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To give you an overall view of how my days look like I tell you this: A month ago I was recommended for physiotherapy. I requested to go to the therapist in the hospital I work as I thought it would be more practical for me to switch my places in the building I already am when needed and this has stayed only in theory so far. Not every weekend is free anymore and during the last weeks sometimes I had to leave the department not sooner than 10.p.m. I cannot feel the days and this is my wish most of the time that a day was more than 24 hours. I feel lucky that I had a chance to join a very vibrant work environment and I feel also stressed. I'm in the middle of my learning process and also in charge of the results of the project that I started. This makes me excited + stressed! I'm starting to know myself more in the new atmosphere with new challenges and in the meantime sometimes I just need to stop, to pause and grab my shoulders, look at myself and think for a little while. The painting class looks nothing like the world that I actually live and makes me feel I entered a different world; world of colors for 2 hours and got back to the real world. And the Dutch course is the latest activity that I'm taking together with Mr.B wondering when would be the possible/productive time of the day to practice and do the homework. Until I realize this goedenavond!

To catch up

The second weekend after starting my work and I don't know from where I should start. I've been learning various techniques. I need to know the basic experimental and theoretical aspects of my own research. I'm expected to be creative with new suggestions and ideas and I'm overwhelmed with loads of skills I need to acquire and things I should learn. Every night I sleep so quickly or almost faint. People ask me how are you? I say I'm great and I literally mean that. I have my own concerns though, can I meet all the requirements that I'm tilted to accomplish?

Lab animals

Dear all,
...tomorrow Friday 27th of November from 13.30 until 14.30 there will be a demonstration against the use of lab animals at...we advise you to be extra alert with transporting your animals to ...
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And that's how you appreciate having humans as the subjects after receiving these kinds of e-mails once in a while. The most used animals in our department are rats and mice. It was something that I considred when I wanted to choose my project last year. I talked to people who had all sorts of logical reasons to not feel guilty because of having to kill these animals at some levels of some of the experiments. I know rats can laugh and this tells a lot I think and I'm not sure what is or is not ethical in here.

Invisible!

I go to them, we talk, we even laugh and I know the next morning they might not feel like saying hi again. And this repeats itself for more than a year. It's not easy to not looking for a correlation between being an Iranian and not being visible enough to some people.

Vision

I do an experiment on people with different visions; good, not bad and worse sights. It takes like an hour for each. The way that they handle the entire experiments- which for them gets boring and also tiring after a while- tells me how different their tolerances are for this specific experiment but doesn't tell me much about what kinds of people they are. I only have to judge their eyes not their characters and that could be a good practice, I hope.

Note

I arrived at the office that I work, someone had put a paper on my desk; a report that said: "The university can no longer be the host to Dr... as he's cooperating with a TV channel that has called the Iranian students who protested against the recent Iranian election's result "riots". I got stuck in an elevator for more than 2 hours, I was the only person and as they think the first one ever. They asked for my room number after getting me out of that lift and they came back after a couple of days to see if I was doing fine and to explain what went wrong. I wasn't there, they'll come back. A scholar who's always polite and the warmest person in our faculty; the first gay man that I've met. And Life is good.

No conclusion- Yet

There has been a big debate over free will for centuries among philosophers and psychologists. Sigmund Freud as a mentalist put the subject in this way: Heredity, environment, instinctive and social factors influence understanding of one's self.
I don't like to think we don't have free will in its genuine term but whether I like it or not I cannot pass by without pondering over some existing realities that challenges free will in its true terms. Our brain chemistry, our history and sex hormones have a strong effect on who we become. Any of these factors could be slightly different and then our present self would turn to some one totally different. We are like products of several prior elements and then at this point we decide to think and believe in this way, act that way and feel as we feel and we think we are free in our choices and I assume it's healthier to have this sense of freedom though.
I came to an article incredibly interesting from Nature Neuroscience titled: "Unconscious determinants of free decisions in the human brain". It was in fact the resource of my main talk in the presentation that I mentioned before. To put it short, in an experiment subjects were asked to press a button and 10 seconds before they become aware or conscious about their own decisions of which button to press, some certain regions in the brain showed activities indicating prediction and storage of the upcoming decision in those areas, this says there is this high-level network that begins to shape an upcoming decision long before the person enters awareness about that. This research is not obviously going to wrap up this old debate to any final conclusion but it's an open door for more questions in the field of hard core science rather than seeking for answers only through the philosophical theories.

Daily e-mails!

Hi everyone,

I just heard that mice from England will arrive today but the EDC does not know what mice these are and what the health status is. If we don't find out in time they will be put in the dirty facility, so please contact me or ... ASAP if you think that these mice are yours!!!
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Hello,

Did anyone by any chance collect my 2 fCNB1 mice from downstairs this morning??????? If you did, could you please inform me about it
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And that's how my day starts every now and then!

Daily Routine

I'm in the middle of my daily routine, trying to keep up with the pace of my tight schedule and I'm getting quicker than before which is good especially when you don't have much choice but to be faster!

I'm coming to this conclusion and use it as a strategy that when I think I have a problem or difficulty, the last thing that I should do is to think why I have this problem and the first thing is to take an action, any action that converts the present problem to a simpler version or to a solved one. I'm specifically talking about the time that I have tons of things to learn and just a little time. This conclusion may not be that much of a help if you're thinking of something else though.

The interesting and unfortunate thing is that I like to write about some of the things that I've been busy reading; on those that I find more interesting, those that when I learn I cannot help but smile and feel excited but I pass by without having the chance of saying a proper good bye hoping to return and greet again.

Science Fallacy

"It is not actually your brain that does the thinking at all. In fact, the very idea that it does is virtually incoherent: not just wrong, but meaningless: the mereological fallacy. Only you as a whole entity can do anything like thinking or believing".
Bennett & Hacker

Bennett and Hacker, one a neuroscientist and the other a scholar of Wittgenstein's thought, attack on the conception of the mind based on contemporary neuroscience. They argue that "brain does not know things, has no beliefs, does not think or guess, hear and see, those are functions of human being".
Well, what they mean by "mereological fallacy" is to take a part for the whole; the brain can only process properly when it's in the body as a whole. In another place they mention, " The mind is not identical with the brain, nor is a split brain leading to two minds, one belonging to the left, one to the right hemisphere".
I agree that a psychological attributes (cognition, thought, memory, emotion,...) can be done in the first place or in a perfect way by the cooperative works of other organs but the mind and its colleration with the brain is so tight in my idea that gives the impression that mind is what brain is busy doing in a wide range and in the vast complexities that neuroscience can describe or interpret some and for others it requires a great deal of time to understand and what happens to the mind of a person with Alzheimer- which is a degenerative disorder of the brain- that the person suffering from this disease can no longer think in a way she/he used to think.

Milk/Yogurt, Chocolate and BRAIN

If I have to name two things that I like about supermarkets in here first I would say milk and second, a specific brand of yogurt which happened to have a semi-answer to our request for so missed Damdaran and kalleh yogurts... This answer comes from a person who quieted drinking milk during living in Libya and a life-time heavily yogurt addicted who has been under the sanction for Iranian yogurts since leaving there.
Holland is famous for its dairy products as you might know, beside its cheese which is available in wide varieties, I think, others are quite comparable with Iranian dairy products and in between Iranian yogurts always win the contest! There is another item that I like unconditionally, it's perfect with a cold glass of milk after a loooong day: "extra bittere chocolade" of "Albert Heijn", if you see this one any where around you don't hesitate to try one especially if you're keen to the dark chocolaty things.
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The brain of a 70-year-old man; the part that he had dedicated to science was something that I experienced examining for the first time. I was watching the many parts of his brain with all its unbelievable complexities, the deep folded cerebral cortex, all small and big pieces within with every bit's huge responsibilities that used to determine that person for over 70 years and me sitting in front of that brain trying to recognize those magnificent pieces.

Work!

There is no significant time during each day that I could actually say I've done my works so that I can get some rest. I say that in the weekends though and it's not because I mean that but because I need that.

Sequence of the days :

-Work hard
-Pronouncing my first name correctly is almost an impossible job to do for my professors and other faculty members
-Work hard
-Me, the door of the room that I work every day and the key of that door don't get along... Maybe I could write weekly stories of our adventures all together in future
- One tea spoon Neurophysiology and I don't scale its recourse because I do not want to :)
-Work hard

Iran

I know as an Iranian and especially as an Iranian woman it's not that odd to hear specific comments or questions from non-Iranians who watch TV, they look at you while reviewing the lessons that they've learned from the news and I can see their curious eyes waiting for the right time to raise those questions.
Those who have watched "Persepolis" think that they know Iran and those who have had Iranian friends feel that they know me.
I have to tell some if I am Persian or Iranian and what is the difference... I can understand why they have this question in the first place.
I like them, I like it when they have questions.
I talk, I describe and I try to be fair.