SpiralthetaM&B Sciences Journal Club: Info & Resources

[hypnagogue]

Last updated: 1/30/06

Welcome to the Mind & Brain Sciences Journal Club! In this club, interested members of the Physics Forums community participate in presenting and discussing scientific articles pertaining to the brain and mind. If you're interested in joining up, please PM me.

Below is some information on how the journal club works and some useful resources for journal club members. Nothing here is set in stone-- the important thing is that we strike on a formula that works well for everyone, and that may entail change over time. So the rules are flexible and may change as we go along; feedback is encouraged.

General Format

The journal club operates on a rolling schedule where two kinds of presentations for two separate articles are active during any given week: one thread which is in an 'introductory phase,' and another which is in a 'discussion phase.'

In the introductory phase, a journal club member posts a new thread announcing the article for which he or she plans to do a presentation, provides references and (where applicable) links to the article, and provides some initial introductory remarks and background information about the article and its topic. The purpose of the introductory phase is to give journal club members time to look over the newly introduced article, digest any relevant background information, and ask preliminary questions before we proceed to an in-depth discussion. Once a full week passes, the thread transitions from the introductory phase to the discussion phase, and a new introductory thread about a new article is posted.

The discussion phase is where the in-depth analyses, critiques, questions, comments, etc. about an article take place. The author of the thread follows up his or her introductory remarks with a detailed summary and discussion of the article, after which the article is discussed amongst the author of the thread and the other members of the journal club. (PF members who are not "officially" in the journal club can also join in whenever they wish, of course.) A journal club thread officially remains in the discussion phase for one week before another thread takes its place in the spotlight, but all discussions can continue indefinitely.

In order to schedule upcoming presentations and peruse an index of present and past presentations, please see the second post in this thread.

Article Resources

All articles discussed in the journal club must have been published in peer reviewed scientific journals. Because different members of the journal club have differing degrees of access to private article resources, it is highly preferred (though not required) that the article one chooses to present be viewable in full through a public, online resource. At the present time, we do not have any plans to facilitate distribution of non-public articles amongst journal members via private means such as e-mail.

The following is a list of some resources one can use to find publically available scientific articles pertaining to the mind and brain. Unless otherwise noted, all articles in these resources are free and publically accessible through the internet. If you come across a good resource not listed here, please PM me or make a note of it in this thread so that it can be added to the list.

- Search engines -

PubMed Central

Google Scholar (does not return only publicly accessible articles, but may be useful for finding articles of interest)
- Journals not specific to mind/brain science -

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/tocrender.fcgi?journal=215&action=archive

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/tocrender.fcgi?journal=104&action=archive

Public Library of Science (PLoS)
http://biology.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=index-html - http://compbiol.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=index-html&issn=1553-7358 - http://medicine.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=index-html&issn=1549-1676 - http://genetics.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=index-html&issn=1553-7404

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/tocrender.fcgi?journal=2&action=archive (free access to articles > 6 months old)
- Journals specific to mind/brain science -

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/tocrender.fcgi?journal=312&action=archive

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/tocrender.fcgi?journal=316&action=archive

BioMed Central (BMC)
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/tocrender.fcgi?journal=48&action=archive - http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/tocrender.fcgi?journal=49&action=archive - http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/tocrender.fcgi?journal=62&action=archive

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/tocrender.fcgi?journal=322&action=archive

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/tocrender.fcgi?journal=201&action=archive

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/tocrender.fcgi?journal=286&action=archive

The Journal of Neuroscience (free access to articles > 1 year old)

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/tocrender.fcgi?journal=119&action=archive

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/tocrender.fcgi?journal=103&action=archive (free access to articles > 1 year old)

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/tocrender.fcgi?journal=307&action=archive

Neuron (free access to articles > 1 year old)

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/tocrender.fcgi?journal=246&action=archive (free access to articles > 6 months old)

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/tocrender.fcgi?journal=130&action=archive

Member List

CosminaPrisma
cotarded
detta
DocToxyn
hypnagogue
Lars Laborious
Monique
Moonbear
neurocomp2003
Q_Goest
shruth
somasimple

 

[hypnagogue]

M&B Journal Club schedule and archives

This post is meant to provide a useful resource for keeping track of past, present, and future journal club presentations. In addition, journal club members can post replies in this thread in order to schedule upcoming presentations. This post will be updated regularly to reflect changes in journal club scheduling and archival information.

Currently active presentations

discussion
JC #4: Neural Activity in Speech-Sensitive Auditory Cortex (detta)

intro
JC #5: Face-gender discrimination is possible in the near abscene of attention (CosminaPrisma)

Upcoming presentations

2/25/06

discussion
JC #5: Face-gender discrimination is possible in the near abscene of attention (CosminaPrisma)

intro
JC #6: to be decided

Archives

JC #3: Temporally Specific Burst in Cell Proliferation Increases Hippocampal Neurogenesis in Protracted Abstinence from Alcohol (DocToxyn)

JC #2: The common neural basis of seeing and feeling disgust (hypnagogue)

JC #1: Kisspeptin directly stimulates gonadotropin-releasing hormone release via G protein-coupled receptor 54 (Moonbear)

 

[hypnagogue]

Hi all. A note about scheduling upcoming presentations-- at the moment the best way to work this out seems to be for JC members to nominate themselves for upcoming slots that need to be filled. So please peruse the schedule every so often and nominate yourself for a time period when you think you'll be ready. I may try to solicit self-nominations if we don't have a satisfactory number of upcoming presentations filled for any given time, but ideally we'll have enough people spontaneously volunteering that we won't need to do that very often.

Moonbear is getting us started with our first presentation. Her introductory thread is already posted, and discussion begins this Saturday. In order to help keep the ball rolling smoothly, I'm going to do the second presentation. But after that, we presently have no commitments. So please take a moment to look at your schedules and reserve a time slot that works for you. To reserve a time slot, just give a reply in this thread stating what dates (two consecutive Saturdays) you're willing to do, and I'll update the above post to reflect that information.

 

[hypnagogue]

I've decided to merge the thread containing general journal club info with the thread containing journal club scheduling and archive info. In order to have the first two posts of the thread be the primary information resources, I had to delete a few posts, but their content is reproduced below.

I think it would be a good idea if we had a regular naming scheme for the journal club presentations. I was thinking something along these lines:

for introductory threads:
JC #X intro: article title

for discussion threads:
JC #X: article title

Where "JC" is shorthand for "journal club," "X" is the ordinal (so if this is the 5th discussion thread, X = 5), and "article title" is the title of the article being presented.

What's everyone's thoughts about this? I wouldn't be averse to a different titling scheme for the threads if someone can suggest a better one, but I do think it would be nice to have some sort of regular scheme in place to help organize things and to let people know what is and is not a journal club thread just by browsing the forum index.

Hi H'.

...interested members of the Physics Forums community participate in presenting and discussing scientific articles pertaining to the brain and mind.

I think this is a bit too vague, could you be more specific as to what types of articles you envision being discussed? You might want to define the boundries of what is an acceptable paper to be reviewed and what might be outside the bounds of discussion.

Just some thoughts - perhaps you could touch on the difference between philisophical papers on the mind and ones dealing strictly with neurology. Mind & Brain seems to indicate the interaction between consciousness and neurology. Should the paper deal with how the physical interaction affects the mind? Are philosophical papers that don't deal with neurology acceptable? Conversely, are neurology papers that don't touch on this interaction, that deal strictly with physical interactions between the brain and body acceptable? Could you give examples of what you feel are very good papers for review or examples of ones that don't fit and why?

I think this is a bit too vague, could you be more specific as to what types of articles you envision being discussed?

As is mentioned in the "articles" section: "All articles discussed in the journal club must have been published in peer reviewed scientific journals." So hopefully, the work of deciding what is 'scientific' enough and so on will have already been done for us by the journals.

The only additional constraint is that the article have something to do with brain or mind. That last criterion is somewhat flexible, to the extent that mind/brain studies are interdisciplinary.

 

[hypnagogue]

Please note some minor changes to the journal club format. Essentially, I've decided to do away with separate threads for the introduction and discussion of particular articles. Discussion will simply take place in the same thread in which an article is initially introduced. (See the original post for full details.)

Also, please make a general note that the primary information resources for the journal club can be found in the first two posts of this thread. The first post contains general format information and resources for finding free journal articles online. (The free journal list has been extensively updated recently, so take a look if you haven't yet.) The second post contains scheduling information for past, present, and future journal club threads.

Finally, we're in need of volunteers! So far no one has volunteered to do any journal club presentations beyond this coming Saturday. Don't be shy now! Does anyone want to nominate themselves to post an introduction to JC #3 this Saturday?

 

[Moonbear]

A few folks volunteered in the original thread about the journal club, but sounded like they just needed a bit more time to think through their articles. Maybe they're ready to call dibs now? (hint hint)

 

[Moonbear]

Do we have any volunteers for week #4? Now's the time to jump in and let us know!

 

[selfAdjoint]

I am going to have to drop out and just lurk. These papers and the discussion are too technically advanced for me. The only experiments I ever did was the fake made-up ones in undergraduate physics.

 

[CosminaPrisma]

I don't know if I have the knowledge to present a paper, since I only have a bachelors degree in psychology...some of the papers posted I don't have the background to understand completely but I've been reading them.

 

[Monique]

I don't know if I have the knowledge to present a paper, since I only have a bachelors degree in psychology...some of the papers posted I don't have the background to understand completely but I've been reading them.

Don't feel shy to ask questions.

 

[Moonbear]

I don't know if I have the knowledge to present a paper, since I only have a bachelors degree in psychology...some of the papers posted I don't have the background to understand completely but I've been reading them.

We fully expect there will be people without sufficient background to completely understand papers they wish to present. We can all help out there, and if it's something none of us is familiar with, we can all learn together. Journal clubs are a good way to get more out of a paper by discussing it with others than you could get out of it by reading it yourself. So if there's a paper that interests you, even if some parts of it are hard for you to understand, present it anyway. There's no shame in admitting there's something you don't understand. Those of us who have more experience with reading and discussing articles have jumped into get things started and break the ice, but what made this idea exciting to me is that it's a great way to get people involved who might not be regularly reading such articles, or who could benefit from some practice presenting their interpretations in order to learn what to focus upon while reading.

 

[detta]

I think I could do week 4's journal club.

 

[hypnagogue]

I don't know if I have the knowledge to present a paper, since I only have a bachelors degree in psychology...some of the papers posted I don't have the background to understand completely but I've been reading them.

I fully agree with Moonbear's and Monique's advice. Don't shy away from presenting a paper because you're not an expert or don't completely understand it (hey, I didn't completely understand every aspect of the paper I just presented either). Rather, you should look at it as a good opportunity to begin looking at certain topics and methodologies in more depth along with other like-minded folks.

 

[hypnagogue]

I think I could do week 4's journal club.

Great, I've reserved your spot on the schedule.

 

[CosminaPrisma]

I'll take week 5...haven't got a paper yet but shouldn't be hard for me to find one.

 

[Moonbear]

Okay, it seems our journal club has been a bit neglected. Cosmina, if you're still too busy to move ahead with your article, do you mind if we try to get someone else to jump in line?

Does anyone else want to give it a try? Remember, we don't expect everyone to understand everything in the article they present right off the bat. It's okay if you just think the topic is interesting and want to try to learn more about it as a group using the paper as the starting point. It takes time and practice to learn to read and understand scientific papers, and we're a friendly place to start doing that (we don't even give out grades, so very low pressure ).

If someone else is interested, please add your name to the list and let us know which week you will be able to present.

Also, if someone is interested in presenting a paper, but needs help choosing something appropriate, I can help with that too. If you send me a PM with a topic of neuroscience that you find interesting, I can help guide you toward finding a paper that's relevant.

I'd really like to see this keep going and get more people exposed to scientific literature who might not otherwise read it on their own.

 

[CosminaPrisma]

Its fine if you have someone else jump in and present. I've got a lot going on right now.

 

[quantumcarl]

Its fine if you have someone else jump in and present. I've got a lot going on right now.

I've expressed an interest in presenting a paper on Neuroplasticty and I have one coming in the email.

I requested one on Adult Neuroplasticity but the lab its coming from is currently in a 5 year study of children's neuroplasticity. This study shows remarkable results. I pointed out how adult neuroplasticity could be an alternative to prison, among a number of things. It was pointed out to me that studies on children's neuroplasticity may well serve to keep people out of prison in the first place.

I errored in my first proposal to present Evoked Potential as a paper. Evoked potential is a tool used to measure neuronal responses. It it particularly useful in measuring the temporal response... from outside of the brain.

Functional Magnetic Resonating Imaging is particularly useful in measuring spatial response, mapping areas in response etc... inside the brain. It does not provide a good temporal measurement with regard to neuronal response times... which are in the millisecond ranges.

A paper on the tools of neuroscience wouldn't be as interesting as a paper on the results of a study so, I'll present the paper I'm getting in the mail if there is a call for it... if its ok with you guys.
Thank you.

 

[Moonbear]

Is this a paper the rest of us can access? It would be best if we can all read along for the journal club (if not, then still feel free to start a discussion on it, just keep in mind we can't participate as well if we can't read it with you).

Send me a PM when you get it started if I don't see the thread first, and I'll bump it up to an official sticky for the first week of discussion (or until someone else has a paper to present, whichever is longer).

Glad you've decided to get involved.

 

[quantumcarl]

Is this a paper the rest of us can access? It would be best if we can all read along for the journal club (if not, then still feel free to start a discussion on it, just keep in mind we can't participate as well if we can't read it with you).

Send me a PM when you get it started if I don't see the thread first, and I'll bump it up to an official sticky for the first week of discussion (or until someone else has a paper to present, whichever is longer).

Glad you've decided to get involved.

So far I haven't heard from my source who promised a paper. You know how these deparement head types can get busy.

Dr. H.J. Neville is, hopefully sending me the paper on neuroplasticity (I asked for one on adult neuroplasticity). Dr. Neville has reported to some of the higher ups in society such as: Pope JP the II - The Dali Lama - Queen of Sweden - and Noam Chomski, everyone at MIT... among many other pivitol personalities and institutions. Her work has sparked interest in spiritual as well as scientific communities. She is, herself, pretty much a hard a**ed physicalist with a lot of compassion for people and her work.

In the mean time I'll look for an alternative paper on adult neurplasticity... and you could help by mentioning one if you happen across it while surfing. Thank you.