This page is for those attending the Python Introduction (2 and 3 November) as part of the PyBrain workshop at the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit. Thanks to Johan Carlin for organising this series of virtual training sessions!
A clash between two major figures in cognitive neuroscience came to a head yesterday, and it got a bit ugly. The dispute centers around a publicly posted peer review of a publicly posted manuscript. Although seemingly aligned with Open Science ideals, the public review prompted worries about ulterior motives and power dynamics in some researchers. In addition to being juicy drama, the events reveal that Open Science requires trust, tact, and integrity. This post summarises the things I’ve learned.
Via Twitter, Dennis Hernaus (@hernaus_tweets) contacted me about my MPy150 library for BioPac’s MP150 system (read this older blog post for more info). After some fiddling, he managed to get his MP160 device to work in Python, and I figured it would be good to share his efforts here.
Titus von der Malsburg and colleagues have organised an OpenSesame and PyGaze workshop at the University of Potsdam. This page contains instructions and downloads, and is updated throughout the workshop based on what we need and produce on each day.
Testing children is less easy than testing adults, primarily because they lack the social inhibition to tell psychological researchers to go away with their super boring tests. This presents a problem in developmental research: How do you reach these kids?! We developed a bunch of iPad games to test the cognition of an entire classroom in one go. And it works!
In cognitive neuroscience, we’re interested in what guides human attention. We distinguish between influences from high-level cognition (e.g. current goals), and low-level visual features. There are highly sophisticated models of how visual features such as intensity, colour, and movement guide human attention. Computerised implementations of these models allow computers to mimic human eye movements. Turns out Taylor Swift’s amazing videos are an excellent example!
Traditional English DPhil programmes end in a viva. This is an examination by one internal and one external examiner, who critically assess the candidate and their thesis over the course of several hours. Mine was today, and I am delighted to announce that I passed! Many thanks to my wonderful …
Today was Python Day at the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit. Download all the required files and scripts here.
Tobii is a major player in the eye-tracking world, selling devices to customers in business and science. Today, Tobii has made a major step towards supporting open science by adding support for its new SDK in PyGaze (and by extension in OpenSesame). You can review the code on GitHub, download the PyGaze package as a zip, or download a full WinPython version. Details below, and more info on downloading here.
European Conference on Eye Movements The European Conference on Eye Movements is a biennial event for scientists and engineers who research or use eye movements in their work. The 2017 edition will be hosted in Wuppertal, Germany, and is preceded by several workshops. One of these is Edwin Dalmaijer’s “Learn …