This week (or month) on the On Your Mind Podcast: Sorry for the wait! Here is a real, honest to God, episode. It's got updates on Liam's Thesis and Kat's paper, some fun science news and lots of advice for graduate students, henceforth known as gradvice. This page will be updated soon with links and more details, but for now here is everything Liam wanted to talk about: Choosing a supervisor Personality and mentorship style can be as important as research interest even if you're someone who likes a lot of supervisor contact you'll want some independence Don't be afraid to ask your potential supervisor very direct questions like "what are your expectations of time spent in the lab" how long does your average student take to finish is there a particular project you have in mind how would you describe your mentorship style how would you describe the work culture of the lab PubMed a few students and see how much they publish Maintaining Sanity Your PHD will probably take 6 years. You can aim for less, but don't assume you'll hit it. DO THINGS OUTSIDE THE LAB you will pretty much always be thinking about work ( I like hobbies that make me think about something else) Things won't always work, in fact they'll almost always not work. Plan for failure. Find people who get you inspired when you talk about science with them. In a lot of labs, the time is unstructured, you can come and go as you please. This actually means you work late or on weekends a lot. If you're working weekends, then any night is as good as a wakened night, go have some fun. you won't be that productive for your first 2-3 years DONT BE AFRAID TO CO TO COUNCILING, there is a very high rate of depression in grad students, and more than 25% of science PhD students don't finish the PhD. probably not because they aren't smart enough. Being successful/productive become the go to person for a technique being organized leads to clear plans leads to being proactive leads to getting things done have side projects Actually plan for failure, if an experiment doesn't work is there some information you can still get from it? have regular conversations with your supervisor, talk about your data, your plans, if the project is progressing to their satisfaction, if they feel you are on track for upcoming milestones, if there is something you are doing that they would like to see improve talk to people who do really different work than you, especially ones who use interesting techniques You will find there are parts of the job you love and parts you hate. Figure out how to work a lot on the things you like, and avoid the things you hate. That said DO NOT put off the things you hate. If you have to do them, do them quickly. Then try to design future projects that don't have as much of that part, or better yet find a friend/collaborator who likes those parts. Different strokes for different folks Ask for help. There are lots of smart people around you. Familiarize yourself with resources available at your institution. Preparing for the afterlife If you want an academic job: they key is really Postdoc papers. You need a decent PhD (and a good network) to get you a good post-doc, you need an excellent post-doc to get a faculty position. Have a real fallback. -probably not a coffee shop Think of the things you like to do (in research or in life) what do they have in common? What are other things that share those traits? What skills do they require, what jobs would employ those skills? What other skills do those jobs need? Get training. Especially in soft skills. Look for ways to apply or demonstrate different skills in your research. Talk to people who have a job you're interested in. it might not be what you think. Ask what makes someone a good candidate for the job. Other PhD Science is creative work. It has more in common with writing a book than it does factory work. Remember this, find a muse, and get inspired. Think about why you're getting the PhD and if you would get as much out of a Masters if you don't understand something, it's not because of you, it's because of the person explaining For any protocol or process understand why you do each step, and why you do it the way that you do it. http://pgbovine.net/early-stage-PhD-advice.htm http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/an-open-letter-to-new-graduate-students/26326  

We are super stoked to announce that the OYM team will be at the Canadian Neuroscience meeting in Toronto this year, hosting an exciting new satellite symposium on science communication!  Come talk about the importance of communication in neuroscience with special guest speakers! Other than shamelessly self-promoting, the hosts have got a whole lot on their minds this week.  They’re both on writing duty this week and have been thinking about the way that their science is portrayed and how it fits into the big picture.  Kat’s been reading up a lot (like, a lot a lot) on the misuse of statistics in the wake of the American Statistical Association’s statement on p values.  Plus, she’s back on a podcast kick and is a new fan of the Bold Signals Podcast.  Meanwhile, Liam’s been spending some free time on Twitter and catches us up on the hashtag #BiologySpaceFacts before we move onto this week’s paper. The media attention drew our attention to this study that was published as a letter in Nature. In it, researchers use a mouse model of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) to study the cells in the dentate gyrus, and their connections to surrounding cortices, that are activated during the formation of contextual fear memories.  They use optogenetic techniques to modulate the activity of these ‘engram’ cells, and show that they can strengthen their connections and recover memory function in the AD mice.  It’s a whole lot of information to be crammed into a letter, but it certainly takes a promising step towards understanding how AD relates to memory formation and retrieval. More links! Institute for Research on Public Policy Podcast Spurious Correlations

This week on the On Your Mind Neuroscience Podcast: The hosts are taking the time to look at their respective big pictures this week, with Kat organizing and analyzing her onslaught of data and Liam working on an outline for his thesis. Fortunately, all this computer time has led to some pretty productive procrastination. While perusing Nature Jobs and Science, Kat’s come across an editorial piece highlighting the pervasiveness of “Imposter Syndrome” in science and a fresh perspective on the concept of “research parasites”.  On the other hand, Liam’s been catching up on his Netflix, and a documentary by David Thorpe has his mind tuned to the question of how our voice defines us.  Then it’s onto this week’s article. Published in Neuron, this week’s paper uses in utero gene transfection and electrophysiology to show that TCF4, a gene that’s been linked to neurodevelopmental disorders, regulates neuron excitability in the prefrontal cortex.  This paper, and it’s sometimes counter-intuitive data, raises more questions than it answers for us, but we’re refreshed by its earnestness.   

We’ve got an explosive episode this week: we’re talking about the schizophrenia genetics paper whose press release has got a lot of internet attention recently. But first, it’s grant deadline crunch time for Liam and Kat and they’re sharing their very different approaches to the writing process.  In between budgets and proposals, Kat’s allowed herself to be distracted by the NEJM editorial piece that introduces the idea of “data authors” and “research parasites”.  It’s a timely warning about the dangers of irresponsible data sharing, given the recent controversy over improperly credited sources in a paper on the Zika virus. Meanwhile, Liam’s come across a surprising (and alarming) article from STAT news that exposes the lack of transparency with human drug research in the US.  Apparently, even though there are stiff fines from the NIH for those who fail to promptly upload their results, the astounding majority of data doesn’t make it to the federal archive.  Then, after another health podcast recommendation from Liam, it’s onto this week’s paper. We’re talking about a paper, published in Nature, that uses a clever mix of statistical modelling and cryptogenetics to investigate the functional impact of one of the most highly implicated genetic loci on schizophrenia risk.  We’re both incredibly impressed by the mountains of data pointing to the expression of a specific isoform of the C4 gene as the key functional mediator of decades of genetic linkage studies that have associated the MHC locus with schizophrenia.

It’s that time of year again, when you’ve got the urge to get close to that special someone, light some candles, and put on the latest OYM episode for a night of sweet, sweet neuroscience.  And this year, we’re delighted to welcome our official valentine, Daniel Almeida, to the guest host chair.  He’s a Master’s student who’s excited about developing a new microscopy technique in his lab, and is putting his background in sex research to good use with this week’s paper about oxytocin and sexual behavior in Prairie Voles.  But first, we’ve got some local neuroscience news to discuss.  The Montreal Neurological Institute in Montreal has announced a new plan to promote open science by asking it’s researchers to make all data and programs available and no longer supporting the creation of new patents. We’re also talking about reproducibility again, with the launch of a the new F1000 research channel, thePreclinical Reproducibility and Robustness Channel, and a comment piece in Science that highlights the many hurdles involved in the ‘self-correcting’ aspect of science.

It’s the first episode of 2016 and we’re catching up with our co-hosts and all that’s been on their minds.  Kat’s pre-winter break plan to get everything finished has backfired bigtime, but she’s learned a valuable lesson in deadline realism.  While she’s frantically trying to catch up, she’s read a story about a disastrous press release that’s lead her to an online organization that systematically reviews and grades medical news stories.   Meanwhile, Liam’s had a bit of a head start back to work and is imminently awaiting the arrival of some very important results.  While he waits, he’s reading up on some (intentionally?) misleading charts that have made the rounds this past year.  We’re also talking about whether it’s cool to ghost write your own reference letters, and the Luminosity lawsuit before it’s onto this week’s paper! This week, we’re talking about an article in Neuron that looks at the Shank3 gene as a link between autism spectrum disorders and schizophrenia.  The authors have generated two novel mouse lines with truncated Shank3 proteins analogous to mutations in human patients with either ASD or schizophrenia.  Then, using a massive battery of electrophysiological, biochemical and behavioral experiments at two developmental time points, this paper presents one of the first experimental investigations that we’ve ever seen, into similarities and differences between these two disorders.

This week on the On Your Mind Neuroscience Podcast: It’s back to our regularly scheduled programming! With the winter holidays looming, our beloved hosts are desperately trying to squeeze the last bit of productivity out of the season.  Kat’s wrestling her labmates for equipment and Liam’s been busy planning the tail end of his degree and has gotten the green light to aim start writing a thesis next summer!  In the meantime, we’re talking about a new journal that’s promising to give light to ‘orphaned’ experiments, the incredibly space-agey and intriguing possibility of open sourced labware, and the way that Deepak Chopra’s twitter account can teach us about the science of believing the bullshit.  Also this week, we’re taking a look at the role of dopamine in motivation and work with an article in Nature Neuroscience.   In it, the authors use a complex decision making task, and precise striatal dopamine measurements to show that the neurotransmitter is involved in the valuating the changing probability of a reward.  Although we’re trying to get past yet another unnecessary optogenetic experiment, the model that the authors present does a great job of merging the role of dopamine in two related, but distinct, cognitive functions. For links to all our past episodes and more, head to www.onyourmind.ca

We’re starting to get back into the swing of things this week, with Kat finally returning from her travelling adventures with stories to share!  She’s discovered an unexpected excitement about bioinformatics while she was away, and so she’s been thinking about the importance of computer literacy in the life sciences.  In fact, she brings us an article from The Conversation that takes the rather controversial stance that the widespread use of personal computers has been actively harmful to science.  Even though we’ve got a lot to say about the details, it all boils down to a call for more computer education in science - and for the understanding that software isn’t flawless.                It seems that Liam has been busy these days as well, probably too busy in fact; he’s the new co-president of the Science Policy Exchange here in Montreal!  Thankfully he’s still got some podcast time, and he’s bringing us a list of other podcasts that he’s been digging lately, including a Reply All episode on LSD microdosing and the newly formed Useful Science that features our longtime OYM friend Ian Mahar!  Of course, given his new extracurricular calling, Liam’s got politics on his mind and he’s got some encouraging news to share about publicly released Minister’s mandate letters, and the role of evidence based science in the policies of the new Canadian government.

This week on the On Your Mind Neuroscience Podcast Kat's still in Europe (she'll be back soon) and Liam is all alone. He first takes the opportunity to talk more about Science funding and Canadian Politics and then follows a though train exploring how weather it would help or hurt science if everyone under stood scientists are just regular people.  Find all our old (full length) episodes at www.onyourmind.ca

This week on the On Your Mind Neuoscience Podcast: Liam is joined by McMaster graduate students Shawna Thompson (@mostlymicroglia) and Aadil Bharwani (@brainymicrobes), to debrief on SFN15, talk about the reproducibility project, recent successes and troubles at 23andMe, and genetic dating services. In this week’s paper we bring together the worlds of microglia and gut microbiota. We know the bacteria in the gut are important for healthy immune response but Erny et al. show that this is also true for microglia, the immune cells of the brain.