It was in the heat of studying biology that I found this epiphany. The whole concept of being a doctor is to intervene when things go terribly wrong. From ambulatory work to preventative medicine, very little, I realized, was done to make life more vibrant. Beyond vaccines, where could I find a cure for life?
Architecture, as I know it, is a balancing point between nature and nurture. Our environment, among the most critical of evolutionary variables, has passivley shaped our biology. Perhaps by modifying our environment in very specific ways, our biology and psychology will react accordingly.
Studies have shown that 460nm light will stimulate melatonin production to treat winter depression (seasonal affective disorder), and that GPA increases with more sunlight in the classroom.
Is this considered medicine?
I can't help but romanticize the idea that by studying neuroaesthetics (neuroarchitecture in this context) I could find ways of using interior design and architecture to influence behavior.
Ramachandran is a neurologist (MD). I wonder if he would discover more if he were an environmental psychologist?
Is architecture a good foundation for a PhD in neuroscience (neuroaesthetics/environmental psychology)?
Doctor vs. neuroscientist. The great debate continues...
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Why I Push Myself
there is a certain point at which we take our pursuit of knowledge personally. the realization that the world in which we thrive is bound together by a cold precision that has little tolerance for error without profound repercussion, leaving no sanctuary in masked inadequacies such as luck. in this sober and unforgiving space, we find that our limits are self-imposed, being essentially rooted in our own ignorance. if you take your life's work as a representation of your idealistic self, perseverance and dedication are second to obsession. i cannot live with myself if the death of another is a result of my lack of passionate preparation, and thus i cannot respect myself if I do not obsess.
there comes a moment in the live of a physician where entropy is reduced to a single moment of utter silence and darkness, in which life and death is delicately balanced on a fulcrum of knowledge. the outcome of this single moment influences countless lives, futures, and dreams. whether a son, sister, mother, or father lives or dies is a direct reflection of your compassion, dedication, and obsession.
this is why i push myself.
to: Robert
there comes a moment in the live of a physician where entropy is reduced to a single moment of utter silence and darkness, in which life and death is delicately balanced on a fulcrum of knowledge. the outcome of this single moment influences countless lives, futures, and dreams. whether a son, sister, mother, or father lives or dies is a direct reflection of your compassion, dedication, and obsession.
this is why i push myself.
to: Robert
Monday, June 23, 2008
wake up
i spent the other night doing a 'where are they now' on some of the more accomplished seniors of my high school class. as i realized the magnitudes of their achievements, my greatest works quickly began to feel so small in comparison. it is now apparent that i have much to do. i need to go where i can think clearly and do great things.
Thursday, June 12, 2008
Summer of Philosophy
Being as blown away as I am about life and science, I easily get excited and into a subject for a week or so and then find a new distraction in a completely irrelevant branch (last night I stayed up till 5 reading about how to build jet packs). It is uncommon for me to remain heavily fixated on a scientific idea for longer than 6 months.
One idea has held my attention of almost a full year now...this concept of 'consciousness.' While falling into the school of cognitive neuroscience, a vast and rich field of study that fuses our understanding of the mechanics mind (cognitive psychology) with the underlying biology (neuroscience), it equally demands a strong understanding of philosophy.
So, I have decided to go all the way with this one and write a thesis on it. This requires that I commit to investing the next year or two understanding everything from journal literature to the mind blowing ideas of Nietzsche, Heidegger, Siddhartha, Tolle, and friends.
The more I read into it, the more my eyes literally fuse to the page and I start exploding with epiphanies...and then comes the urge to run around ranting all of this to anyone unfortunate enough to be around. Usually, its Vicky, Steve, or Rob, who encounter me in some feverish state ranting and raving like some estranged mystic...
So, for our mutual sanity, I am going to start raving here...starting with a quote from Eckhart Tolle's The Power of Now:
For a musician, this is like studying the canvas underneath the acrylic to find a deeper meaning. Cool beans.
One idea has held my attention of almost a full year now...this concept of 'consciousness.' While falling into the school of cognitive neuroscience, a vast and rich field of study that fuses our understanding of the mechanics mind (cognitive psychology) with the underlying biology (neuroscience), it equally demands a strong understanding of philosophy.
So, I have decided to go all the way with this one and write a thesis on it. This requires that I commit to investing the next year or two understanding everything from journal literature to the mind blowing ideas of Nietzsche, Heidegger, Siddhartha, Tolle, and friends.
The more I read into it, the more my eyes literally fuse to the page and I start exploding with epiphanies...and then comes the urge to run around ranting all of this to anyone unfortunate enough to be around. Usually, its Vicky, Steve, or Rob, who encounter me in some feverish state ranting and raving like some estranged mystic...
So, for our mutual sanity, I am going to start raving here...starting with a quote from Eckhart Tolle's The Power of Now:
Use your senses fully. Be where you are. Look around. Just look, don't interpret. See the light, shapes, colors, textures. Be aware of the silent presence of each thing. Be aware of the space that allows everything to be. Listen to the sounds; don't judge them. Listen to the silence underneath the sounds.
For a musician, this is like studying the canvas underneath the acrylic to find a deeper meaning. Cool beans.
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
Neuroscience, People Mapping, and My Damn Microwave
Because San Diego State does NOT have a Neuroscience program *waves fists,* I have had to conjure one up on my own. (I originally came here to study business management and art but switched to medicine on orientation day.) Today you find me as the Psychology and Biology double major trying to keep my head above the water.
Over winter break, I have attempted to pursue a small education in the Computational NeuroScience subject matter. I started by reading Apprentices of Wonder: Inside the Neural Network Revolution, a book borrowed from good my phriend and physics professor, Tony DiMauro. Written by William F. Allman, it’s an introduction to the connectivist Dao that covers everything from brain teaser examples to descriptions of current uses of the neural network. [More on that some other day...] I found it very interesting and have made a new hobby of wondering how most everyday objects would function differently if powered by a neural network. I’m almost certain my microwave/nuclear reactor would have learned how to heat without melting my dinners by now. (Try reheating panda express and you’ll get a plate sized recreation of Chernobyl.)
And following that connection to the latest advent of 3D anatomical atlases that seem to be appearing from all sides, we seem to have many new opportunities to constructively integrate this technology. Many of my current areas of interest, including the geographic information system (GIS) model of the human body, are, as it turns out, under development. The IBM Zurich Laboratory as well as a collaboration by Stanford, Google, and NASA have all quietly begun research in developing a “bio-referencing” system that will allow doctors to navigate the human body. If you want to play with this concept, cruise over to http://www.visiblebody.com/ and take the human anatomy for a test drive. Although this polygon based 3D model is quite compelling, it is developed as a reference to the concept of human anatomy and is not an accurate image of a real human as is the 2D Visual Human Project.
My dream and active research pursuit for the last year has been a convergence of the two concepts of raster and vector data as it pertains to biomapping. And while I kept it top-secret, only confiding in close friends and collaborators, and of course intellectual property patent attorneys, it turns out I may have been beaten to the chase by those better equipped with supercomputers and experience *air of bitterness.* (I asked my parents for an SG Prism Visualization System and a Siemens AXIOM CT scanner for Christmas, but I got a purple blanket instead. Damn. Next year…)
Speaking of which...
Stanford has used a new, more powerful, system of CT scanning to take a peek inside the body of a 2,000 year old mummy (Article 1, and Article 2). I feel as our capacity to take higher quality images increases, our need for cataloging and presenting them in referenced and annotated 3D will become greater. And as computing power increases, as those in GIS as desperate to see, our ability to disperse this data among scientists outside the supercomputing centers will also increase. And so, I’m seeing new groups of researchers emerge along with new growth in the private sector. *Investment opportunities galore.* However, as we will soon start to see an explosion in this field, we will also see the same snowball effect of incompatibilities in database structure, markup languages, and graphics rendering. Smells a lot like GIS...*sigh.*
So, then what now?? Well, we ought to learn from the mistakes of those damn hippy geographers and create a standard now before all of our funding is spent on conversion algorithms and more processing power to account for our foolish inefficiencies. I don’t want to see the fast paced explosion of the bioinformatics field get stifled by a lack of congruence. And there, we follow the neural pathway to the novel concept of a standard modeling system of the human body. Its not too far off, and it just might be under secret development as I write this.
However, I feel it is the neuroscientists who may need to spearhead such a project. Why us you may ask? Well when designing a database system it is good practice to think well ahead into what may be the most complex use and what roadblocks the future may see because of a lack of expandability. It is my personal belief that neuroscience may just as well be the most confusing SOB field out there with the greatest amount of unknowns and possibilities for researchers to try and consider. So, in that regard, I think it is fitting that they should find out the limitations of such a system currently being presented and make sure that there is plenty of room to expand in the directions we want to go for we fear the risk of having to segregate from the vast wealth of data the rest of the body may provide in a comprehensive map.
So, I’ve taken this opportunity to begin research into the most comprehensive neuro-analysis software systems and have been constructively criticizing the UI and analyzing each to see what potential it has to offer the overall schema of the “standard bio-referencing system.”
But first, I'll have to fold my laundry...
Over winter break, I have attempted to pursue a small education in the Computational NeuroScience subject matter. I started by reading Apprentices of Wonder: Inside the Neural Network Revolution, a book borrowed from good my phriend and physics professor, Tony DiMauro. Written by William F. Allman, it’s an introduction to the connectivist Dao that covers everything from brain teaser examples to descriptions of current uses of the neural network. [More on that some other day...] I found it very interesting and have made a new hobby of wondering how most everyday objects would function differently if powered by a neural network. I’m almost certain my microwave/nuclear reactor would have learned how to heat without melting my dinners by now. (Try reheating panda express and you’ll get a plate sized recreation of Chernobyl.)
And following that connection to the latest advent of 3D anatomical atlases that seem to be appearing from all sides, we seem to have many new opportunities to constructively integrate this technology. Many of my current areas of interest, including the geographic information system (GIS) model of the human body, are, as it turns out, under development. The IBM Zurich Laboratory as well as a collaboration by Stanford, Google, and NASA have all quietly begun research in developing a “bio-referencing” system that will allow doctors to navigate the human body. If you want to play with this concept, cruise over to http://www.visiblebody.com/ and take the human anatomy for a test drive. Although this polygon based 3D model is quite compelling, it is developed as a reference to the concept of human anatomy and is not an accurate image of a real human as is the 2D Visual Human Project.
My dream and active research pursuit for the last year has been a convergence of the two concepts of raster and vector data as it pertains to biomapping. And while I kept it top-secret, only confiding in close friends and collaborators, and of course intellectual property patent attorneys, it turns out I may have been beaten to the chase by those better equipped with supercomputers and experience *air of bitterness.* (I asked my parents for an SG Prism Visualization System and a Siemens AXIOM CT scanner for Christmas, but I got a purple blanket instead. Damn. Next year…)
Speaking of which...
Stanford has used a new, more powerful, system of CT scanning to take a peek inside the body of a 2,000 year old mummy (Article 1, and Article 2). I feel as our capacity to take higher quality images increases, our need for cataloging and presenting them in referenced and annotated 3D will become greater. And as computing power increases, as those in GIS as desperate to see, our ability to disperse this data among scientists outside the supercomputing centers will also increase. And so, I’m seeing new groups of researchers emerge along with new growth in the private sector. *Investment opportunities galore.* However, as we will soon start to see an explosion in this field, we will also see the same snowball effect of incompatibilities in database structure, markup languages, and graphics rendering. Smells a lot like GIS...*sigh.*
So, then what now?? Well, we ought to learn from the mistakes of those damn hippy geographers and create a standard now before all of our funding is spent on conversion algorithms and more processing power to account for our foolish inefficiencies. I don’t want to see the fast paced explosion of the bioinformatics field get stifled by a lack of congruence. And there, we follow the neural pathway to the novel concept of a standard modeling system of the human body. Its not too far off, and it just might be under secret development as I write this.
However, I feel it is the neuroscientists who may need to spearhead such a project. Why us you may ask? Well when designing a database system it is good practice to think well ahead into what may be the most complex use and what roadblocks the future may see because of a lack of expandability. It is my personal belief that neuroscience may just as well be the most confusing SOB field out there with the greatest amount of unknowns and possibilities for researchers to try and consider. So, in that regard, I think it is fitting that they should find out the limitations of such a system currently being presented and make sure that there is plenty of room to expand in the directions we want to go for we fear the risk of having to segregate from the vast wealth of data the rest of the body may provide in a comprehensive map.
So, I’ve taken this opportunity to begin research into the most comprehensive neuro-analysis software systems and have been constructively criticizing the UI and analyzing each to see what potential it has to offer the overall schema of the “standard bio-referencing system.”
But first, I'll have to fold my laundry...
So...
I hope 2008 has found you well and rested. I know my break has certainly been anything but relaxing, as I completed a 3 week intensive accelerated course in emergency medicine at UCLA, followed immediately by a 1 week intensive snowboard excursion in Canada. I have now until Friday to prepare for the next semester when I will then be travelling/snowboarding once again until Sunday. So, with that sleep deprived regard, I'll start this ol' bligity blog off. For those of you who subscribed to my last blog, ill have you know that its quite over due to my lack of resource in maintaining a polyblogish lifestyle aside my flamboyant lack resource in general.
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