Neural oscillations underlying behavior: adjustments after commission errors and temporal judgements

The current thesis aimed to: 1) explore whether alpha peak frequency (APF) as measured with electroencephalography (EEG) might be indicative of an internal clock. No systematic relationship between APF and temporal decision making was found, which suggests that a straightforward interpretation of APF reflecting the brain’s internal clock is too simplistic. 2) examine the role of oscillatory power on performance monitoring and temporal decision making. We found no evidence that medial frontal cortex used oscillatory power to influence subsequent processing in down-stream regions after an error was committed. Instead, we found phase-based connectivity after an error although the implications on behavioral adjustments remain unexplored. In the temporal decision making experiments we found increased theta power in correct compared to incorrect judgements after the short time interval had elapsed, which might suggest that theta power reflects evidence accumulation of temporal information. 3) examine the role of climbing neural activity in temporal decision making as reflected by slow evoked potentials (SEPs) in the EEG. No consistent evidence across the different experiments was observed, which suggests that SEPs do not reflect temporal evidence accumulation in the current time estimation task and differences are instead reflected in theta power differences

Neuromatch Academy: Teaching Computational Neuroscience with global accessibility

Neuromatch Academy designed and ran a fully online 3-week Computational Neuroscience summer school for 1757 students with 191 teaching assistants working in virtual inverted (or flipped) classrooms and on small group projects. Fourteen languages, active community management, and low cost allowed for an unprecedented level of inclusivity and universal accessibility.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figures. Equal contribution by the executive committee members of Neuromatch Academy: Tara van Viegen, Athena Akrami, Kate Bonnen, Eric DeWitt, Alexandre Hyafil, Helena Ledmyr, Grace W. Lindsay, Patrick Mineault, John D. Murray, Xaq Pitkow, Aina Puce, Madineh Sedigh-Sarvestani, Carsen Stringer. and equal contribution by the board of directors of Neuromatch Academy: Gunnar Blohm, Konrad Kording, Paul Schrater, Brad Wyble, Sean Escola, Megan A. K. Peter

Neuromatch Academy: a 3-week, online summer school in computational neuroscience

Neuromatch Academy (https://academy.neuromatch.io; (van Viegen et al., 2021)) was designed as an online summer school to cover the basics of computational neuroscience in three weeks. The materials cover dominant and emerging computational neuroscience tools, how they complement one another, and specifically focus on how they can help us to better understand how the brain functions. An original component of the materials is its focus on modeling choices, i.e. how do we choose the right approach, how do we build models, and how can we evaluate models to determine if they provide real (meaningful) insight. This meta-modeling component of the instructional materials asks what questions can be answered by different techniques, and how to apply them meaningfully to get insight about brain function

Ten simple rules for failing successfully in academia

Failure is an integral part of life and by extension academia. At the same time, failure is often ignored, with potentially negative consequences both for the science and the scientists involved. This article provides several strategies for learning from and dealing with failure instead of ignoring it. Hopefully, our recommendations are widely applicable, while still taking into account individual differences between academics. These simple rules allow academics to further develop their own strategies for failing successfully in academia

Examples of resources that might help you learn more about failure and/or find other people who have experienced similar struggles.

Examples of resources that might help you learn more about failure and/or find other people who have experienced similar struggles.</p

Example of giving yourself time to process failure.

Example of giving yourself time to process failure.</p