Cognitive Science is pretty neat. Another neat thing that turns out to be true: fMRI is the Mother Of All Brain Imagining Techniques. So far, the only reasons to do anything /but/ an fMRI is that you can't, won't, or just really like scans with names like "CAT" and "PET". As it turns out, MRIs (functional and otherwise) use GIANT MAGNETS (awesome!!!) to align those little dipoles we like to call hydrogen atoms. And then the gizmo measures the time it takes your dipoles to discombobulate. In turn, this tells us something about someone's brain. What's particularly audacious about these things is how dramatic the post-processing needs to be in order to get something useful. First you have to compensate, computationally of course, for movement along all three spatial axes. Then you gotta antialias your voxels. Then you're looking at collating your slices into a 3D image. And, of course, you have to choose your imaging type, probably T2. Lastly you'll want to take relative averages against your baseline for each time-slice. And Voila! You have a vague idea that something may have happened...and you know vaguely where it happened. Now we're cooking.
In another not-so-recent not-so-scientific breakthrough, it turns out that single-speed bikes--you know, the ones people like because they're cheap and simple--are both expensive to buy and complicated enough to stump the most Irish of bike-store people. So it goes.
But! I have a number of nifty ideas for a cognitive psychology question. As it turns out, coming up with smart questions really /is/ almost as hard as answering them. We had to come up with a question concerning human cognition for this week's class. My ideas are here in list form:
1) How do people separate words in spoken speech?
2) How do people simplify language for assumed learners (baby talk, pet talk)?
3) How do, if at all, people find the meaning of made-up adjectives?
4) How well can people make up a verb for a given noun?
5) How accurate are people at determining projectile trajectory in 2D?
5a) How fast can someone /decide/ accuracy? And how is this speed related to accuracy?
5b) How might visual distractions affect accuracy?
5c) Does technical knowledge of spatial geometry have any effect on accuracy or speed?
What interests me most about number 5 are the potential evolutionary aspects. For instance, there's an obvious advantage to determining the accuracy of parabolic curves (so as to throw something accurately...or dodge that dodge-ball). There may also be advantages to accuracy in linear prediction. But might we be significantly less accurate for logarithmic or exponential curves?
As it turns out, you'll have to check back in seven years to get answers to any of these questions. And, as it will likely turn out, the answers won't make anyone better at basketball.