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.

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.

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.

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

               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.

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

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.

We're joined by special guest Dr. Brad Dieter who tells us about his journey from running people on treadmills to running proteins on a gel.  Then we discuss the challenges of preparing for conferences, the importance of colour coordination, and taking classes way to late into grads school. 

On Our Minds:

Liam has been dreaming of telling a story in The Bench Warmers, a new podcast featuring tales from grad school, and we all swap stories of the most expensive things we’ve ever broken in the lab.  

Then he finds another excuse to talk about CRISPR, this time it’s about who should win the Nobel Prize for the discovery, why it might be a different person than the patent holder, and why this whole process completely misrepresents science.

Brad has been spending a lot of time thinking about the ethics of human cloning, and can’t figure out why it would be such a bad thing. And frankly we can’t either.

Kat has been digging deep into the field of predatory journals, who made over $75 million last year

Paper:

This week’s paper is about how the stress response factor NRF2 regulates the degradation of phosphorylated Tau in models of Alzheimer’s disease (Readcube link)

Kathryn has been so busy getting ready for conferences she hasn’t prepared for her committee meeting, and Liam’s been so busy not thinking about it he hasn’t gotten ready for conferences! Maybe he should spend less time interviewing politicians like Ted Hsu and Laurin Liu about science policy, and more time focusing on school.

Still not focusing on school Liam’s been reading about the Ethics for a New Scientific Millennium on The Winnower, a really cool open scholarly publishing platform. Meanwhile Kathryn has been focused on increasing her score on Nature’s How Interdisciplinary Are You quiz, and becoming more T-shaped, whatever that means.

In this week’s paper (OA), suggested by listener Rebeca, we examine the suitability of fibroblasts for modeling the motor neuron diseases ALS and PLS.

Kat has had a dramatic change in problems, and now has so much data she can’t stop working on it (literally), while Liam has realized that maybe it was a mistake to sign up for so many extracurricular activities.

In what little spare time Kat has she's been searching for levity in the IgNobel Prizes - Personal favourites include the universal pee time and diagnosing appendicitis with speed bumps.

Liam is interested in conflicts of interest this week, but insists he has nothing to disclose.

Oh, and Kat accidently predicted the future last week now that Tom Insel has stepped down as director of the NIMH to take a job at the Google spinoff Life Sciences.

This week’s paper is a plot study - or maybe a pilot of a pilot study - that takes an interesting approach to the search for Alzheimer's biomarkers by studying people with Down’s syndrome. A lot of the techniques are interesting, but we wish there was a little more data available before publication.

In the title test we could see past the colon, but it turns out the length may reduce their citations.

“The down syndrome biomarker initiative (DSBI) pilot: proof of concept for deep phenotyping of Alzheimer’s disease biomarkers in down syndrome”  (OA)

Thanks for listening! For links to our previous episodes head to www.onyourmind.ca

This week on the On Your Mind Neuroscience Podcast:

We celebrate our triumphant return, and realize that somewhere during our break we became senior PhD students in our labs. A lot has happened since we spoke last, so Kat catches us up on Tom Insel's push to involve private tech companies in neuroscience, and why neuroscience needs hackers, and Liam give his thoughts on former OYM guest Jean-François Gariépy's Public departure from academic science and if encouraging students to study science is a fools errand.

Finally in our paper this week we discuss how NDMA receptors can cause spine shrinkage and LND without opening ion channels. 

Our website is a little bit behind our release schedule right now, but you can still find all our old episodes at www.onyourmind.ca

We’re back! If only for a moment. In this week’s dumpling powered episode Liam and Kathryn discuss working in groups, the Tim Hunt scandal, open science and closed off data.

This will be our last episode for a few weeks, so jump into our past episodes at www.onyourmind.ca

It's a double whammy! We’re talking about two papers looking at using bone marrow transplants and microglia to treat Rett syndrome in mice. After a 2012 paper showed some very promising results some hospitals started using this approach for human trails, but a 2015 paper from a group of four labs have tried and failed to replicate the original findings. 

Before we can get to that Liam tries to rectify his love preparing talks with his hatred preparing posters, then lightens the mood with some talk of studying music. Then Kathryn discusses terrible advice for female scientists.

For links to everything we talked about today, full show notes, past episodes and more head to www.onyourmind.ca

We've got a lot peer review on our minds this week. Liam brings the story of fabricated data about canvasing for gay marriage, and Kats excited about ORCIDs integration of crediting peer review. 

Then in this weeks paper we talk about the different roles of D1 and D2 neurons in cocaine response. 

For links to everything we talked about full shownotes and more head to www.onyourmind.ca

Kathryn talks shares some advice for young scientists, and explains why we should embrace the flawed nature of science and Liam tries to untangle the unsolved problems of neuroscience. 

Then in this week’s paper, mice and rats given early androgens or with blocked methylation have masculinized brains

For links to everything we talked about, past episodes, full show notes and more head to www.onyourmind.ca

This week on the On Your Mind neuroscience podcast:

Liam and Kathryn discuss the joys of working with undergrads, and budget writing. Meanwhile Kat's been distressed by differences in reference letters written for nice women who get their work done despite being moms, and brilliant male leaders. And Liam has been thinking about what defines a neuronal subtype.

In this week’s paper, feeding pregnant mice high fat and low protein diets has causes specific cognitive deficits in their offspring. There are some very cool experiments here, even if we wish there were more of them.

We're joined by social worker Sophia Rinaldis to talk about the #addmaleauthorgate, why a teratoma is not an evil twin, and how to be more inclusive of other cultures in research. Sophia's interests are in the social determinants of mental health, and she's brought in a report from the Canadian Mental Health commotion of the efficacy of the At Home/Chez Soi project, a Housing first approach to improving the mental health of hopeless people. 

For links to everything we talked about, full shownotes, past episodes and more head to www.onyourmind.ca

We're joined by neuroscience power couple Ian Blum and Robin Keeley for a discussion on the difficulties of being in a relationship where both people want academic positions, or the two body problem, and ethical issues surrounding a recent paper genetically modifying human embryonic cells. 

This week’s paper uses a modification of traditional drosophila learning models to compare the neural circuit used for visual and olfactory memories, and we spend as much time talking about the ups and downs of studying behaviour as we do on the actual circuits. 

For links to everything we talked about, full show notes and more, head to www.onyourmind.ca

Liam and Kat talk about whether or not the current post-doc system is broken (it is) and how to fix it, then what lesson can universities learn from businesses?

This week’s paper is about the long term memory requiring astrocyte expression of klingon in the fly, and leads us to discussion of the importance of considering glia in your neuronal studies.

For links to what we talked about today, full show notes, past episodes and more head to www.onyourmind.ca

We're joined by Neuroethicist Dr Veljko Dubljevic  ! He tells us what it's like to be an ethicists, and lends his perspective to our conversations about peer review and the Human Brian Project. Then we get into a paper all about the public attitudes on issues of safety, pressure, fairness, and authenticity when it comes to cognitive enhancement. 

For links to everything we talked about today, full shownotes, and past episoeds head to www.onyourmind.ca

Another week has gone by, and Kat and Liam are back to catch up over some science.  Liam’s got the proof of his review back from the journal and is reveling in seeing his (many) months of work in a formatted pdf.  Meanwhile, Kat’s been plugging away at processing her samples and is unreasonably enraged by a minor setback.  When she went to put her samples in an overnight incubation, she discovered that the oven was already in use, and she suddenly identified with an article that she read weeks ago, “How to P*ss off a Scientist”.  Liam’s had his own burst of frustration this week when he read the title of a press release that claimed that the differences between the autistic brain and the healthy brain have been identified “for the first time”.

Venting aside, he’s concerned about the implications of misleading titles and has read an article on “scienceyness” which argues that the effects are detrimental.  Scienceyness is a take on “truthiness” that describes the phenomenon of people re-sharing overhyped science headlines without knowing/evaluating whether they are true or not.  The author of this article suggests that the only outcome of scienceyness is long-term mistrust in science and the related damage to scientists; but Liam’s got a more optimistic view.

And speaking of reading articles with through an optimistic lens, Kat’s read an article in Scientific American, which has a cringe-worthy set-up that’s clearly meant to attract the attention of the public, but has an interesting thesis. The article covers a study that compared massive schizophrenia GWAS data to regions of the genome that have undergone accelerated change during human evolution.  The extensive overlap is used as evidence to suggest that there’s an evolutionary genetics explanation why schizophrenia is a uniquely human condition.  Then it’s onto this week’s article…

The Paper

Our article this week is published in Cell Stem Cell and uses induced pluripotent stem cells from patients with Sporadic Alzheimer’s Disease (SAD) to discover a unique interaction between SORL1 genotype and cellular phenotypes.  The authors chose to study SORL1 because it is a protein that is involved in the cleavage of APP and a gene that has been associated with SAD in previous studies.  Using their relatively large number of cell lines from patients and controls, they found no overall difference in SORL1 expression in fibroblasts, neural stem cells, nor in cultured neurons.  What’s more, the presence of a protective (P) or risk (R) haplotype at the 5’ end of the SORL1 gene had no impact on SORL1 expression.  Importantly, the authors realized that the addition of BDNF and cAMP to their cell medium could impact SORL1 expression so, instead of accepting their negative results as the end of the story, they did follow-up experiments with and without these molecules.

Adding cAMP to the media induced SORL1 expression in all the cell lines, while adding BDNF increased SORL1 expression only in cell lines with the P haplotype.  Their genotype-specific findings extend to amyloid beta protein levels, where increased SORL1 decreases the toxic protein only in cell lines with the P haplotype.  What’s most interesting about these findings is the lack of segregation between patient and control lines.  There are patient lines that do not carry the risk genotype, that must carry risk alleles at other loci, and there are lines that are homozygous for the risk allele, but lack the SAD diagnosis.  It is a beautiful example of the genetic complexity of polygenic disorders like SAD, and the potential of iPSCs to study them.

Young J., Daniel A. Williams, Grace Woodruff, Floyd Buen, Arra C. Revilla, Cheryl Herrera, Mason A. Israel, Shauna H. Yuan, Steven D. Edland & Lawrence S.B. Goldstein & (2015). Elucidating Molecular Phenotypes Caused by the SORL1 Alzheimer’s Disease Genetic Risk Factor Using Human Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells, Cell Stem Cell,  DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.stem.2015.02.004

We’re super excited to announce that we will be live-streaming the 2015 Sunposium: Neural Circuits and Sunshine, put on by the Max Planck Florida Institute for Neuroscience on Monday March 30 and Tuesday March 31!  There’s an impressive list of speakers, including Nobel Award winner Eric Betzig and in vivo memory manipulator Richard Tsien, who’s talks will be available for your viewing pleasure, live on this page.  We were able to get an interview with Dan Wilson, a graduate student at the Institute who studies synaptic dynamics in individual dendrites, which means you get a bonus weekend episode! 

Of course it wouldn’t be an OYM episode if Liam and Kat didn’t talk about what’s on their minds, so we’ve got a lot of discussion going on about open sourcing the human body, the latest report to come out of the controversy over the Human Brain Project, and the possibility that neurons evolved twice! We hope you enjoy.

Get the stream and links to everything we talked about head to www.onyourmind.ca/sunposium2015

Then we get into two articles about sleep this week, looking at the relationship between energy metabolism and sleep in insomnia and acute sleep deprivation. 

For past episodes, full show notes, and links to everything we talked about head to www.onyourmind.ca

She joins us for conversations about the Junk DNA debate and why people find science hard to believe, and brings in an article on how to evaluate undergraduate research experiences, and this weeks feature artle describing the encoding of 3D space in bats brains.

For links to everything we talked about today, full show notes and more head to www.onyourmind.ca!

We welcome back founding OYMer Adel Farah! We talk about How to make science a better place for women, transcranial electronic stimulation, and The scientist Magazine. This weeks paper examines the role of gutamate and the blood brain barrier in a mouse model of Alzhimers disease. 

For links to everything we talked about today, full show notes and more, head to www.onyourmind.ca

Liam and Kathryn talk about the challenges of workign weekends, the implosibilty of head transplants, banning P-values, and 10 rules for better figures. 

This weeks paper is about the involvment of Gomaffu, an awesomely named long noncoding RNA, in regulatoin of the nearby gene CRYBBY1 in response to fear conditioning. 

For all our previous episodes, full show ntoes, and links to everything we talked about, head to www.onyourmind.ca

This weeks paper is about the networks of genes that are mutated in Autism spectrom disordres, and their possible correlation with phenotype severity (http://rdcu.be/ccYl for share access)

For a full description of this weeks episode, links to everything we talked about, and our full archive of episodes head to www.onyourmind.ca/life-of-PI 

Founding OYMer Adel Farrah joins us from Ireland to talk about publishing case studies, or fairry tales as he calls them, and the importance of antibody validation. Liam's publised his first review, and is happy that some physicists teamed up to prove half of them were wrong. Kathryn has computer scientists on her mind, or more accuratly Scientist Computers. 

Finally we're talking about how local protein translation impacts synapse development and vice-versa in this weeks paper from eLife.

For full show notes and links to everything we talked about today, head to www.onyourmind.ca

PhD student and Huntington's researcher Kimberly Girly joins us for conversations about consciousness in a coma, planning your mental health treatments with your partner, and how academic fraudster Diederik Stapel became the human garbage he is.

Kim also brought us a paper using a super cool model to study how aggregates of mutant Huntington protein pass from one neuron to another. 

For links to everything we've talked about in this and every other episode head to www.onyourmind.ca/Huntin-Frankenslices-Kimberly-Girling

Kat's thinking about why some fields ahve more female PhDs than others while Liam wants to digitize his labbook. In this weeks paper somatic mutations are used to trace the liniage of single neurons in the human brain.

For links to everything we talked about, full shownotes and more, head to www.oympodcast.ca/sexy-single-cells

We're welcoming Huy-Binh Nguyen, our new ephys expert, to the OYM studio!  He's here to chat about organizational skills, the use of consumer genetic data for profit, and the risks of neuroprofiling criminals.  Also, our paper this week uses optogenetics to provide solid evidence for the role of LTP in memory.

For links to everything we talked about this week, head to www.onyourmind.ca/mind-control

For links to everything we talked about this week, all our other episodes, full shownotes, and more head to www.onyourmind.ca/resolutions 

We welcome our special guest and fellow podcaster, Nipun Chopra!  He brings discussion on the philosophy of science, what we can and should do about scientific misinterpretation, and the value of a good Charlize Theron movie; not to mention, this week’s article on the role of the REST complex in the pathology of Alzheimer’s disease

In the spirit of the season, we’re talking about what Santa Clause might have to do with mental illness.  We’re also discussing the idea of read-only article sharing, the beauty of infographics, and the role of ERK in myelin maintenance.

For links to everything we talked about, full show notes and more head to OnYourMind.ca/erkquake

Adel’s back this week to talk about the platinum genome project, the seedy underbelly of peer review and the issues with using inbred rodents for science.  Also, our article this week looks at the relationship between exercise physiology, molecular changes in the brain, and depression. 

Find links to this weeks paper, links to everything we talked about and more at www.onyourmind.ca/kats-resist-depression

We’re back with a special SfN 2014 feature episode!  This year's this year’s Society for neuroscience conference was amazing. We met and talked to so many interesting and exciting people!

So we're taking this episode to recap the conference, talk about some of our facourite things, and share a few of our conversations with Jack Lee, Dr. Brian Chen, Denise Zannino, Brittany Wright, Michael Stendardi, Alex and Emily Davidson, Ben Cipollini, Alex Tuttle, Nipun Chopra, Arturo Lichauco, Donald Thevalingam, Benjamin Cordy & Jesse Miles.

We talk about media representations of Schizophrenia, GMOs, science communication and Brain Training with cognitive neuroscientist Claire Champigny.

For links to all the things we talked about, full show notes and more head to www.onyourmind.ca/Clarifying-Brain-Training 

We're talking about spooky science, gene patents and science idols! Then we break down the relationship between mTOR and the Huntington protein. 

For links to what we talked about, full show notes and more, head to onyourmind.ca/everyones-doing-mtor

Adel’s back for his second episode in a row, and we’re talking education and science this week -from the changing role of universities, to pervasive neuroscience myths and the over-abundance of post docs without academic positions.  Then, it’s onto this week’s paper discussion about ASD, synaptic pruning, and the impact of mTOR activity on autophagy.

For full shownotes and links to most of the stuff we talked about today head to onyourmind.ca/pruning-and-postdocs

It's a 50th episode OYM reunion! Adel's back with lessons from medschool and talk of understudied patient groups. Liam and Kathryn have been applying for funding, and the stress drove Liam to vacation. 

Then we're chatting about prizes both Nobel and Ignobel and papers whose titles are Blowing in the Wind. 

Finally it's on to our paper examining social memory and amygdala alterations in mice modeling NF1 disease. 

For more information, links to what we talked about, and past episodes head to OnYourMind.ca

For links to everything we talked about, full show notes and more go to www.onyourmind.ca/shooting-the-science-shit

Last but far from least, this week’s paper may have our worst rated title yet, but it's an interesting look at epigenetics and Alzheimer’s. 

During his hours alone in the cell culture room Liam has been catching up on other podcasts including The Partially Examined Life, a philosophy podcast with a couple great episodes on philosophy of science. And Kathryn has been reading about Twitter Psychosis. Is it real? The authors have apologized for the hyperbolic title, now if only people would stop writing them. This leads us down a wormhole of a conversation about the place of case studies in science.

Finally our paper this week examines the role of MicroRNA 135 in depression. This strikes close to home for Liam who was an author on a recent similar paper. 

The whole crew is back in studio this week for another neuroscience adventure.  We’re dipping into the realm of brain imaging with a couple of articles that, if nothing else, have got us talking about what we can get from a MRI.  We’ve also got tales of extraterrestrial intelligence and see through jelly mice before moving onto our article this week, which tackles the full scope of disease modelling from humans to stem cells to mice and back again.

Coming at you from three provinces! We talk about the future of CIHR funding, why the Chinese are hacking science agencies, and how Kathryn has been an author on four papers without even knowing it. Then how changes in dopamine projections change the epigenetics of their downstream targets? 

For links to everything we talked about today and full show notes head to www.onyourmind.ca/funding-projections

It’s an ultra-rare episode with all three hosts in the same room!  We’re talking about the degrees of plagiarism, the scientific 1% and the lack of predictive power in animal research.  Then it’s onto our article this week, about the migration of neural progenitors and the involvement of the microtubule protein Eml1 in subcortical heterotopias. 

For full show notes, links to what we've talked about and more head to onyourmind.ca/emlgrating-to-heterotipa

For links, full show notes and more head to OnYourMind.ca/PTTG1-Keeps-You-Regular

Find all our old episodes at www.onyourmind.ca

A bonus episde! We get an update from Liam about the ISSCR conference, and hear about Adels commitee stuggles and Kats high profile meetings. No paper, No what's On our Minds, lots of late night giggles!

For link to everything we talked about and full show notes check out www.onyourmind.ca/mul1ng-over-mitochondria

Why you should drink before you get stabbed; Will your self driving car kill you to save someone else? and a new tool helps predict if you'll become a PI. Finally, a new stem cell model of ALS suggests the involvment of ER stress response. 

We’re back from CAN and talking about conference dynamics and poster marketing.  This episode also touches on some cognitive science, the role of intuition in science and a paper that combines two levels of study to collect mRNA from specific subpopulation of projection neurons. 

For links to all the things we've talked about this week and full show notes check out www.OnYourMind.ca/nanobody-snatchers

The gang has a sensational discussion on synesthesia and an experiment suggesting we might identify letters before we might even be aware of them. Then a press release of unpublised research gets the group riled up on its implications for autism diagnoses.

The article this week is about MS and how human neural stem cell grafts can mitigate its development, or reverse its progression. 

For links and full show notes head to www.onyourmind.ca/ms-america

Kat’s back from her networking adventure to talk about lucid dreaming, eating bugs and mass extinction with the rest of the team.  This week, we’re talking about a paper that investigates the role of potassium channels and astrocytes in the development of Huntington’s Disease. 

For full show notes, links and more check out www.onyourmind.ca/special-k-channels

Its yet another guested podcast. Ian has returned, since Kat's away in Victoria B.C. for a conference! This week the gang talks about science in the media and how much of good reporting depends on the scientist themselves. Also, we discuss about what its like to be a broke student and whether that feeling might change when we actually grow and get jobs. Finally, the article for this week is about the analgesic effects in mice of male experimenters just standing in the room! This paper is making a lot of noise in the media and is also making scientists working with animal models a little nervous!

For links to everything we've talked about to day and full show notes head to www.onyourmind.ca/mice-get-afraid

We get into a super fun discussion when Kat brings up an article on the impact of a crying baby and how that helps its fitness. Then things get a little heated when the subject of the scientific rigor of evolutionary psych as field comes up. Fortunately, Liam was able to calm our nerves when he let us know they discovered a 13th cranial nerve. Guess its time to throw out your mnemonics, anatomy majors! In a pretty big change of pace Adel talks about new moons forming and breaking up in Saturn's rings, with the newest one being discovered called Peggy!

The article for this episode touches on the effects of THC use in adolescent rats that may or may not lead to different drug seeking behaviour in their offspring, even long after the parents have stopped using it.

For Links to what we talked about and full show notes check out www.onyourmind.ca/offspring-on-your-left

We walk the line between reality and science fiction this week with stories of reverse engineering an image from brain activity and compounds that can reverse aging. We’re also discussing a paper that uses gene network analysis and exome sequencing to study neurodegeneration

Adel’s ventured out into the real world but he’s still got time to talk science, and gibberish, with the team back home.  We’re talking about the GABA switch, oxytocin, and the whether or not they’re related to autism in this week’s paper

We’re in the spirit of the season and talking about the neuroscience of love, our infatuation with p values and the effects of long term stress on the hippocampus.  Particularly, we’re focusing on a paper looking at the birth of oligodendrocytes: the myelinating cells of the CNS.

For shownotes and links checdk out www.onoyurmind.ca/oligodendrogenesis

Let's take it from the ethics of genetic diagnosis all the way down to single RNA visualization this week.  Our papers examine the idea of RNA granules and impress us with their high resolution FISH.  We'll also talk about the idea of tenure, the biology of addiction and, apparently, the mathematically derived variations of tying a tie.

We’re probing the concept of the gut-brain axis and talking about the use of primates in genetic research, the responsibilities of scientific journalism and the gap between research and practice in veterinary medicine

We’ve got a double-header for you!  The papers that we’ve got on our minds use optogenetics to manipulate fear memory in the mouse hippocampus.  We’re also talking about primary care practitioners in mental health, the gender disparity in science and much more.

We’re going back to basic science this week with a paper on dendrite regeneration by Stone et al.   We’ll also talk about the darkside of genius and the inspiring concept of a journal edited by kids, for kids.

For shownotes and links to everything we've talk about today check out www.onyourmind.ca/destroying_dendrites

The first OYM episode of 2014 is full of advice on how to pick a graduate advisor and succeed as a graduate student.  We’re talking about two recent advice articles in Neuron that have inspired us to take a look back at our own decisions and a the attention a Nobel winner has brought to the perils of Impact Factors.

See you in 2014!

Alzheimers and the Garbage Barge. 

Alzheimer’s disease and other neurodegenerative disorders are associated with amyloid plaques- aggregates of misfolded, aberrant proteins – throughout the brain. Our paper this week builds on the hypothesis that too much amyloid precursor protein (APP) is released from neurons because of impaired lysosome (Garbage Barge) functioning using Neu1 knockout mice.

Also on our minds this week are computer models of peer review, medical hoaxes, and Vally-speak.

For full show notes and links to everything we've talked about today head to www.OnYourMind.ca

Can epigenetics explain behavioural inheritance between generations?  We’ll take a look at a paper by Dias and Ressler to help figure it out.  Also, we’ve got a lot to say about a paper claiming that the differences between men and women are, in part, due to the connectivity of their brain.

For full shownotes and relevant links for this and every other episode go to www.onyourmind.ca

This week we’re trying to unite genetics studies of autism and neurodevelopmental disorders with their associated gene networks with a paper by Willsey et al.  We’re also talking about the autrocities committed by American researchers in Guatamala in the 40s, the approach to AIDS treatment in Rwanda and the future of 23andMe.

For full show notes and links head to www.OnYourMind.ca

This week Liam interviewed a bunch of students and post-docs that presented posters at SFN. These are there stories.

Keith Hengen: Homoeostasis of neuronal spiking

His <a title="Neuron Paper" href=" https://www.cell.com/neuron/abstract/S0896-6273(13)00798-8?script=true">Neuron Paper</a>: (close access)

Computer modelling shows the <a href="http://www.ploscompbiol.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pcbi.1003330">need for homoeostasis</a>:  (Open Access)

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Jonathan Michaels: Neural networks in grasping movements

<a href=" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multielectrode_array">Multi-electrode</a> array recording in monkeys -

His Blog: <a href="http://consciousmistakes.com/">ConciousMistakes.com</a>

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Anand Krishnan:  Peripheral nerve regeneration in mammals

Nerve <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroregeneration">regeneration</a>:

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Nico Reggente: Diffusion Tensor Imaging in Value-Directed learning

DTI: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion_MRI

Value Directed <a href="http://www.nature.com/nrn/journal/v9/n7/abs/nrn2357.html ">Decision Making</a>: (closed access)

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Elise Piazza : Hemisphereic Differences in Binocular Rivalry

Binocular rivalry<a href=" http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Binocular_rivalry"> review</a>

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Martin Engel: Treating Schizophrenia with Neuregulin

The state of<a href="http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/psychopharmacology/what-make-catie-are-we-better-atypical-antipsychotics"> current antipsychotics</a>:

We’ve also got stress and the state of academia on our minds and we discuss all this from two different time zones at once!

It’s an OYM blast from the past with this week’s special-release, archived episode!  

This episode starts out with a well-deserved congratulation to our very own Liam, for acing his PhD candidacy exam.  Now he’s formally allowed to do more work for no change in pay!  We also talk about how frustrating it can be when your experiments don’t work and how nerve wracking it is waiting for a funding decision.  This is the first (and hopefully last) episode where the “Kath-eter of science” makes an appearance and then it’s onto this week’s paper.  

It’s called “Detection of Clinically Relevant Genetic Variants in Autism Spectrum Disorder by Whole-Genome Sequencing” by Jiang et al. doi:10.1016/j.ajhg.2013.06.012 This paper brings up some nostalgic flash-backs from Kat, who used to work in ASD research before taking the leap into grad school.  Autism spectrum disorders affect 1 in 88 children and are defined by deficits in social skills, communication and repetitive and restrictive interests.  Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have identified genetic polymorphisms that contribute to the risk of ASD but these are common mutations that can’t explain the whole genetic landscape of the disease.  This week’s paper uses whole genome sequencing (for a video tutorial: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rzmm57udYdk  ) to identify new, rare mutations that are found in 32 children with ASD.  These include single nucleotide changes (SNP or SNV), and larger alterations to the genetic sequence (indels and CNVs).  The authors attempt to prioritize future medical interventions and follow up for children based on their genetic findings.  Of course, this leads us to a rather epistemological discussion on personalized genomics and the pros and cons of putting disorders on a spectrum in the first place.

Finally, this week wraps up with a debate about predicting the impact of your research inspired by this article in Science. (http://www.sciencemag.org/content/340/6138/1265.full.pdf)