SciDi: Frontiers of the Brain – Glitch

SciDi: Frontiers of the Brain – Glitch

Music

JM: Welcome to Pulse of the Planet’s Science Diaries – a glimpse of the world of science from the inside. John Beggs is a biophysicist at Indiana University, who’s trying to understand how groups of brain cells work together to accomplish the millions of tasks our brains routinely perform. One of the tools of his trade is a computer, and like any tool it has its limitations.

JB: “So most of the day I think I spent working on a computer program, trying to see if the results it was putting out made sense. And it seemed like most of the time, it didn’t make sense. I think there’s a glitch in the program and I’ve spent a lot of part of the day going over it and trying to figure out what the error is. And it’s kind of frustrating because, you know, you like to see what the data tell you. You just want to know what’s going on in there. And you can’t see it unless you have the right tools. And a computer program is a tool that lets us look at the data to analyze it, to see what the patterns are that are really coming out of that little network of brain cells. But if the computer program is messed up, I guess it’s a little bit like have having a telescope with a cracked lens, you can’t trust anything that you see. It’s misleading, and it’s really frustrating because you can kind of see partial images of what might be interesting, but you can’t really get at it until you fix that. So, what I really want to do is spend hours and hours working on this and trying to figure it out and get it all to work, but I have a date night with my wife. So I’ll go do that. That’ll be a lot of fun. I’m not saying that I don’t want to have fun with my wife, I do, but there’s another part of me that also, I think is very tenacious. I want to solve this problem until it’s satisfactory, and then I really want to have fun.”

JM: You can check out John Begg’s blog on pulseplanet.com. Pulse of the Planet Science Diaries are made possible by the National Science Foundation. I’m Jim Metzner.

SciDi: Frontiers of the Brain - Glitch

Analyzing the workings of the human brain is difficult enough when everything works as it should. Unfortunately, sometimes it doesn't.
Air Date:10/19/2012
Scientist:
Transcript:

SciDi: Frontiers of the Brain - Glitch

Music

JM: Welcome to Pulse of the Planet's Science Diaries - a glimpse of the world of science from the inside. John Beggs is a biophysicist at Indiana University, who's trying to understand how groups of brain cells work together to accomplish the millions of tasks our brains routinely perform. One of the tools of his trade is a computer, and like any tool it has its limitations.

JB: "So most of the day I think I spent working on a computer program, trying to see if the results it was putting out made sense. And it seemed like most of the time, it didn't make sense. I think there's a glitch in the program and I've spent a lot of part of the day going over it and trying to figure out what the error is. And it's kind of frustrating because, you know, you like to see what the data tell you. You just want to know what's going on in there. And you can't see it unless you have the right tools. And a computer program is a tool that lets us look at the data to analyze it, to see what the patterns are that are really coming out of that little network of brain cells. But if the computer program is messed up, I guess it's a little bit like have having a telescope with a cracked lens, you can't trust anything that you see. It's misleading, and it's really frustrating because you can kind of see partial images of what might be interesting, but you can't really get at it until you fix that. So, what I really want to do is spend hours and hours working on this and trying to figure it out and get it all to work, but I have a date night with my wife. So I'll go do that. That'll be a lot of fun. I'm not saying that I don't want to have fun with my wife, I do, but there's another part of me that also, I think is very tenacious. I want to solve this problem until it's satisfactory, and then I really want to have fun."

JM: You can check out John Begg's blog on pulseplanet.com. Pulse of the Planet Science Diaries are made possible by the National Science Foundation. I'm Jim Metzner.