the airport by then.

Neuroscience meeting 2005

2005-10-03T09:22:00.000-07:00

Well, it looks like my plans on returning home migth be slightly altered again. My professor just offered me to go to the Neuroscience meeting in Washington DC. He'll pay for the ticket and/or any possible costs in changing my flight back to the Netherlands, the hotel and the registration fees. It will mean that I'll be home 9 days later though since the meeting is november 12-16 and I originally planned to go home november 7th. But this is a major opportunity. We're talking about the largest (30.000 people) and most influential congress in the field of neuroscience and it's quite expensive to attend. If I would go for three days from the Netherlands it would cost approx. 700€(flight) + 450$(three nights hotel) + 100$(registration) so that's a total of about 1400$. Now I only have to pay for my food and transportation in Washington DC.

So now to the practical stuff. I must try to find out how to change my flight, look into the problems I am going to encounter by this possible extended stay.I think I have a course starting on november 16th. Ah well, then I'll just miss the first day.

**EDIT oct 3** Okay, my flight can be changed for 170€, and I don't need any other tickets since I was bound to fly to Amsterdam with a transfer in Washington DC already. I'll just fly to Washington 6 days later and stay there for a couple of days before I get on a plane to Amsterdam. For a hotel we can probably manage to arrange something with the place the rest of the lab is staying and I actually get money for cabs and food as well. This is most probably not going to cost me anything extra. Very nice...**

New flight schedule

2005-09-29T09:57:00.000-07:00

I got an email today that informed me, my flight home was rescheduled. And it's not getting any better. In stead of the leaving at 11am and arriving at 9am, I'm now leaving at 7am and arriving at 7am and instead of 1h in chicago I have a 2.5h transfer in washington dc. Well it sucks, but what can you do about it? Sure you can make a scene and everything, but hey, I'll try to sleep anyway and I'll just take a long coffee-break in washington. It's a long tiring journey anyway...

An other shade of green....

2005-09-28T23:56:00.000-07:00

We went to see Jimmy Eat World and Greenday in the Memorial Coliseum, Portland, last night. And well, it was not what I hoped for. Before I start complaining, let me point that I think Greenday has written a bunch of very catchy songs with sometimes funny an lately nice and critical lyrics. I liked them in the early and mid-nineties when I was discovering punk-rock bit by bit. It's just that....

Apparently Greenday is HUGE in the USA which in part might explain why we we're watching the Billie Joe Armstrong show, with the only need for the crowd to go crazy was for him to be there.... Unfortunately his crowd participation thing heavily relied on shouting "hey Portland!" or "hey-hooo!" with which he unfortunately was assured of thousands of people responding loud with brilliant responses such as "yeah" and "hey-hoo". Don't get me wrong, that's okay if you do it once or twice but every f*****g 5 minutes??!! The in-between-songs were awful, with BJA taking any pose whatsoever for god knows how long and the crowd going crazy with their annoying high pitched children voices. Maybe I'm getting old but I always think something is wrong when the audience is filled with kids that brought their parents for guardiance. Just like I start to worry if I see too many Blink182 t-shirts, women in high heels, girls dressed like Avril and guys wearing make-up. They were all there....

We just saw a little bit of Jimmy Eat World, which wasn't impressive but not bad either. The music preceeding Greendays show gave me hope. I heard the ramones, the clash, less than jake, bu then something awful happened... Y.M.C.A.... I guess in the USA this song doesn't have the "gay" image it has in the Netherlands or I was surrounded bij thousands of queers. Just to make clear, I don't have a problem with homosexuals, I have a problem with an enormous mass of people doing the arm movements to form the Y.MC.A. letters. Greenday played tight and the lights and firework were great but the crowd and the hey-ho's drove me nuts. And I don't mind it if there are one or two sensitive songs, I can even deal with the occasional ligter in the air but that much and that often? Give me a break! Apparently the lighter has been overtaken by the now hugely popular act of putting your mobile phone in the air, wow, al those lit displays really set a wonderful atmosphere.....NOT!!

Then greenday did this Operation Ivy cover "Knowledge". I love OpIvy, and Greenday covered this song nicely on their 1991 album "smoothed out slappy hours", but they played it not very well now and they thought it necessary to form a band out of people from the audience and let them play. Great for those people, a shame for the song. The first half an hour I thought we were listening to the cd-presentation of "american idiot", since no song older than two years was played. They made up for that later in the show by playing some classics though.

To summarize; Greenday was thight, but predictable, annoying and boring in-between songs. The audience was, well how will put it, "not my kind of audience"... They would have fitted well at a bitney spears concert with their hysterical teenage shouting.

Why was this show such a disappointment, I ask myself. Well I can think of a couple of reasons. Apparently I was wrong thinking Greenday has even a bit of Punkrock spirit left. They obviously have turned into this mega-pop-rock-punky sensation. The stuff MTV feeds the kids like geese in French foie gras farm. And apparently they're okay with it since the interaction between band and crowd wouldn't misfit a backstreet boys concert. Are we talking "american idiot" or "american idols"? An other thing is the location; until about ten years ago the Memorial Coliseum was the home of the Portland Trail Blazers and NBA games were played there. I don't like big venues and I don't seats during a (punk)rock concert. Another minor thing was the fact that the strongest drinks inside the hall where strawberry lemonades. Sure there was beer, but no way you can have a beer and watch the band at the same time. The idea alone; ridiculous!

To conclude; luckily there's no audience or attitude on the albums, so I really think this is the best way to enjoy greenday these days. I'm sorry if I sound like a negative, critical, old asshole. Cause maybe that's just what I am when it comes to music. I don't say everything used to be better, but I sure liked greenday better when the were an other shade of green....

*Maybe it was a cultural thing as well. This might just be totally american, but I don't think (and hope) so.

**something completely different; can any of you dutch people come up with a proper dutch word for ignorance? "onwetendheid" misses something, I'm just wondering if we even have a word like that....

Today's surgery attempt

2005-09-26T16:42:00.000-07:00

Another week, another try! Vadim and I both performed a labyrinthectomy. Not entirely succesful but not completely disappointing either. Vadim's mouse survived but needed a second shot of anesthesia during the procedure. It is now having some trouble coming out of it, but it's still alive so it looks hopeful. I was a little less lucky. The procedure went great and fast enough. Unfortunately the animal died during the procedure. That can happen, it's just very annoying that we don't know why it died. It didn't bleed at all and we were supposedly on the safe side with our dose of anesthesia. We'll just try again tomorrow and if Vadim's mouse survives we might do some recording. So work is in progress, we're getting better and succes is close... I'll keep you posted..

Just a pic....

2005-09-25T22:55:00.000-07:00

Dunno, just a pic, no need to explain..

"Pannenkoeken"

2005-09-25T21:14:00.000-07:00

Yesterday after watching Max's soccer match, I made pannenkoeken. These dutch pancakes are rather different from their american counterparts. They're thinner and bigger. I made a lot but today we are already approaching the bottom of the pile so I guess it won't get wasted. I was Bella's first time she had pannekoeken and she especially liked the cheesy ones. That morning we went to the Dutch store to get some stroop (a kind of syrup, you put on the pannenkoek) and many other things you never realise are unique for the Netherlands when you see them in your supermarket every week. A sure treat for the immigrant and the accompanying kid that is allowed to get his own assorting of "dropjes". Other than that there is not a lot to tell. Time flies now that I have some practical work to do besides writing my report and the weekends are gone before you know it.

To top it off for the night I changed the music again. Has any of you ever had the weird experience you always kind of liked a certain band but than one day you listen to it again after you haven't listened to it for a while and you totally love them. And you just can't figure out was has caused this change, since it's the same music it was years ago. Well, I have had that with the Clash and it was starting when I wrote that post about it a while ago. Right now I listen to it practically every day when I go to work and it never gets boring. These guys just made some awesome music and it's just weird I never fully realised that. Also I promised Martin I wouldn't mention his soccer-matches on my blog so I won't ;P

Surgery..

2005-09-25T21:13:00.000-07:00

This week I performed my first operation on the mouse inner ear. I'd love to tell you people what it's like but that's hard to do without giving some detailed information about the anatomy of the ear first. This first picture is of a mouse's skull. The hole at which is says external auditory meatus is basically the ear-opening and in the mouse it has a diameter of approximately 1 mm. That's our starting point But to get there we should make a little incision between the mouse's eye and ear and make our way through some muscle and fat tissue. Needless to say that the mouse is at that moment under anesthesia and it won't feel a thing. Once we have our ear-opening free we remove the tympanic membrane (eardrum) and we can see the inner ear. This procedure and everything from that point is done with tiny tools and under a microscope. In the inner ear there are three little bones that are interconnected and are there to transport the oscillation we call sound from the tympanic membrane to the deepest part of the inner ear; the cochlea where the auditory nerve takes the signal to the brain. The three little bones are called malleus (hammer), incus (anvil) and stapes (stirrup). The lower picture shows you the orientation of these bones. The picture is of a human ear, but in the mouse it's very similar (only a lot smaller and other angles). We remove the malleus and incus pretty easy, but the stapes offers a problem. As you can see in the picture it has a triangular shape and right through the middle goes a major arterie. Avoiding bloodloss is already very important since a mouse only has about three mililitres, but with such a (relatively) big arterie we have to be extra careful. So we use a microdrill to drill away a pice of bone to create better acces to the arterie and than we coagulate it (burn it shut). Than we can remove the stapes, if it is not burnt during the coagulation already (remember those bones are a couple of micrometres in size) and we will see the oval window which is the entrance to the inner ear. We then inject a little bit of neurotoxin in the inner ear and plug it off with gelfoam. The mouse gets put back together with about three stitches and the Labyrinthectomy is complete. Won't the animal be deaf on one ear then, you might ask. Well, yes it would be, but more importantly the neurotoxin will destroy the receptor haircells of the vestibular system, so no "balance-information" will be provided by that side of the head. This is an important aspect in our research to unravel the neural circuitry behind balance maintenaince. It would go to far to tell you why, and besides I don't think many of you will truly be interested in that. If you are, I'll be more than happy to explain it to you one day....

Last week we haven't actually let a mouse come out of the anesthesia, because we had to practise the technique first. I'm new to the basic idea of operating an live animals and Vadim who has many years experience in neurosurgery had done these operations on rats and rabbits but it was his first time on a mouse as well. Our conclusion is that it is definately doable, but I should get a little faster. Right now it takes me about 1.5h and that for the best result we should do it within the hour to keep the mouse in shape and under anesthesia. We will try that next week, so we can monitor the recovery of the mouse better.

Missing out on a great trip...

2005-09-17T23:32:00.000-07:00

Grrr, I am missing out on the annual sailing trip of Sita's family. That's really a shame cause it's always one of the best weekends of the year. Just being at the sea all the time. Wind, sun, coffee, beer and the most insane, meaningless, but highly entertaining conversations.... Well, too bad, there's nothing I can do about it, but I'm missing out on these kind of views:

CS Lewis

2005-09-17T22:10:00.000-07:00

I finished "The Chronicles of Narnia" tonight. I read the seven books in chronological order, which is the way the author, CS Lewis, said he preferred it to be read (although there is discussion wether reading it in publishing order wouldn't be better. Frankly I think it doesn't really matter).

It wasn't the first time I read the books. I have read them a long time ago when I was (and this is a guess) about ten years old. I don't know wether I have read them all back then and although a lot of it was a feast of recognition, there was also some stuff I didn't remember. The first book "the magician's nephew" was kind of disappointing. Was this really the series I loved when I was a kid? Narnia didn't seem as exciting as I remembered it to be. But everything turned out well with the "the lion, the witch and the wardrobe" altough I still thought there was a lot more action in the story I remembered than there seemed to be right now. "The horse and his boy" was ok, but not very exciting either. It was when I was reading "Prince Caspian" when it all came together and the world of Narnia as I remembered it started to live again. "The voyage of the dawn treader" and "the silver chair"kept that feeling alive very well, while in "the last battle" mr Lewis kind of went overboard on the symbolism. But he 's forgiven. I loved rereading "the Chronicles of Narnia" which I now consider to be one of the best series of books that are interesting for both children and adults. It doesn't rank as high as Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings" but if you like one, you will most probably like the other. Tolkien and CS Lewis were friends and I wonder what kinds of discussions those two will have had that led to the creation of both "middle earth" and "narnia". Maybe I need to find a more historical book on that(or do a nice modern google search), or maybe any of you might know more about that andcares to let me know.

Disney is turning "the lion the witch and the wardrobe" into a major motion picture that will probably hit the cinemas right before christmas. I wonder if it will be any good, the strength of the narnia series lies in the complete chronicles. At least for me it's that way. Nevertheless I will probably try the movie, but I also wanted to see "the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy" which is one of my alltime favorite books. After all the bad reviews the urge kind of faded and I still haven't seen it.

By the way; I changed the site's music to the Foo Fighters - Cold day in the sun. I intend to switch it a lot just to try keep it interesting and reflecting my current interests. And yes, Deborah was right, the last Foo Fighters album is way better than the previous one!

New feature for Firefox users

2005-09-15T15:24:00.000-07:00

I needed a break from science today and started playing around with the html-code for this site again. I added background music; a short clip will automatically start playing when you open the site. That is, if you're not still one of those ignorant people that use Microsofts Internet Explorer as a browser, cause then it won't work. If you use a proper browser like firefox, a mediaplayer control bar will show up in the side-bar and you can turn of the music if you don't like it. But it will only play once and it's just a couple of seconds.

Maybe this will turn out to be a very annoying feature and then I will get rid of again, but for now, I've had some coding-fun, so you'll have to deal with it. The clip playing at the moment is "Angel wings" from the Social Distortion album "Sex, love and Rock'n'Roll". I plan to change the clip regularly, that is, IF I decide to keep the feature.

I don't know wether it will work in Netscape, Opera or others. It probably will, since it's always microsoft that has to do things differently....

Efficiency and stomach pains...

2005-09-14T20:23:00.000-07:00

My stomach hurts, but it's my own fault. Although circumstances are not entirely within my control, I can blame no one but myself. Today was a day in which I did not do a crazy lot but what I did sorted result....yeeeeeeeeh for efficiency! I had a talk with my professor earlier this week about the practical work in progress at the moment. The lab is running out of money, so pisriorities are with finishing grant proposals . This basically means that the only practical work going on at the moment is some molecular work in order to create some nice pictures to accomodate the grant proposal.

The new behavioral experiment I designed with Neal will have to wait longer, because the necessary new device is far from ready. We actually decided we're giving up the hope of it being ready in time. If the device is ready (and that'll probably take another week or two) we still have to finish the electronics for it, which is another couple of weeks. Well, I will only be here for 7,5 more weeks so I don't have that kind of time. All I am doing at the moment is work on my final report, which is a lot of work but predominantly theoretical, and I would like to do some practical work as well. I did not go to the USA just to sit behind my laptop and type! So we decided we will attempt to do some more electrophysilogical experiments. We will perform unilateral laberinthectomies in mice and record from Purkinje cells. This fits into the experimental switch from rabbit to mice since Neal and Vadim did such an experiment on rabbits in 2003 and a similar result in mice is a necessary result to validate the interneuron recordings in mice.

I also decided which PhD project I want to work on. If it's up to me, I will stick with the high potential project on conscious visual perception. So that's decided, another problem of my mind. This lead me to start planning my master's thesis a little further. My master's administration agrees on the rest of my planning so this is the last thing I have to arrange. I want to do the thesis on (un)conscious visual perception, since it's interesting and may serve as a nice introduction for the PhD project. The thing I have to decide on is who I will ask to supervise and assess the thesis. My preference lies with a professor in Amsterdam but then I need to have a second supervisor at my own university again. I have not figured out who to ask for that yet, but there are a couple of professors that would be suitable.

After all that planning stuff (which is more than just make a decision, I read a lot of articles to come up with the choices I think are right) I noticed my thermos of coffee was empty and it was close to 6 pm already. On my way home I realized the house would be filled with the ladies of my aunt's bookclub. Thinking how that wouldn't be the best circumstances to make dinner I decided to pick up some dinner on the way home (hey, it's the USA the streets are flooded with food providing venues). So I dropped by Taco Del Mar and got a burrito platter. And I thought Taco Bell made good mexican food: This was so much better! It was actually so good that when I came home and noticed all the women I slipped downstairs to my room and ate it TOO FAST, for which I am now paying the price :S Well actually since I started writing this post the feeling that I'm about to explode has pretty much faded.

You see, writing about it how you feel does help you to deal with your problems!

Boys will be boys....

2005-09-11T14:02:00.000-07:00

Hehe, need I say more?

Work and play....

2005-09-09T16:14:00.000-07:00

So another week in the USA has passed and I've been so busy I already typed a sentence saying nothing really happened when I realized that that's not true. Monday was labour day, which means a day off and it was also the last day of summer vacation for Max, so we made it a fun end of summer. We went to a Family Fun Centre, where we played mini-golf (and don't call it midget-golf in the USA, cause Grumpey will sue you right away!), all kinds of fair-like games which got Max the winning mood of a true gambler, and Martin and Max did a bumperboat ride (including watercannons!). Bella was less fortunate; to maintain her falling streak she had set in the week before by running into a door-post, she was walking one way and looking another way on the mini-golf course... And mini-golf courses are full of obstacles that make you trip, fall, bump, your head and cut yourself. Besides this little drama it was a fun day that was concluded with a cinema visit to watch "March of the Penguins". A very cool movie about the extreme conditions penguins on antarctica have to withstand to reproduce succesfully.

For dinner Martin made very nice chicken-sateh. And now my request to all you readers in the Netherlands; for a good american chicken-sateh we use a marinade of dutch/indonesian nasi mix. Which is something they don't sell here. So, I know there are very many better causes to help out, but if you want to make a pseudo-dutch family in the USA very happy send in those envelopes of conimex!! You can ask me for the adress and of course postage will be reimbursed on request...

And the rest of the week I just worked and worked and worked. The new stimulus/recording device still is far from ready and the people in the lab are all working on writing grants (to ensure there is money for research last year) and finifhing the manuscript of the previously executed electrophysiology experiments. So, to put it shortly, the only experiments that are done right now, are done to get preliminary molecular data for the grant proposal. And that is not something for me to work on. So with no electrophysiology in progress and the materials for the newly proposed behavioral experiments far from ready I am working on my report all day every day. Which is something that is kind of booring but also satisfying when it is working out nicely. I intend to write a report with four major chapters, one giving background information on the cerebellum (anatomy, cellular organisation, function), the vestibular and visual systems and the circuitry involved and one for each experimental line (electrophysiology, behavioral neurobiology and computational neurobiology) I have been involved in.

That's where it is getting difficult though. I first spend a couple of months exploring a simulation model of the cerebellar circuitry. This computermodel together with literature was a nice way to get the hang of the circuitry, but I left the model after thinking over how our hypotheses could fit into the model and never went through the trouble of actually programming that, since I didn't think that would make any difference for our research. Well I guess I can still write that.. Then there's the behavioral neurobiology, we came up with a nice idea, I build some rather simple devices to check some assumptions (all just by observing, never actually recording or measuring anything) and then we told the engineers what we wanted them to build. Till today we only have an official drawing of the sketches we made and still no device, and therefore no pilot experiments and no data, let alone results and conclusions. It's good thing the electrophysiology manuscript is almost ready. Although I am not one of the authors of the article I did work in that project to learn about the techniques and that promises to become a nice chapter.

I finally got a reply from my master coordinator today telling she agrees with the way I intend to get all my required study-points. That's a good thing, so as soon as I have decided what project I want to do for my PhD (yep I'm still in doubt) I can make arrangements for my final thesis and graduation is coming closer. Today I realised I have to give a final presentation of this internship, but it would be nonsense to do it in the group I am working in, cause I'll be telling them exactly what they thaught me and what they do theirselves. Maybe I can give a final presentation in the Netherlands where people might actually hear something new. That would be better I guess. Well, I'll figure that out later....

For now I'll take a last cup of coffee and write some more before I start my weekend. This report is gonna be huge. It is already 41 pages and that's that's only a (not quite finished) background chapter, and the first draw of the first electrophysiology experiment. Adding references would account for at least 5 pages and the other two research chapters will problably take some space as well. I guess difficult topics require long explanations, or maybe I just have a tendency to write too much. Judging from the length of this post, that just might be the case....

Popquiz; What band never covered the Clash?

2005-09-02T22:59:00.000-07:00

No really I think it's one of the most covered bands ever and then I'm not even mentioning the influence on the sounds of punk and rock as we know it. Wow Chris, that's pretty strong propaganda coming from someone that wasn't even born when the Clash released their most famous abum "London's calling". Where did that come from, you might ask. Well, let me tell you; since the formatted iPod debacle I have been limited in my choice of music and as most of you will probably agree, that's not something one should be limited in. Well, in my attempts to get the new Transplants album "Haunted Cities" I encountered "Streetcore" by Joe Strummer and the Mescalero's. For those that lack a memory or love for useless musical facts; Joe Strummer was the singer of the Clash. He died in 2002 from a heart attack just after he finished this album. And this album is just fabulous! Don't expect to hear the clash or some awesome punk, it's more of a folky rock'n'roll thing (making up genres is not really my cup of tea, maybe Lucas and Joost can help me out here?!) Of course this album led me to relisten the Clash albums that are probably enormously underrated by the largest part of my generation. They absolutely kick ass! I liked 'em before, but I love 'em now. I fought the Clash and the Clash won!!

Whilst on the asskicking, old music-train I relistened Minor Threat, Black Flag, Circle Jerks, Dead Kennedys, the Business and Social Distortion. Complemented with Johnny Cash, Joey Ramone and Billy Bragg it made a fine mix. But I didn't forget to get involved in more recent music; the new MxPx "panic", the last Lars Frederiksen and the Bastards "Viking", the new Dropkick Murphy's "warrior's code", the last Foo Fighters "In your honor" and I found a great Rancid Live album "live in Nottingham" where it al comes together when Lars Frederiksen dedicates the Billy Bragg song "To have and to have not" (previously covered by Lars Frederiksen and the Bastards) to the late Joe Strummer. Who said this wasn't a coherent post?

And the take home message: Go check out the mentioned albums, if there's some sense of music in you there will at least one that you like...

By the way; I think Jimi Hendrix never covered the Clash :P (given the chronology of events) But would he had he lived later or longer? That's the kind of "back to the future"-madness that could change the evolution o rock and punk forever. Wow, this has turned in total and utter nonsense! But still, you're reading it; what does that say about you??

Choices, choices....

2005-09-01T10:28:00.000-07:00

I received an email today from my future boss informing me that another research project proposal got granted. Two months ago when we had our first talk about my future possibilities as a PhD student in his lab, this proposal was only just submitted and he asked me my preference in research projects; the already granted project investigating "conscious visual perception" or the submitted one "spatial abstraction and categorisation" (in simple words "controlling what you see" and "spatial orientation"). Back then I thought both projects sounded like interesting and fun. Both used similar techniques (fMRI, electrophysiology and psychophysics). CVP had a larger international outreach, SAC a more concrete aim. I told him I did not really have a preference and I got the job for the CVP-project. All good.

Well today I got this email telling me the SAC-project got granted as well and if I would be willing to switch to the SAC so someone else could start on CVP right away (since I will only be able to start in february or march). Now I don't know what to do. Since I got really enthusiastic about the CVP over the last months I think I prefer not to switch, but is a first thought the right one? I should read in on the SAC and see if my first thought lingers on. For the type of work it wouldn't matter, same methods (other stimuli though), same lab, same pay.... It's the context that makes the difference; what ultimate goal do I consider more attractive to work on for 4 years, do I want to work in a biology-physics context or a biology-psychology context, do I want to flirt with a scientific approach to an age old philosophic problem or do I want to work more applied, is the collaboration with Harvard/Princeton/Salk/Sydney that important to me?

I realize that this is a luxury problem. I didn't graduate yet, still I'm sure of a nice PhD-student position and I'm nagging on about how hard it is to choose between two projects... But still it decides what I'll be doing for four years and what I'll get a PhD in which might be important for the rest of my scientific career.. Sigh, and I don't even know why I am posting this, it's not like any of you will some up with the solution (although I dare you to!). I have to figure this one out myself...

She's gone....

2005-08-28T23:35:00.000-07:00

She’s gone…. This morning (really, really early) Sita had to go back to the Netherlands. Waking up before 6 am (and that’s a sunday morning) is not really my thing and saying goodbye for another ten weeks after having so much fun for a couple of weeks was not really a motivation to get up either. But hey, that’s life; so we drove to the airport at sunrise which offered an awesome view of Mt. Hood, one of the cascade mountain range’s volcanoes we had left less than twelve hours before.

Saturday we did the “Mt. Hood loop” a scenic route through the Columbia River Gorge, along the river, passing a couple of falls, historic landmarks and circling Mt. Hood with bypasses up the hill. We started off at Crown Point, a viewpoint with a fantastic view of the gorge. From there we visited Latourell falls, Wahkeena falls and Multnomah falls. At Multnomah we walked all the way up to the top of the fall where there was a great view. Of the river that is, because you could hardly see the fall itself. From there we moved on; saw the Bonneville Dam, the Bridge of the Gods and the Hood River village. Then we went up the hill to the Mt. Hood meadows and we arrived at Timberline Lodge at about 9 pm. That’s where we had dinner and when we came back outside we were surprised with the ultimately dark night sky. I don’t think I have ever seen so many stars…

The downside of the dark night was the ride down the hill. Deer along the road and only sight for as far the headlights of the car allowed us to see. We came home at about 11 pm and drank a bottle “goodbye-wine” with Martin and Angee, followed by a very short night, the ride to the airport, a double espresso on an empty stomach and unfortunately saying goodbye for real. Well, it’s only ten weeks, we’ll survive and it’ll give us something to look forward to.

Seattle

2005-08-24T15:08:00.000-07:00

Monday morning (early again!!) Sita and I started of our journey to Seattle by walking to the bus stop. Turned out the trip planner wasn't accurate or we made a mistake but line 38 that was supposed to take us to Portland did not stop there... So we walked to another bus stop and took another bus that eventually brought us to the train station where we boarded our Amtrak train for a 3.5 our ride to Seattle. Great view of the washington lakes on the way and a comfortable way of travelling.

When we got out at King street station in Seattle, we got a great view of the former Kingdome (now known as the qwest field) and Safeco field stadium, homes of the Seattle Seahawks and Seattle Mariners. We walked down to Seattle's waterfront and got lunch at Red Robin's on the Pier. We actually were served by a waiter with a dutch mom that could speak a fair amount of dutch. What are the chances for that? After lunch we walked p to Pike Place Public Market where we saw the famous flying fish and I bought a couple of cheap used records at the Holy Cow record store (finally bought "the gray race" Bad Religions best album ever, "Remanufacture" by Fear Factory and a SNUFF album). We wlked up Pike hill towards the monorail to Seattle Center where the 1962 world fair was held and where the famous Space Needle is situated. Our hotel (Inn at Queen Anne) was only two blocks away from it and right across the key arena (home of the Seattle Sonics and many great concerts), so we checked in and went back out. We took the monorail back downtown and walked around the city some more and had a great dinner at the waterfront at Fishermans. Seafood with a view on Elliot bay, very nice. After that we went to the Imax theatre at Seattle center to watch Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. If you haven't seen this movie yet, you should; the Depp-Burton thing worked out fine again! It was midnight when we came back out and we decided to walk up onto Queen Anne Hill to have the famous view on Seattle's skyline from Highland Park; Absolutely fabulous!

The next morning we visited the Experience the Music Project, which is weird building with all kinds of music exhibitions and a really cool piece of art made out of guitars. Really fun! After strolling around for a couple of hours we went downtown and took a cruise on Elliot Bay to get a great view of Seattle from the water. Besides Sita getting hit by a seagull-bomber, this was really fun too. We spend the left hour walking through Pioneer square back to the station. The ride back was shortened by watching "Madagascar", a pretty fun movie too. Back in Portland we took a bus to Portland Community College where Martin picked us up.

After a long night of sleep I spend today recovering, reorganizing and updating this blog; which is done right now....

Lincoln City August 15-21

2005-08-24T15:02:00.000-07:00

Monday august 15th we went back to Lincoln City again. This time we stayed a week and it was even more vacation-like. For the first days we didn't do much but hang around the pool and on the beach. And we tried the hotel's cocktail mixing skills which weren't disappointing at all. Wednesday Sita and I went to the Oregon Coast Aquarium where Sita once again displayed her extraordinary love for sea otters (which I must admit are quite fun to look at). Thursday we toured down highway 101, which is a north-south highway along the Oregon coast that has a nice ocean view almost all the time. We went south to Florence where we visited the world's largest sea cave; Sealionscave. And yes that does mean there are a lot of sea lions there, they're just not in the cave, but right outside of it. Well there was one in the cave but compared to the tens of californian sea lions outside that's nothing. After this stop we went further south and stopped at the Oregon Dunes Area. A huge area with high sand dunes where all the real Americans can have fun with their outrageously big four wheel drive cars and small dune buggies. Since we didn't have an outrageously big fourwheeldrive car we walked up the dunes which appeared to be harder than it seemed. But when we arrived at the top puffing like a ... (hm, does anyone know something that puffs really hard; besides an old steam train or a woman in labour?) it was really worth it.

Friday we wanted to do a similar tour north. First take a look at cascade head, a conserved nature area with a great view and then maybe move on to Astoria or Tillamook. Well, we kind of underestimated cascade head where we spend 5 hours hiking from the foot of the mountain to the top and back. After that we were kind of tired so we skipped the rest of the plans. Cascade head is a part of the cascade mountain range that covers the northwest of the USA from california to canada. Cascade head sticks out into the Pacific at the point where the salmon river enters the Pacific, which offers a great view. Unfortunately it was really foggy when we were there so we couldn't see very far but the weird sight of a fog covered Pacific was pretty cool too.

On saturday we visited the Tanger Factory outlet stores in Lincoln city cause Sita needed shoes and wanted to buy a skirt. Being a woman as she is, we came home with a reasonable amount of clothes, but none of them could be called shoes nor skirt. Still it was a pretty succesful trip and even I bought some clothes more exciting than socks (which was the only thing I bought there last time) . When we came back we met up with Martin, Angee and the kids on the beach and we all walked to Mo's for dinner. After that we got same great icecream and walked back to make a fire on the beach and there were s'mores for everyone this time.

Sunday we packed everything up, went for a final swim in the pool and headed home. Sita and I stopped by the Tigard mall and finally got her a set of shoes. Before we went to bed we had some Taco Bell's (which should definately open some locations in the Netherlands) and watched Sleepless in Seattle, which is actually kind of a booring movie, but Sita and I were to go to Seattle the next morning so the views of Seattle were a nice preview.

The best news that evening was that Ian found a car and when all paperwork is done I can drive my '90 Honda Accord....

More great pictures can be found shortly on my photoblog...

Bridge pedal/stride

2005-08-24T15:00:00.000-07:00

"Birds sing there's not a cloud in the sky
August 8th is a beautiful day...." (NOFX)

Monday night august 8th I went to the airport to pick up Sita. Yeeeeh! It's just that I was waiting by the wrong gate... Well, the Netherlands to Portland, that's an international flight right? That's what I thought, forgetting the transition in New York which made the flight to Portland domestic and thereby arriving at gate 9 and not 10.... It didn't take me too long to realize my mistake though, so I walked over to gate 9 too meet up with Sita. Really good to see her again.

The rest of the week I was still working and Sita added a nasty cold to the jetlag which tied her to the bed pretty much. But at the end of the week my vacation began and the fun could start! Friday night I went out with Ian (Angee's brother) on the hunt for an acceptable, afforable used car. Unfortunately enough only one person on his list of selected ads answered the phone. We went down to take a look at this Toyota Camry which seemed to be ok. But back home we checked the VIN and the car turned out to have a history of being totalled and stolen, so that deal was off and although it was a fun night it wasn't very succesful. Saturday Sita and I went to downtown Portland, wandered through the city, hang around the waterfront and had dinner at the Ro ck Bottom Brewery, where they serve some nice food and excellent beer. Back home we subscribed for the anual Portland Providene Bridge Pedal on sunday.

During this event all ten bridges that connect the parts of Portland east and west of the Willamette river are closed of for cars and there are biking and walking tours that cross one or more bridges. Because we didn't have bikes and didn't want to go through the trouble of renting them at 7 in the morning we decided to do the bridge stride which is a walking tour of 5 miles crossing 2 of the ten bridges; the steel bridge which is an industrial looking bridge and the Fremont bridge which is a very high bow bridge.
From the Fremont bridge you have a very nice view of the river and the city. We walked from 8 to 10 am and visited the Bite of Oregon Festival afterwards. This festival at the waterfront features typical Oregon cuisine and might be more fun at a later time of day when you are actually feeling like eeting salmon and stuff and tasting a lot of local wine. At about 11 am it's fun to see and we got a great fresh strawberry lemonade but it's not very exciting.

Lincoln City August 5-7

2005-08-24T14:56:00.000-07:00

After we dropped off my parents at the airport (Max: You can come back anytime you want!) on friday august 5th, we moved on to the coast for a short weekend at the beach. Angee came later since she had to work. A lot later actually since she was one of the tires of the car ran flat on her way down to the beach. Fortunately she had just renewed her AAA subscription so everything worked out fine but it was past midnight when she arrived and the car needed new tires the next morning. We didn't do anything too exciting that weekend but breath some nice ocean air and enjoy the beach, the pool and the hottub. We walked the beach over to Mo's for diner on saturday, flew some kite and spotted some seals. When we walked back we had to go through the "kietelgras" (which is the dutch term for tickly grass that Max uses to describe the dune grass).

Later that night I got invited to a real guys thing Max and Martin use to do on the beach; Make a fire.. "But, don't tell Bella, cause she can't come...", whispered Max in a conspirative voice. Once the fire was lit I was introduced to some more Americana; "S'mores". S'mores (if that's how you write it) are made of crackers with a little piece of Hershy's chocolate which is melted by a marshmallow straight from the fire and squashed by another piece cracker. Ultrasweet, but in moderate amounts very very good!

On sunday Martin and I went back cause we were expected at work on monday morning and the last time we tried going back early on a monday morning we didn't arrive at work till moday afternoon :)

Sorry, here we go again....

2005-08-24T14:49:00.000-07:00

So it took me quite a while to post again. My humble apologies to all of you that thought something terrible had happened to me, but actually something good has happened; Sita is here! Yes and after not seeing my girlfriend for three months, you'll understand I kind of prioritize (is that even a word?) her above updating this blog. But after spending a week at the coast and a couple of days in Seattle I'm back in Lake Oswego and I'm using this day to rest and reorganize before I'll go back to the lab. Might as well report about the past couple of weeks then, right? So here we go, the next couple of posts will tell it all; prepare for a informative ride.....

the Pearl district

2005-08-05T10:33:00.000-07:00

Since my parents are flying back to the Netherlands today we went out for dinner in Portland last night. It had been a very hot day with temperatures over 100F (about 35C) and it was still rather hot in the evening. We went to Fratelli, which is an Italian restaurant in Portland with a Dutch chef, named Paul. Martin and Angee now this guy so we got a great table and he came out of the kitchen for a talk. Man, this guy can cook! We were very lucky in our pick of the evening. It was the first thursday of the month and we were in the Pearl district in Portland. This is the most trendy part of Portland with a nice mixture of old warehouses, new appartment buildings, fun shops and a ton of art galleries. Well, the first thursday is the traditional start of new exhibitions and there is some sort of art market on the streets. Since it was such a hot evening the streets were flooded with people. Two types of people really sticked out of the crowd; there were these really arty looking alternative people and the really trendy people (and I quote; "Women come to the Pearl district to show off their new boobs"). As I mentioned before we had a nice table with a clear view on the passing crowd so we enjoyed ourselves watching the diversity pass by.

Afterwards we went for a walk through the Pearl again and hopped into Powell's. Powell's is the largest independent new and used bookstore in the world and it's somewhat of a readers mecca. I am proud to say that I left the store again without buying any books. But who am I kidding, let's quote the governator "I'll be back". After this we dropped by Mio Gelato and got ourselves a VERY tasty gelato. I would recommend it to everyone that visits Portland. Enjoying our gelato's we walked back to the car and Martin took us home with a 100-turns detour through downtown Portland to show stuff. Altogether it was a fantastic evening, I was enjoying myself greatly (it would have been even nicer with Sita around, but you can't have everything and I think we'll visit the Pearl when she's here in a couple of days) and I think my parents couldn't have wished for a nicer last evening in Portland.

Bella's Birthday

2005-08-01T00:08:00.000-07:00

Bella turned two today. She got a lot of presents (including a very nice red bike). All very cute, some of 'em slightly too big for her, but at the age of two growing is not really a problem... After the early morning arousal ("it's my birthday") there was a "little" party at local park. And yes, little is a word that could only be used to describe the size of the birthday girl, since the party itself was anything but little.

Lots of people, lots of presents and the food and drinks section had a large selection of .... well too much too tell actually. I must mention the cake though. There was a "button" theme to the party, so Angee made a cake all topped of with buttons. It looked very professional and tasted great.

Saint Helens

2005-07-31T23:45:00.000-07:00

Saturday, we went to Washington (the state) and visited mount Saint Helens, an active volcano. It was really impressive. St Helens had a major eruption in may 1980, when a bulge on the North site of the mountain exploded and blow out a mixture of steam, ash, dust and lava in a horizontal direction (in stead of the more general vertical eruption) with 300 mph and at 320 kmph destroying everything in a 230 square mile area. This blast lasted an hour and had a force comparable to 27000 atomic bombs like used in Hirosjima. With this the top 1300 feet of the mountain slided downand glaciers were melting for 75%. This caused the largest landslide in recorded history and a devastating mud stream which buried pieces of the valley in as much as 600 feet of mountain leftovers and filled the rivers with mud and trees. 57 people died as a result of the eruption and the ash cloud darkened two states. Ash was found all over the United States. In the last 20 years vegetation has worked on a comeback, but there's still a huge area of dusty ground without vegetation and a lot of trees are still just laying there pointing away from the mountain as silent witnesses of the '80 blast. Last year geologist recorder some earthquakes under St. Helens and since than the volcano has been smoking andshe's steadily growing. When we were there we could see the little pointers record some movement and actually today (one day after we haven been there) they have measured an earthquake under the mountain again. No one knows if and when st. Helens is going to erupt again, but it sure is an impressive area to walk around... For more pictures you can click here...

Science

2005-07-31T23:01:00.000-07:00

Another week has passed. Can't really recall what I've been up to. Guess nothing too exciting, just work at the lab. I am figuring out what's the best way of recording head movements in our new setup. Using a search coil system seems to be most accurate. Here you put to orthogonal coils (of a couple of mm) on the mouse's head. If you then put the mouse in a Helmholtz cube frame in which two orthoganal uniform magnetic fields are present, you can measure the orientation of the coils (and thus of the mouses head) by recording the magnetically induced voltage from the coils. The voltage recorded depends on the amount of the magnetic field that passes through the coil, so a coil orthogonal to he direction of the magnetic field would have the highest induced voltage and a coil alligned with the magnetic field would have no induced voltage. In between every position is reresented by a gradient in voltage. I hope I explain this basic physics clear enough so someone will understand it... The problem with such a system is the uniform magnetic field that has to be created by a framework of three pairs of opposing coils. This configuration is called a Helmholtz cube or field coil and is not cheap. Our lab does not own a Helmholtz cube. So I'll gues we might have to abandon the ideal method for something else. We're also exploring the possibility of using gyroscopes, little sensors that record rotation in a way I will not try to explain. The problem with gyroscopes is that they will need a hand made circuitry of chips which will be an awful lot of work. We'll see what we'll use in the end. The good thing is that just recently two papers were published claiming that measuring the vestibulo collic reflex (stabilizing head position in space by compensating head movements) is a valid method of measuring the state of the vestibular system. This has great advantages over measuring the vestibulo ocular reflex (stabilizing the image on the retina by compensating eye movements) because, well mice just have pretty small eyes....

Furthermore I am trying to schedule the road to graduation. I got my working with animals licence course scheduled for december and I might do an online course on conscious and unconscious perception with the University of Amsterdam fom september to the end of november. This would only leave me with a thesis and a graduation presentation in the new year and I might be ready to start my job in march instead of april, which is benificial for all of us.

Well there's some interesting stuff coming up about volcanoes and birthday parties, but I guess I'd better put that in a new post because everybody will have stopped reading even halfway my explanation of a search coil system..

Downtown Portland

2005-07-23T20:34:00.000-07:00

Took a bus to downtown Portland today and wandered around the city. Public transportation is ok in Oregon, it's cheap ( I paid $3,50 for a day card) and more or less comfortable. In the city centre it's even totally free. But since I didn't really have a destination I only walked around. Of course the batteries of my camera went dead after about 4 pictures, but hey, I was in the city centre so there had to be a place that sold batteries. And of course there was, so my photoblog has some nice new additions. I picked a perfect day since it was very sunny, but not incredibly hot. I guess summer has finally started and all that "it will be nice weather from the fourth of july till at least september"- talk I've been getting starts to make sense. We're averaging about 80 Fahrenheit which is about 25 degrees Celsius, but we're up for some more heat as this picture will show you:

New layout

2005-07-21T14:03:00.000-07:00

I couldn't sleep last night so I started making a new layout for this blog. Didn't finish it though, but I managed to do the last bits in some lost minutes at the lab... So here it is. Less standard than the previous layout. I had to do quite a little bit of html, but that's not too difficult. Comments turn up on this page now too, rather than opening a new one and the text is lined out nicer. Let me know what you think about it..

Don't Panic

2005-07-20T21:35:00.000-07:00

Yesterday evening I went on a mission to get the new Harry Potter for my aunt (and of course I want to read it myself too) First I went to Target in Tigard, but it was sold out. Yeah, they had some special collector's items left but at about four times the regular price.. So I went on to the mall to discover there was no book store in the mall. Later I was told there was a book store but it was located in the food-corner (don't ask me why) so I didn't look there. I was already on my way back home when I passed a Barnes and Nobles; a big bookstore that was open till 10pm and still had the book I was looking for in stock. Then it happened again. Why can I never leave a bookstore buying just one book? I don't know, but this time I once again walked out with four books. I got my aunt the new Harry Potter, bought the Ultimate Hitchhiker's guide to Galaxy for my uncle (can't believe he has never read that, it's one of the funniest books I know. Still curious about the movie, has anybody seen it?) and for myself I bought The long and dark tea time of the soul, another Douglas Adams book, starting with the promising sentence; It can hardly be a coincidence that no language on earth has ever produced the expression: "as pretty as an airport" . Airports are ugly. I also got myself the chronicles of Narnia, since I was talking to my aunt about it and I remembered I read it when I was about 12, but did not remember much more then that it involved a magic closet that was a port to another world, a huge lion which had to be sacrificed on a stone table and an evil witch... and that I liked it. So I decided to re-read it.

In the lab everything is going steady but slow. Designing a complete new setup for an experiment involves a lot of thinking, construction and looking up possibilities. We have e long way to go but we're on it. Today we celebrated my colleague Tim's birthday and went to a Mexican restaurant called Chevy's for lunch. The food was good but a bit heavy on the stomach for lunch. We had a good time though and that's most important.

Tonight after dinner I went for a swim again. I did 1500m this time since I was later and the pool closed. It went way better than last week. I adjusted my starting speed so I could go on longer without resting. It's still not even remotely like it used to be but it's getting better. I hope I can keep up my weekly kilometers in the pool. It's a nice workout, altough at the moment my arms feel like lead and I'll probably pay for my efforts tomorrow.

Also today I found out that the Osdorp Posse released a new dvd-box. For those of you that don't know the Osdorp Posse; they were the first hiphop band in the Netherlands to start hiphop in dutch, the so called "Nederhop". They started out translating NWA lyrics literally at the end of the eighties but soon started writing their own lyrics. I used to love them when I was 13 till 19 or something, but didn't listen to it since. Now there is this dvd-box with documentaries on the origin of "Nederhop" some live footage and a new album. I asked my brother (who turned 22 yesterday, happy birthday Bo!) to buy the box for me in the Netherlands and I downloaded the new tracks as a preview. I must say that I am not as enthousiatic about them as I was back in the nineties (ough...that sentence hurts) but it's still pretty okay. I also got a copy of the new Queens of the Stone Age, that is definately worth listening to. I haven't really "listened to it" (like in focussing on the music) but in the car and during work it sounds good... By the way, if anyone has any music they recommend me to listen to; I'm always curious to discover new sounds so share your enthousiasm and tell me about it!

the Pacific

2005-07-17T09:07:00.000-07:00

Last sunday we went to Sweet Tomatoes, an all American restaurant. You get to load your plate with salad, then you pay and after that you can get as much soup, pasta, pizza, fruit and icecream as you want. The working week was spent on building the new experimental apparatus. I first tried to do it with all the stuff that was just laying around, hiding in all kinds of different boxes and drawers in the lab, but since I seemed to miss key-parts with every different aproach I decided that I was being silly to try to do it with old junk and went out to buy some new materials. That was apparently a good decision since everything was a lot easier with the new stuff. So I build our adjustable restraining box that was supposed to keep our mouse from turning around and mess up recordings, screwed it to our vestibular stimulation platform and.... discovered our little pen-motor was not strong enough to move the entire construction... So now we have to build a new motor as well, with all new kinds of "problems". Keeps you busy though.

On thursday night I went to the recreation centre and swam 2 km. Ouch, that's a lot, I know. And all the time I was fighting against the memory of how easy it used to be. For all of you that don't know; I did competitive swimming for about ten years, but stopped about six years ago and didn't really swim during those years. So at my thursday night attempt I was getting tired so incredibly fast..... But still, I took my time, did a fair distance and took a short stay in the sauna afterwards. Pretty nice altogether, but the pain in my arms and shoulders made it clear they weren't used to something like this anymore. But it' s a nice kind of pain...

Friday afternoon I took off a few hours early because we were going to the beach! We would be at the Inn at Spanish Head in Lincoln City for the weekend, were we would meet my parents again and get our fair share of Pacific breeze. At the moment I'm sitting in our living room, posting with the wireless connection the Inn provides and I'm looking straight at the ocean. This picture is the view from our balcony. We're on the seventh floor and if you take the elevator down to one you actually get out on the beach; fabulous!

Yesterday we went to Newport to see the Oregon Coast Aquarium; Otters, sea lions, stingrays, sharks, jellyfishes turtles and many more. The biologist in me enjoyed himself thoroughly, but hardly as much as Max and Bella, who had a fantastic day (we did too, but you just can't beat the enthousiasm of a 1 or 5 year old). We had dinner at Mo's were they sell the world famous (their own claim) Clam Showder, my dad's so lyrious about. And I must admit; it was GOOD!
On our way home we also stopped at Otter Crest, from which you have a great view over the Pacific and Devil's Punch Bowl.

My stomach has almost recoverd from the champaign brunch my parents just treated us on. An incredible amount of delicious food and they keep filling up your champaign and coffee (or something Americans like to call coffee, but is more like warm coffee lemonade). In an attempt to taste as much I could, I kind of overdid it but now, after an hour of easily digesting I am fine again.

Counting the days right now. Not that I am getting bored with the USA or life around here, not at all, but it's only three weeks before Sita (bird girl :P) gets here!! Wow, looking forward to that...

By the way; I added some very nice pictures to my photoblog. Check 'em out!

Multi-compartmental long story....

2005-07-09T22:32:00.000-07:00

This long post could and maybe even should have been a couple of short stories. All I had to do for that is update this thing every time or half the times I thought about doing it. A combination of being busy and a reluctant I'll-do-that-later-attitude has led us to a blogless week with a large post on satyrday. I'll ake you through the week quickly with some pictures to ease the reading. Pic1; the house is on the market. Not totally finished but the ads have been placed and responses are coming in. I wonder how fast it will sell...
Pic2. I witnessed the United States in one of it's great patriotic moments; the fourth of july. We went to Tigard high to watch the fireworks from the football field. I must say I was not totally comfortable when the entire crowd stood up and faced the flag to listen to the national anthem with their hands on their hearts. It's strange, but maybe it's just me lacking a great sense of patriotism :P Fireworks were fun though and the kids didn't seem to have any problems staying up so late.
Weather is getting better, it has been so sunny almost the entire week (real icecream-temperatures: Pic3) The fourth of july was a free monday which caused the working week t be shoerter and fly by. We came up with the idea to do a new kind of behavioral test to strengthen the validity of the other research. We have to build a new device for it and test if it works the way we think it will. And if it does, we will run in to a recording problem that we have not entirely solved on paper yet. We will build the device and run some pilots next week and then we'll decide wether it's worth the effort. The basic idea is to put a mouse on platform that is moving (vestibular stimulation) and have a screen with optokinetic information in sight of the mouse. We will then test with mice that have a damaged nodulus and compare them with 'normal' mice. We will record the headmovements to show (or at least we expect to show) that the nodulus is primarily involved in vestibular processing and not that much optokinetics. This will probably not make any sense to whoever is reading this, but then again, I don't really believe you people care about the details and maybe I'll explain stuff better later (their we go again postponing...)
I did some more sightseeing last week which resulted in a couple of nice pictures that I will put on my photoblog (see link on the right side of this page) right after I will finish this post.

My parents arrived last wednesday, but they will move on to washington and Canada on monday already. They will however meet up with us next weekend when we will spend some time at the beach. I'm looking forward to that; always been kind of a sucker for oceans :D

The electonic trouble department has been cleared thoroughly. After 2 formats my iPod's working again. I have lost all my music but it's still on my computer back in the Netherlands and for the last 4 months (time flies) in the USA I have my sources that have provided me with some nice music. Thanx Bo and thanx Martin. Good thing you guys have a proper sense of music... I am writing this post on my OWN laptop. After three months I finally got it back, with a nice new screen..........and an erased harddisk. I don't really get why you need to erase the harddisk to replace a screen, but it's all working now, so I will not mention it again.

Sita has her ticket and stuff arranged as well and she will arrive 3 days after my parents leave. August 8 I will see my girlfriend again... that'll be great!

Enough for now. I wonder how long I'll be able to postpone the next post.. we'll see...

I accepted...

2005-07-02T19:18:00.000-07:00

Thought about for a day and a half, slept a night on it so to say... Of course I knew about the project for a while already, so it wasn't really that hard to decide. Guess I needed some people to show some enthusiasm about it for my final decision to arrive. After all accepting means I know what I'll be working on until 2010. It also means I get to do what I like (and studied for), with people I like to work with in an international prestigious project and get paid for it (wow, I'll have my weekends back). So I did it; I've just send out the email accepting the job. I will get my PHD in Neurobiology at my very own Utrecht University.....

Job offer aka my future

2005-07-01T11:27:00.000-07:00

I just received an email with the official job-offer to get my PHD at the Functional Neurobiology department of Utrecht University. It's the project I talked about earlier. The official title is; Neural mechanisms of voluntarily control: shaping conscious visual perception. It's one of the High Potential projects of Utrecht University, physics of men and functional neurobiology working together. I did not accept yet, but I'm pretty sure I will within the next 24 hours. I just need to process this first and not respond within 5 minutes. Besides the aim of the project (finding the neurophysiology of controlled perception, popularly "willpower") and the techniques (electrophysiology, psychophysics and fMRI) the internationally oriented approach of the project appeals to me very much. Utrecht University will be cooperating with Harvard, Princeton, Salk Institute and the University of Sydney. With all these unemployed academics out there, I'm pretty lucky to get this offer months before I even graduate and get my MSc... And I didn't even have to attend a job interview (which would have been pretty hard, with me being in the USA and all). It helps that the principal investigator is the guy I worked with during my first internship last summer. He already knows me and the way I work. Guess he liked it. So now I can start planning for real, because the moment I accept I'll be settled till 2010. Returning to the Netherlands, write my masters thesis and find a $%#@ course to officially complete my BSc (yeah, I forgot to do one and we discovered that only when I had already planned my internship in the USA. It's a free choice course, so I can do whatever I want at a level I had 3 years ago, so it's really quite silly). I think can attend a course and write a thesis at the same time, I think I can even write a thesis on a topic anticipating the PHD project, so ill must be able to start March next year. Official graduation will be in April. I'm totally off with the order of things here. Usually one gets a BSc, then a MSc, then when starts looking for a PHD-student position. I will probably start of with accepting a PHD student position, then finish the requirements for my MSc and the last thing I will do is fullfilling the requirements for a BSc. Yeeeeeeeeh me, rebel :P

Soccer

2005-06-30T09:59:00.000-07:00

Last night I played soccer for 2 hours. Real soccer with people that could play. Not the youngest people I admit (I was the youngest), but they play on a weekly base so they're pretty well trained. Unlike me... I hadn't played this kind of soccer for years and altough I really liked doing it, my legs tell me I am not used to running around for a couple of hours any more. We played 3 on 3 so it was quite intensive. I like the feeling though, it's good to feel that you've been working out... It was also a very nice evening to play soccer last night. Warm, but not too warm, just perfect. I will certainly do this again...

Animals and iPod

2005-06-29T14:14:00.000-07:00

Last night I saw a raccoon strolling around the backyard. Kind of weird to realize they are walking around here freely, there are also a lot of squirrels, my lab is surrounded by deer and I'm told there are also lynxes in the area. Then again I was also told that it would be sunny from may to november....

Less fun; my iPod broke down yesterday. It still plays without any problems, it is just not recognized by any computer as an iPod. Pretty annoying, because this means I can not change the music that is on it. I did a diagnostic show and it told me my hard drive is damaged. Fortunately it is still under warranty for one more month, so I will have go to an apple store and see what they can do for me. It will probably mean I will lose the 38 gb of music that is on it. That is not too bad, because I still have it on my computer..... which is in the Netherlands... We'll see what happens.

BBQ

2005-06-29T14:13:00.002-07:00

Last saturday we went to Ron's place for a BBQ. Ron is my uncle's colleague and they are in the same band (although some of the wifes expressed their doubts about the present existince of this band; Chemical X). Although I hardly knew anybody there, I had a great time. All the people (mainly colleagues) were very nice and all the kids were totally enjoying the trampoline and disney movies. I discovered the refined taste of Margherita's (before I had never mixed my tequila with anything other than bitter lemon) and sitting outside with bbq-food and fire is always fun. Then their was this weird dog that without any result kept asking for attention.

[EDIT1] It was pointed out to me that the fact that one of the guests offered to BBQ the dog on multiple occasions should not go unmentioned. He's right, that was pretty funny too. I almost forgot. And for all you prejudiced people out there; yes he was Asian....[EDIT1]

I was also impressed by Ron's collection of autographed guitars. He had guitars from Megadeth, Social Distortion, the Donna's, the Offspring and a couple more. It was like his own private "Stairway to heaven".

[EDIT2] In retrospective I wonder if Ron's guitar collection reflects his lack of wood :P (terrible insider's joke) [EDIT2]

Laptop matters

2005-06-29T14:13:00.001-07:00

Well, apparently laptop repair shops don't read emails, faxes or letters, because altough I have told them 3 times they should not call me when my laptop's ready (cause I'll be in another timezone) I received a wake-up call last week at 5 am local time telling me it was repaired and I could come to pick it up. Because of the happy contents of the message I quickly forgave them their mistake of waking me up. Now my parents can bring my laptop when they're here for their holidays next week and I can finally work on my own machine..

My colleague Tim was less lucky in the laptop department this week. He spilled some coffee over his, which caused his screen backlight to stop working and the keyboard to behave really strange (double or non responding keys). Repairing would cost at least 500 dollars and we couldn't do it ourselves, so it's now degraded to be a desktop computer by using an external monitor and keyboard.

Computers.....there so useful if everything is working fine....

Soccercamp

2005-06-29T14:13:00.000-07:00

Besides his birthday Max attended a soccercamp last week. He got practise for 3 hours every day (supported by his mom and sister) and he really seemed to like it. It's a shame however that his UK coaches poisoned him with lies. I'll explain for the last time; The best soccer-players in the world are not from England!! The kid's half Dutch and should realize that's were the talent's from!!!

Birthdays

2005-06-29T14:12:00.000-07:00

Last week (I know, it has been a while) we had a birthday-party theme. On tuesday my colleague Mary, the immunologist and "lab's mother" turned 55 which was a good reason for the lab to go out for an extensive lunch. We went to downtown Portland and had a great lunch. The trip into the city from our lab must have looked pretty funny, I was in the "international convertible"; An American, Ukrainian, Chinese and Dutch guy in one car. In the afternoon there was cake and icecream, which seems to be a normal combination here. Needless to say we did not get a lot of work done that day.

Thursday it was time for a much more anticipated birthday; Max turned 5! He had been telling us for two weeks how long it would take before he had as birthday. For a 5-year old a birthday is one big rush of excitement; presents, cake, attention and a lot of it all! He had his party at "Pump it Up", which is gym full of blow-up slides, jumping pillows etc. Party-heaven for these kids. After jumping we went to the party room for cake and Max, got his presents sitting on a giant blow-up chair. When all the kids were leaving again, he told me; "I've got a lot of new toys, we're gonna open them all tonight" Of course he was to tired to live up to this, but I got my fair share of Lego and Playmobil the following days.....

Multnomah Falls

2005-06-20T11:16:00.000-07:00

Sunday, we decided not to work and enjoy the nice weather instead. We went down to the Columbia River Gorge and Multnomah Falls.

So after a month I finally acted like a tourist as I was walking around with my camera on a sunny day. It's a very beautiful scenery. There are some nice wetlands along the river that might interest a couple of my biology friends but have merely an esthetic value to me. Nevertheless I enjoyed myself.

At Multnomah Falls there was something going on that included music and all kinds of volunteers with stands. The kids got to make a necklace and saw Smokey the Bear (which was both scary and interesting). On the way back they fell asleep in the car within minutes, exhausted from a day of impressions. It is good to know the area is so beautiful and I am happy I will have some more time to explore...

World Wind

2005-06-20T11:00:00.000-07:00

I found a great piece of software. At http://worldwind.arc.nasa.gov/ you can download WorldWind, which is a program that allows you scan the globe and zoom in with the use of sattelite pictures. Too bad the Netherlands aren't available in high resolution yet, but there's a lot of other stuff to play with. In the left picture there is a relief scan of the Oregon coast and Portland and the right picture shows my lab. That's how close you can get! There are also a lot of add-ins available that give you the same effects of al the planets and the moon! ANd now for the best part; IT'S FREE! So go check it out, it garantuees you some playtime...

ID? What the %$#%$?

2005-06-20T10:42:00.000-07:00

Okay, I always thought that you only needed ID to buy alcohol at the age of 15 and so did you right? Wrong... After a long day of scraping, sanding and painting at the old house, we came home saturday evening, where dinner was already served (thanks Bev), we finished dinner and went out to pick up a movie and relax a little bit. In the videostore, we decided, in a moment of sheer brilliance, that a beer would go down very well, so we stopped at Albertson's on the way back. And now for the fun part; we weren't allowed to buy the beer because I did not have any ID on me. I'm f*****g 24 years old and I was with my uncle who is 37 and did have ID on him. Now should I take this as a compliment or be totally stunned about the madness in this country? You decide... Just wondering about the consequences of this everyone-in-the-group-of-people-of-which-one-is-buying-alcohol-
should-have-ID-showing-he-or-she-is-over-21-even-it-is-obvious-
by-using-your-eyes-and-lump-of-nerve-cells-embedded-in-the-
skull-more-generally-known-as-brains-policy. Does this mean a family doing their weekend groceries can not bring a bottle of wine if the kids accompany them to the grocery store? I am truly puzzled with this... So we went to another store and I waited in the car like a 14 year old sending out his big brother for a beer... Going through al this trouble the beers tasted extra well while watching Oceans Twelve, which I had already seen on the plain but this time I could actually hear what they were saying which came in very handy in understanding the plot... Still that one sentence "can I see your ID please, the both of you..." I don't think I have ever had someone asking me this in an alcohol related context.... Weird.

Music for this week

2005-06-13T09:28:00.000-07:00

The three albums of the moment (at least for last and this week) are definately; System of a Down - Mezmerize, No Use For a Name - Keep them Confused and The White Stripes - Get behind me Satan. Furthermore I finally start to appreciate the sound of Audioslave. The first time I was expecting a Rage against the machine sequel and I was kind of disappointed. But if you listen to it like it's the vastly improved Soundgarden, it's actually pretty good :)

Busy-busy-busy

2005-06-12T21:57:00.000-07:00

It has been a while since my last post, but guess what; I have actually been quite busy. In the mean while I have filled out a ton of forms at NSI/OHSU to allow get my own badge and keys to all areas. I took some preliminary courses on respect/harassment/discrimination at the university, privacy while working with patient records and safe working with research animals and lab equipment. I don't think they have told me anything new but, since this the USA possible liability claims have been taken care of... In the mean time I spend the weekends working at Martin and Angees old house, and I must say it has turned from "just helping out" into a kind of "it WILL be done before july"..

At the lab we started recording last week and we had some really succesful days with lots of nice cells to record from. The last couple of days however were worthless but the mice we used those days were older and heavier and we found out that the anesthetic we kept at room temperature should have been kept at 4 degrees celsius. The mice still were anesthesized nicely, but there were probably some side-effects.

For all that are interested I will try to explain what it is that we are doing; In the cerebellum (part of the brain) a lot of sensory information is collected and finds a way to the motor cortex (other part of the brain) from which movements are initiated. The area we're looking at collects information from eye movements and the vestibular organ (balance organ/inner ear organ). There are different types of nerve-cells in this area; Purkinje-cells (Pcells) are the central output to the motor cortex and different types of helper cels (interneurons) are located systematically around these Pcells creating a kind of circuitry. The anatomy and signal transduction of this circuitry is pretty well known but the functional circuitry is still unknown and our point of interest. The respons of Pcells is known but the origin of this response is not. We use vestibular stimuli (a moving table) in combination with electrophysiological recordings in an anesthesized mouse's cerebellum to map the responses of the different interneurons. this will eventually unravel the circuitry I mentioned before and might bring us closer to a cure for Tinnitus, Meniere's disease and motion sickness. If anyone cares and wants to know more, feel free to ask me. I hope I managed to explain things a bit clearly....

Saturday 4 June sucked. It was my girlfriend's birthday and I was at the other side the world. I send here some flowers and talked to her on the phone, but being there would have been way better. Well, I guess I just have to wait another two months and then she will be here to visit! That'll be great. Other than that I miss Sita somewhat, I am not really bothered with any form of homesickness. After all, a lab is a lab, whether it is in the Netherlands or the USA and I have been to busy to even realize I have been here for a month already. I guess it helps a lot that I am getting along with family very well. I took Max to the pool last week without his dad coming along and of course this was quite an adventure for the little guy. Especially when I told him we were going to walk (he called it "hike", but it's only 10 minutes) and take a secret path. Then he even saw a woodpecker and we came along a tunnel; all very exciting when your 4. At the pool he behaved perfectly (besides the standard attempts to get candy and play the videogames), guess there's no point in whining if your parents aren't there. Well it's sunday night, I am about to hit the showers and go to sleep. Tomorrow we'll see if we have any luck in our scheduled recordings. I hope to post again a bit sooner next time..

DIY and the pool

2005-05-31T13:22:00.000-07:00

Memorial weekend was all about DIY'ing, we spend a lot of time at the old house, taking stuff down, weeding, painting and closing of a drain. Lots of work left, but also lots of work done. Yesterday evening we finally took Max to the swimming pool; he was so excited he kept running and jumping around. The pool is in the "Mountain Park Home Owners Recreation Centre" which also includes steam baths, saunas, fitness facilities, a basketball court and other fun stuff. And the best part of it all is that it's freely accessible for residents. Well, of course it's not free, but it comes with the house and you can not choose not to pay for it, so you might as well take advantage of it. I intend to pick up swimming again and go down to the pool on a weekly base to work out. Of course it's always questionable whether I will actually do this but since it's there and it's only a 10 minutes walk from the house, why shouldn't I? Max already asked us if we could go 'every day' but we managed to convince him that's a bit too much. This morning at breakfast however he already said "Wednesday is a good day for swimming, I know it" Well at least he likes it and yesterday after he was convinced there was no way he could sink with that life jacket on, he even swam 4 laps, unsupported! Considering it's an Olympic sized pool, that's 50m per lap and at the deepest point I guess it's about 3.40m deep, and Max is only 4 (well, almost 5), that's quite an achievement! Okay, he is still scared to put his head under water and he was swimming with 'diver's feet' as he called it, but it's a start and a pretty nice one.

Although Ian has worked hard on the car thing, it didn't work out yet. It's the wrong time of the year and the wrong price range to find a car. All the graduating high school kids are getting the cheap cars as a present and it remains a guess whether a car under 3000$ will not cause any major problems really fast. Since I don't have the money to spend more and I don't want to get into any complex financing arrangement we found another solution. I can use Martin's VW Jetta for now, as long as I can be flexible in using it (picking him up from work every now and then). Martin can use his bike to go to work and they still have the van for everything else. Martin and Angee were already planning on buying a 'new-used-second-car' after selling the other house, which will hopefully be in a week or two. If they do so I can just use the Jetta till I go back to the Netherlands and they will sell it then, instead of right away. I am lucky to have these people here; they are really nice for me and very helpful. And it's fun to stay with them as well.

Bleg, I just made my worst cup of coffee ever.. It tastes like water with a tiny little coffee flavour, it's awful. And I gave Vadim a cup too... I'll better apologize and make a better batch because this is just not worth it to be even called coffee. I guess Neal will be back from Italy later today or tomorrow and we can finally discuss what my project is going to be like and get to work. Right now I'm off trying to get myself a real cup of coffee.....

2005-05-25T17:41:00.000-07:00

Summer's setting in for sure now...

And then there was sun...

2005-05-24T23:16:00.000-07:00

And then there was sun! Yes my dear readers, it stopped raining and with the sun around it's even more beautiful around here. Yesterday, I went by the lab and got introduced to everybody. There is not a lot can do yet, since technicians have to set up my internet connection. Apparently that's kind of a big deal. The complex of the Neurological Science Institute is heavily secured. I wondered why, maybe to protect it from aggressive animal rights activists? Then I noticed that we're in the same building as the Vaccine & Gene Therapy Institute and it started to make some sense. Since everything with even the word 'gene' in it scares the shit out of most people (it was tempting to say 'Americans' but I guess it's more of a worldwide problem) and you don't want any viruses on the loose it seems logical to have security at the complex gate where you drive in and in the building itself. Well I have got my 'visiting researcher' badge so I can get in everywhere now. Unfortunately to get a badge you have to be in the building and to get in the building, strictly speaking, you need a badge. But it all turned out well and now I can go where-ever I want. In a few days my visitors badge will be replaced by an employees badge with my picture on it and I am really 'one of the guys'. I met with Vadim Yakhnitsa today, who is probably going to be the guy I will work with the most, and he showed me the electrophysiology set-up and explained me what they're currently doing with it. He's a really friendly guy, originally from Ukraine, but he worked in Stockholm, Sweden, for a long time and he is in Portland only for five years now, so he knows what I have to deal with being new to the area.

Yesterday evening I helped Angee (my aunt) taking the ceiling out of their old house. They are making some 'cosmetical improvements' before attempting to sell it. Of course taken stuff apart is always fun, men will be boys forever, but pulling out about 1000 staples was less fun. Still, we managed to get the ceiling out in less than two hours which was way faster than we expected.

I got a local cell phone now, so it won't cost me 1,90 euros/minute to make a call anymore. And my attempts to get a car are also in progress. Ian, Angee's brother, will help me out with that, since neither me nor my uncle know a lot about cars or have any experience in buying a used car in the USA. I basically gave him carte blanche within my budget to get me a car that will be mechanically ok. I don't care much for esthetics in this case, it just needs to get me to the lab and take me around Oregon (end maybe some Canada, California or Washington state) and do that for six months without any major problems. I am confident he will manage to get me something nice and I'm very happy he is willing to do this for me.

Maybe I'll have a long weekend this weekend because most labs seem to be closed next Friday. It will probably have something to do with memorial weekend.

Just one more thing, if any of you is interested in what the city and nature looks like around here; check out this site. Some amazingly beautiful pictures!!

Lake Oswego

2005-05-23T07:44:00.000-07:00

I dropped my uncle of at the airport this morning because he needs to go to Phoenix for a couple of days for work. This leaves me his car! Unfortunately it was almost out of fuel so I had to take an alternative route home to be at a gass station in time. The gass prices here are awesome. In the netherlands you pay about 1,30 euros for a litre. Here, you get a gallon for 2,39 dollars and a gallon is almost 4 litres. Just when I started to feel proud that I seemed to be getting home quite easy with the alternative route I must have taken a wrong turn and ended up south of Lake Oswego, where I should have been north of it... But I never leave the house without a map here, so I managed to find my way home. With the lake in between my current and desired location I decided to take a look at it. Unfortunately I didn't bring my camera, but I found this picture on the internet that kind of resembles what I saw this morning at 7 am. Well lets have some breakfast and when traffic lies down a bit I will head up to campus to report at the international office and hopefully pick up the keys and security badge for the NSI.

I got an email of the repairshop that has my laptop this morning saying they ordered the new screen but it will probably take 6-8 weeks for it to arrive. Personally I think that's crazy, but hey, what can you do about it... So in total I will have to miss my laptop for about 3 months. There's a lesson in it here; always tape your laptop to the table, it will save you a lot of trouble...

Dutch stuff

2005-05-20T13:45:00.000-07:00

My family with some of the stuff I brought from the Netherlands...

Getting settled...

2005-05-20T12:20:00.000-07:00

I have mastered the jetlag! At least I can stay up past 10pm so I think I have... I definitely need to get a car here, but it is not as simple as just going downtown and buy one. I still have a student's budget so I can not spend it all on a car.. For now I can use my uncle's car when he's at work, but it would be better if I had my own. Than I could start at the lab as well. After all I came down here for science. I drove down to the Neurological Science Institute yesterday(picture), to see how long it would take and if I could find it. Turns out it's only a 20 minute drive and although I did not find it right away, it's actually quit easy to find.

Here's an impression of the house I am staying. It's a fantastic place and my family is really nice. I made my grandma's famous tomato soup first the time in my life Wednesday and without being arrogant I think I can say it was pretty good :P My cousin (he's four) already showed me his goggles and told me about the swimming pool so I will probably take him there any time soon. I should also go down to Seattle, Vancouver, Montana, Crater Lake and the Pacific Coast and I haven't even seen Portland properly! Yes, I think I am going to have a fantastic time here! Should hurry getting a car.

Good news from the future-front; I am one of the candidates for a PHD-student position at the functional neurobiology department, where I did my first internship. Although I will only graduate in april and there is enough time to worry about jobs, this crossed my path and it would be a great job! At the moment I only know there are several candidates for the position, but I am one of them. The job will involve electrophysiology in primates and psychophysics in man and the main focus will be on the role of willpower/voluntary control in (visual) perception. It's a High Potential project, a collaboration between the departments of physics and biology. At the moment I am studying the C++ programming language to improve my experimental skills and chances. It will be no problem if I wouldn't get the job, but it would be great if I would!

Festival, party and flight....

2005-05-17T11:48:00.000-07:00

A lot has happened since my previous post. Thank god it has, if nothing would have happened in over two weeks my life would have gotten pretty boring. Lets go over the weeks;

After Queensday the first day worth noticing was may 5th, liberation day. A good reason for festivals all over the Netherlands. Luckily for us we live in a city that has one of the larger festivals, so we spend the day at the GriftPark in Utrecht listening to music, having a beer and realizing that it was not as warm as it seemed to be when we left the house in the morning (so maybe the shorts weren't such a good idea after all). In the evening we watched AZ win the soccer match against Sporting Club Lissabon but because of a Portuguese goal in the 122nd (!!!) minute they were still kicked out of the European competition. The night before PSV had won from AC Milan (3-1) but because of an Italian goal in extra time they were still out of competition. Enough about soccer and the disappointment of extra time counter goals. We decided to go to bar afterwards and on our way we were treated to a fair amount of liberating rain. The kind for which it doesn't matter whether you're in it for 30 seconds or 30 minutes, because you won't get any wetter after 30 seconds..

Saturday may 7th we had a party at our house. Partly because it was only one week before my departure to Portland, but more importantly because parties are fun and it had been a while. It wasn't very crowded (I think there were about 40 people or so), but they all partied hard resulting in a lot of fun and a sudden lack of beer at 3 am. We kind of miscalculated the amount the beer we needed and much to our surprise we were all out of it at 3 am. No one really seemed to care though, they just started drinking the wine and when all alcohol had made a journey down someone's throat at about 6 am the party was definitely over. After a good night's sleep we spend all Sunday cleaning and reorganizing the house. This is always the disadvantage of throwing a party yourself....

The rest of the two weeks mainly consisted of packing my stuff and cleaning my room. On Saturday we went to club Bibelot to watch my brother's band Powerslib play as a support act for Jaya the Cat. The show wasn't exactly perfect due to technical problems but it was still fun to see them again. Sunday my dad celebrated his birthday (that is actually today, HAPPY BIRTHDAY dad; you dont turn 18 every day :P). I had the opportunity to see a lot of my family and say goodbye to them. Monday morning we got up at 5 am and thats REALLY EARLY! As a result we were at the airport 3 hours early, talking about a safe margin It was hard saying goodbye to Sita, but after all, I will see her again in about three months, so start counting girl! The trip was okay, but why do you get more leg space on a 1h flight from Amsterdam to Frankfurt than on a 10h flight from Frankfurt to Portland. After showing my passport and collection of other important documents and standing in line for an extensive period of time I finally arrived in heavily raining Portland. I delivered all the toys, sweets and cheese and got a quick tour around the city. After a 26h day I naturally slept fantastic and after a breakfast of pancakes and coffee, I am now answering my emails and posting my blog. Well, I did actually, cause now I'm done...

Queensday and movie-time...

2005-05-01T04:45:00.000-07:00

The Dutch went crazy for Queensday again! For all non-dutch; on april 30 we celebrate our queens birthday. Well, actually it's the birthday of the queens mom (she passed away last year) This year it was also our queens 25th year on the job. I wonder if our government gave her an engraved watch :P On the night before Queensday the actual party starts. In the larger cities like Utrecht the streets are flooded with happy (and slightly drunk) people, dressed mostly in orange, and there's a huge nightly flea market in the centre of the city. Unfortunately enough for me, I had to work on Queensday and be in at 10 am, so I did not spend the entire night in town. Work sucked by the way, there were hardly any customers so I was boored out of my brain for 7 hours, missing all the festivities and actually get very tired from doing so little... When I came home I decided not to go in town again, cause my feet were killing me, so I stayed in and watch two movies; the Devil's Advocate and Cube. the first one I had already seen before but it was on tv and I like it, so I decided it was worth to watch again. One of my friends had been very enthousiastic about Cube and I must admit it is a fantastic movie! Go see it if you haven't yet!

Sunday morning I woke up at 10 am and decided to watch some more movies and be lazy as hell. Although Ichi the Killer is not really a sunday morning movie I enjoyed it (one more I can get of my list of movies I should definately see some time). One last to go; Cube Zero, usually I don't like sequels (or I believe it's even nr.3, but HyperCube is not that good, or so I am told), but I am curious if it is anything like the original Cube. Well, I'll go get a cup of coffee and get back to doing nothing in particular..

Sorry Lise, we suck...

2005-04-28T03:07:00.000-07:00

So my housemate's play was pretty good.....I think. We did not actually make it in time to see it though. Big time SORRY for that. For compensation this is a picture of there acting group and this is their website.

Seems like our total and utter lack of planning did not work out this time. The thing is (brace yourself, here come the lame excuses...) that the housemate that convinced us to go see the play, celebrated the last day of her course a bit to enthousiastically and was not able to go. Then there were the three of us that planned to leave the house at 6.15 pm and be at a restaurant in Amsterdam at 7.00 pm (which is impossible when you think about it). So we were in Amsterdam at about 7.15 pm, cancelled our reservation at the restaurant, met up with Bas who was already in Amsterdam because he works there these days and tried to make a plan to save the night. We decided to go to the street the theater is in and get a quick snack. Bas thought the theatre was the same one he visited last year, but it wasn't, which left us with as much information as "it's somewhere in the Spuistraat" which is a whole lot of street. So we went to the Spuistraat entered a café and got a quick bite. The we walked all the way down the street to find the theatre. Of course the theatre was at the far end of the street, basically across the street from central station we left more than an hour before that moment. Then we discovered that we misinterpreted the start-of-the-play-time for the doors-open-time, so the play was already in progress for over 15 minutes and were not allowed to go in anymore. It's a good thing we didn't pick up the reserved tickets yet. Altogether we failed big time and I feel sorry for my housemate we screwed up.. To make something of the night after all we went to Waterlooplein and had a few beers.

Before this lame adventure I spend all day at the University Medical Centre in Utrecht for the neuroscience symposium day, had some nice discussions during the poster sessions and listened to some interesting talks. It was pretty tiring to keep alert and listen from 9 am to 5 pm, but it was cool to see all the projects that my fellow students participate in.

Repairing my laptop will cost 380 euros (crazy!!) which is 40 dollars to much to just let it repair. Now an expert of the insurance company has to examine at first which will probably take another couple of days. It is getting less and less likely it will be repaired in time. Bummer!!

Motor Maths

2005-04-26T09:46:00.000-07:00

I finished the Motor Systems course today. Well, i still have to write 2 reports but I do not have to show up anywhere anymore. Today we discussed to models for arm movements. The most important one describes hand and arm movements with no regard to the neural system but on a higher level based on miniziming the jerkiness of a movement. It states that movements are made as smooth as possible. Than we tried to use the model to calculate the trajectory of the hand of a dart-player when throwing darts.

It took me 4 pages of math, but I managed to solve this system of equations with 6 (!!) variables. I was pretty proud..

Well I am back home now and in a while I will have a nice meal with my girlfriend Sita, watch the dutch soccerteam PSV hopefully beat AC Milan in the semi-finals of the Champions League. Then we will sweat the laziness away with an hour of squash and we will end the night in bar.

Tomorrow morning I will have to be present at the Neuroscience symposium at 9 am and I am scheduled for the afternoon poster session. I am looking forward to discuss my experimental results and see what others have done. In the evening I will go to Amsterdam to watch a play, one of my roommates acts in. But first we will go out for dinner in Amsterdam with some people...

Notebook crash...

2005-04-21T06:54:00.000-07:00

A terrible thing happened this morning. Sita accidentally bumped my notebook of my desk while walking past it and the screen did not survive the drop...

I checked with an external monitor and The hard drives an stuff seem to be OK, but the screen is F****D. We already contacted the insurance company and a repair company, but it is going to be a close call whether it will be repaired before I need to leave for the USA. Even still, it is not sure it will be repaired at all, because a new screen ain't cheap and might even be just as expensive as a new laptop. Right now I can do nothing but hope for the best...

More electrodes and hard work...

2005-04-19T14:48:00.000-07:00

Another day in the Motor Systems course today. We adressed speech and yes, it involved another set of electrodes... We measured the open and closed position of the vocal chord and related it with speaking in a noisy environment. The relevance of such measurements were not completely clear, but it is obviously useful in developing strategies for louder speaking, There should be more to it though.

I also finished my research poster for the Neuroscience Symposium next week. I just need to get it printed and I am ready to go! I might actually get to work on my cerebellar learning model this week....

I booked!!

2005-04-14T07:30:00.000-07:00

I booked my ticket today. I will leave Amsterdam at 10.30 in the morning on may 16 to fly the astonishing distance to Frankfurt, where I will catch my flight to Portland. I will return at november 7, with a stop in Chicago. So now I can start thinking about the practical stuff one has to think of if you want to spend 6 months working abroad...

Culture and science

2005-04-11T13:38:00.000-07:00

It's been a while but I've been kind of busy. I actually still am, but working for 24h a day would be wrong (even for me). Last sunday my friends and I went downtown to take part in one of the city's "Cultural Sundays". Museums were open (and entrance was free) and there were lectures, theater, music performances and special expositions everywhere. It was all fun, but I especially liked the lecture on the comparison of microscopic photos and famous artworks.

Today I got the good news that the second guy I invited to look at my room liked it enough to want to live here and pay my rent while I am in the USA. I spend half the day processing data the wrong way. I made a little mistake in writing the script for the processing, so I spend the second half of the day making up for my mistake..

I'm finished now, so there's some time to post and relax. Tomorrow morning I'll take an early train to Roterdam and the science-circus starts again :P

Eye coil

2005-04-05T09:02:00.000-07:00

Today was the second day of the Helmholtz Course Motor Systems. The day was dedicated to 3d-rotation of the eye, ways to look at it, calculate with it and measure it. I spend some time with a coil in my eye sitting in a cube with two magnetic fields that induced small currents in the coil depending on the position of the coil (and therefore the eye) in the magnetic field. After a couple of minutes the view of the eye with the coil gets blurry and it stays like that for about half an hour after removing the coil. Now (a few hours later) I can see sharp again with the eye but it still feels like something is in it. It'll probably wear off soon...

US Embassy

2005-04-04T10:52:00.000-07:00

So today I had my appointment at the US embassy in Amsterdam to convince those weird americans that I am truly not a terrorist and I will just visit their beloved country, pay for everything and return home after six months. It was a sunny day and the embassy is located at the museumplein in Amsterdam near the Vondelpark, so that wasn't too bad. I saw the funniest thing; a bunch of kids just sitting around on the grass when suddenly the sprinklers started working. It was really funny watching them get surprised and run. The embassy by the way is like a fort. Double fences, metal detectors and grumpy armed men. They were pissed off because I had my mobile phone on me (but in the phonecall they only mentioned that cameras weren't allowed), then they started complaining my photographs might not be clear enough, but in the end, nothing was really much of a problem and I will have my passport back on wednesday with my visa stamped in it. In total this only costs about 175 euros and a shitload of time and patience. Now I can start looking for the appropriate flight...

Festival season is now officially open!

2005-03-29T08:06:00.000-08:00

Festival season is now officially opened! Sita and I spent last weekend at the Paaspop festival, the first "open air" festival of the year. Although all performances were in large tents, the mud between the tents and the night temperature made up for that and created a real "outdoorish" feeling. We checked out El Guapo stunt Team, Agnostic Front, Bambix, Beef, Boom Chicago (improvised theater), Eboman, Face Tomorrow, Flogging Molly, Jovink en de Voederbietels, Mambo Kurt (really funny German dude with a hammond organ), Nile, Peter Pan Speedrock, The Dillinger Escape Plan, the Palookas, the Toy Dolls (solid old punk), Mala Vita and Ali B (actually quite funny to have a rapper on a rock festival).

When I got back on monday I spent the rest of the day cleaning up and fell asleep nice and early. This morning I had to get up very early because I am taking a course on Motor Systems (the neural basis of all movements), partially at the Rotterdam Medical Centre. I am the only student in a group of all PhD's but I managed to discuss along at the desired level. Next friday I will return to Rotterdam to execute some experiments that I will design in the next few days.

I will have to deliver an abstract for the poster I will present at the Neuroscience Master Symposium by the end of this week. I think I will present the results of my previous intern research project (the representational momentum effect with respect to apparant and implied motion processing), because I do not really have enough time to put something together on my current research topics. Furthermore I think it will be nice to present results instead of backgrounds, hypothesis and planned research.

I picked up the photographs I need for the US embassy to process my visa request today when I returned from Rotterdam. This means I now have everything I need and tomorrow I can make the call to get an appointment. If everything goes well I think I will get my visa within the next 2 weeks. Then I can finally book my flight... I got some responses on the ad I put on the internet for subletting my room, so I am confident that it'll work out after all and I will not be stuck with double rent.

the Toy Dolls at Paaspop 2005

My fame is spreading...

2005-03-22T02:28:00.000-08:00

I discovered something strange today. I tried a search with google on my name to see whether this blog would turn up and I discovered that a thesis I did more than a year ago on mirror neurons was part of a website on autism... Although I am not really happy with the quality of this paper (I could do better now, but then again that's what education is all about :P), it is fun to find my work on the internet without having anything to do with it myself. The "famous paper" can be found here, but it must be noted that unfortunately enough the neurobiological arguments in the discussion are kind of poor, which gives the paper a kind of neuropsychology appraoch. Not really something I usually like to do, but as I said before; it was a year ago and I am still growing into this science thing... :D

NFSU2

2005-03-22T02:00:00.000-08:00

One of the rare computer-games that got me kind of addicted.. This morning I finally finished Need for Speed Underground 2. My pimped Audi TT led me to victory!! Now I can read a book again....

A non-gambler in a casino...

2005-03-21T06:00:00.000-08:00

Well, the snow is hardly gone and it actually feels likes spring. This picture was taken in the Wilhelminapark in Utrecht. I think it's pretty nice :P

I actually worked outside for a large part of the day, today. It took me a while but I finally found a position that allowed me to enjoy the sun and still see things on my notebook screen. It is not that warm yet, but out of the wind it was very nice. Yesterday me and my roommates had dinner in the new appartment of Bas, who used to live with us. His appartment is fantastic; it's huge and the view of the city's skyline is great!

Saturday night I was in a casino for the first time. It was a party for all employees of mediamarkt, where I have my part-time job. Drinks were free and we got some playing coins. We basically spend all the time having free drinks, watching other people lose money. We didn't actually gamble anything because we thought all those machines were way to difficult and we didn't really feel like playing any roulette or blackjack. Altoghether, we had a lot of fun, handed in the coins at the end of the evening and went home with the strange idea that we actually had more money in our pockets than when we arrived....

My Brain

2005-03-16T08:36:00.000-08:00

So this is the home of my brilliant mind :) It's actually a rather blurry picture of an MRI scan of my brain. I will try to get some pictures with a higher resolution and maybe some 3d stuff...

Photoblog

2005-03-14T06:07:00.000-08:00

Apart from the occasional picture on this weblog I will try to put more pictures on a photoblog that is designed to deal with photos better.. I added the link to that photosite in the link container on the right of this site, but you can also click here.

Busy...

2005-03-14T01:42:00.000-08:00

After a busy weekend (work-party in Tilburg-repairing my brothers computer-having dinner at my parents') a busy week has started. A few minutes ago I received the DS2019 form from OHSU. This means I just have to fill out a few more forms stating that I am truly not a terrorist and that the main purpose of me visiting the USA has nothing to do with either drugs or terrorism, but that I am a (mostly) harmless, hard working student and that I will return home after six months and not pursue a long illegal stay in the country they all love and hate so dearly :P Of course this statement is once again going to cost me a some money and time but I have good hopes the US Embassy will not give me a hard time.

I don't think I will manage to gather all necessary information required by the embassy today though, since the pile of paper right next to me does not present me with the idea that I will have any time left when I finish it.. First of all I have to finish a discussion on a Nature Neuroscience Review paper, I have to present next wednesday afternoon. I have all the information I need but I still need to put it in a nice presentation and make my arguments match my opinion :)

Then there's Genesis (a neural simulation program); the amount of physics and maths required to work with it seems to slow me down and I don't like it. I hope to finish chapter 7 (of 20) today and gain some speed in acquiring the programming skills needed to work on the intended model of Purkinje Cells and Interneurons.

If that's not enough, there is a (roughly 8 cm high) pile of experiment proposal that need to be reviewed in a meeting wednesday morning and I am supposed to have read them carefully by then...

My master program coordinators thought it would be nice to organize correction, to make the students organize) a symposium and make it a requirement for all students to either present orally or hand in a poster describing their current research. Since I will start the real experiments in may in the USA, I will not have a lot to talk about in april when the symposium is being held. Therefore I decide to put together a nice poster descibing some of the background and the main problems concerning the integration of optokinetics and vestibular information and plasticity mechanism in the cerebellum. I don't think I will manage to start working on the poster anything earlier than thursday, but we will see...

Altoghether I will not be bored this week... Thank god for Kaldi watching his goats in Ethiopia around 600-800 AD, and the monk Chadely for trying to make a drink out of the enrgizing berries discovered by Kaldi and mix them with boiling water. Last but not least my thanks goes out to the fellow that discovered that roasting the berries before mixing them with the boiling water greatly improved the taste! Coffee will keep me going...