Hello Readers!
My dad and I pulled into San Jose last night and got settled into my Great Aunt's house. I commuted over to UCSF today for a quick meeting with my advisor, Matt. Plans for research are pretty much still the same: focus on finishing piano cognition project. In the next couple days I'm just going to finish reading the Python book just to get the main concepts of programming. Once I'm finished, the first step will be to analyze what type of mistake I made when I was shocked: Substitution, Addition, Deletion or Slowing Down. Substitution is when I completely missed the right note. Addition is when I smushed two notes together, one of which is wrong. Deletion is when I just skipped over a note, or "deleted" it. And Slowing Down is when I delayed. The two most frequent mistakes were Substitution and Slowing Down. After annotation, the next step will be to look at where in the brain was shocked when I made the mistakes and see if any type of mistake was made when a specific part was shocked. I'll print out several pictures of my brain and just circle where was shocked for each different type of mistake. Hopefully, there are specific parts that lead to certain mistakes. Either way the data will be interesting!
Till next time,
Dylan
Thursday, February 23, 2017
Monday, February 13, 2017
Hello Readers!
This past week has been uneventful. Essentially all I've done for my SRP is rereading a book on how to use basic Python programming. The book is a little tedious at the beginning, the main things it teaches you how to do is to make functions which isn't particularly challenging but it is really important. Example of how to define functions on Python:
>>> def convert_to_celcius(Fahrenheit):
Return (Fahrenheit-32)*5/9
Writing these is pretty straightforward. The main importance of knowing how to define an equation is so you can program a loop that lets you plug a lot of data into a function and have all of the data go through the algorithm in one input. There are two types of loops: a for loop and a while loop. For loops are loops that plug and chug the data. While loops repeat statement(s) while the given condition is true.
This next week I'll take a small step away from programming and focus on interpreting the data from ELAN files (annotated video of me playing piano and being stimulated to make mistakes). Hopefully I can write a short summary of the data that we've collected so we can figure out what the paper we're writing should look like.
Cheers,
Dylan
This past week has been uneventful. Essentially all I've done for my SRP is rereading a book on how to use basic Python programming. The book is a little tedious at the beginning, the main things it teaches you how to do is to make functions which isn't particularly challenging but it is really important. Example of how to define functions on Python:
>>> def convert_to_celcius(Fahrenheit):
Return (Fahrenheit-32)*5/9
Writing these is pretty straightforward. The main importance of knowing how to define an equation is so you can program a loop that lets you plug a lot of data into a function and have all of the data go through the algorithm in one input. There are two types of loops: a for loop and a while loop. For loops are loops that plug and chug the data. While loops repeat statement(s) while the given condition is true.
This next week I'll take a small step away from programming and focus on interpreting the data from ELAN files (annotated video of me playing piano and being stimulated to make mistakes). Hopefully I can write a short summary of the data that we've collected so we can figure out what the paper we're writing should look like.
Cheers,
Dylan
Friday, February 10, 2017
Introduction to Neuroscience Research
This third trimester I will be in San Francisco working on my Senior Research Project (SRP). While I was at UCSF's children hospital, with an electrode grid on my left temporal and parietal lobe, multiple music and language tests were performed to ensure removing the impaired tissue didn't limit me playing piano or speaking English, Spanish, and French.
For my SRP, I will be helping finish the research on the experiment that searched for piano cognition. The experiment for this had me playing relatively simple pieces that I knew well. At random points during me playing the doctors would shock certain parts of my brain to see if the shock would make me make a mistake.
We started this research in the Summer of 2015. My work on this experiment was labelling what type of mistake was made and then looking at where in my brain was shocked at the time. We'll continue this research for my SRP and hopefully have a paper written, maybe published by the time my project is done.
If time allows, I think it would be cool to compare foreign languages to music. There were several tests done on me that were just listening to music or phrases in English, French, and Spanish. I think it would be interesting to compare the two. Whether or not the music and languages overlap much would be interesting. I think it would be particularly cool if foreign languages overlapped with music in our brains.
Excited to get out there and start researching in two weeks!
Dylan
This third trimester I will be in San Francisco working on my Senior Research Project (SRP). While I was at UCSF's children hospital, with an electrode grid on my left temporal and parietal lobe, multiple music and language tests were performed to ensure removing the impaired tissue didn't limit me playing piano or speaking English, Spanish, and French.
For my SRP, I will be helping finish the research on the experiment that searched for piano cognition. The experiment for this had me playing relatively simple pieces that I knew well. At random points during me playing the doctors would shock certain parts of my brain to see if the shock would make me make a mistake.
We started this research in the Summer of 2015. My work on this experiment was labelling what type of mistake was made and then looking at where in my brain was shocked at the time. We'll continue this research for my SRP and hopefully have a paper written, maybe published by the time my project is done.
If time allows, I think it would be cool to compare foreign languages to music. There were several tests done on me that were just listening to music or phrases in English, French, and Spanish. I think it would be interesting to compare the two. Whether or not the music and languages overlap much would be interesting. I think it would be particularly cool if foreign languages overlapped with music in our brains.
Excited to get out there and start researching in two weeks!
Dylan
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