mind or computer?

I was very disappointed in the annual meetings of Society for Neuroscience (a.k.a. SfN). I like neuroscientists who know what they are doing and try to explain what is going on in the brain. I do not like neuroscientists who think they know what they are doing and provide something useless to the universe of understanding human mind.
A typical useless report is like this: Oh, I scanned people while they were doing so and so tasks. And then bang! I found some and some brain areas activated. Those areas must be involved in performing the task.
I am like: so what?
Your people were alive and of course some of their brain areas were more active than others. But what does it mean?
Can you please tell me, based on your colorful neuroscientific images or data, what does attention mean? What does attention do? How does attention affect other mental functions? What can affect attention?
One presenter even used a task that did not related to attention and said it was an attentional task.

Now I know why only a very few people of cognitive psychology go to SfN. Five good posters among thousands and two good talk sessions among half hundred were totally not worthy for the pricey registration fee, flight tickets, and hotel room rates. At least I met people I had wanted to meet. At least I danced tango and disco.

A good neuroscientific study on mind has to start with psychological theories! This is such a basic starter.
Neuroscientific methods are just methods to understand mind. Neuroscience itself cannot be the answer. Many many questions cannot be answered by knowing neural circuits. And there are limitations for each so-called neuroscientific methods, which can only provide indirect hints. Sometimes I want to ask those people who believe neuroscience is the only way to study mind: What do you think mind is?


I wish I could answer how mind works by looking at my data. Oh I wish.

I did my first-year graduate study with eletrocephalography (EEG). This equipment detects and records brain waves from scalp. I mean, electrodes are attached to the scalp. The spatial resolution is coarse but the temporal resolution is great. That is, I can sample signals very very fast like almost online.
BUT that does not mean I can read someone's mind or brain. That just means if there is anything detectable, I can see it right after some brain activity has occurred.
(I cannot stand people who look at me and are afraid that I will read their mind. All I can read is: what a moron.)
What I want to say is: EEG research is not an easy thing to do. After my first-year project, I thought I would not touch it again.

Earlier this year, Michael the professor bought a high-density EEG system, which has 128 channels or electrodes. At that time, I was struggling what I could do for my dissertation. Toby suggested me to use that machine to test two theories on visual attention. I accepted the suggestion and got my proposal approved and started the looooooooong process of getting it done.
I had my IRB number (a number you need for running any experiment) way early in March.
Rick and Lyndsey worked on how to use Matlab to talk to Net Station, which took them the whole summer.
Programming is not easy, especially for people like us who are not full-time computer programmers. Net Station is the software of the EEG machine, which is operated in Mac. I insisted to use Matlab because my other experiments in the same project were in Matlab. Net Station by default is communicating in another language "E-Prime" which is not optimal for my research purpose. Anyway, Rick and Lyndsey figured out how to synchronize stimulus presentation on PC (the experiment stuff in front of my participants) and data recording on Mac.

Finally I thought everything was okay. I started to run pilots. See, there is an "s" after the word "pilot".
I thought one pilot was enough to see all the problems and to fix all the flaws. It turned out that I ran 3 pilots. Each time I found something unpleasant and fixed it. Those "something" were all about the hardware and software of computers. Computers are evil.
I learned that I should turn on three different machines in an exact order, otherwise I would need to restart all machines.
I learned that some commands in Matlab crashed Net Station.
I learned that the Mac hated me.

Seriously, the Mac could sense me that I am a PC user, so it failed on me from time to time with no sensible reason at all. Hey, I am a scientist. I have evidence for this hatred. Three incidences:

1. After my pilot study, I was nervous and tried to get things right, so I was being careful and prepared, so I went to the EEG lab earlier than usual to test the code. After clicking on the icon of Net Station, the software was initiated but the amplifier (for enhancing EEG signals) could not be detected or connected. I checked all the cables and connections, and nothing looked wrong. I restarted the machine, and the same error message was displayed. My hand started to get sweaty and my heart was jumping very fast. I went to Justin the lab manager for help. He came and touched cables and connections. Yes, he just touched them and did not change anything. Boom, things worked again. The Mac simply needed Justin's touch and did not want mine.

2. Then I collected data in a pretty smooth way. Zabeth helped me to apply the electrode net on participants. All participants were able to finish the experiment and followed the instruction. Zabeth became my perfect EEG partner and I was happy with Net Station so far. One day, my tenth participant with a nice short-haired head came, and in a very short time the net was applied on this person. But I could not initiate Net Station at all. Tried for 30 minutes and I let the participant go with 12 dollars and no data. The next day, I asked for Justin the lab manager's help again. He touched the machine and all, but this time touching did not work. He logged in with his account, and Net Station worked. What???? It turned out that Net Station only worked with his account but not with anyone else's account, not even the admin's account. The Mac simply rejected everyone but Justin.

3. Finally the data collection was over. I spent 30 to 40 hours to extract event-related potentials (ERPs) in order to analyze what was going on in people's head when attention was located on something. It was very time-consuming and stressing and depressing. I could not sleep well and all the time I had waves in front of my eyes. "What does that mean? Why was it like that?" I kept asking myself everyday in the past week. I figured out why my data was weird (because of the Matlab code). I was happy that the data eventually appeared normal (because my participants were normal people) and I did not have to re-do experiments. One morning, I went to the EEG lab and wanted to look at my data once again. The Mac could not be logged in! It stayed at the login image and the cursor remained wheeling and I could not see my data!!!!! I almost had heart attack. I did not back up my data the other day because my mobile hard drive was full. Restarting several times, trying out several possibilities, the Mac refused to be logged in. 30 minutes later, I wrote Justin a long message. Just before leaving the lab, I tried one last time. It worked. The Mac suddenly decided to let me in. It really had a great time playing with me.

See? The Mac is evil.
I cannot understand computers.
To understand it, you may tear a computer open and see all the circuits and chips. Or you can grill the designer, the programmer, and the saleman to understand it. But the question is: Can you?
Can you really understand a computer and stop it from failing on me?

Can you understand mind by seeing brain?


-------------
The ERP waveforms are my data, which I am proud of.
The participant's eyes are protected in this picture. I think Marc would not mind.