The Great Lakes

The past week in England has been full of bittersweet goodbyes, see-you-laters, and wonderful company. By the time Monday came around, I had 8 participants lined up for the week. Research gets so much more fun and engaging when I start testing participants. In between participants, I continued to page through the statistics book, learning about correlations and t-tests. I am really starting to wish I had taken an upper level research stats class before coming here, but being able to apply all these terms to my data is certainly helping me understand what the numbers mean. By Thursday, I had a good amount of data and began running analysis on it using my newfound skills in SPSS. Thursday was quite the busy day: it started off with saying our morning goodbyes over breakfast at Combibos Coffee, a small coffee shop with delicious breakfast items. I was craving a waffle and was delighted when it came with some powdered sugar! I had a participant to tend to shortly after and went out to the shops again to see if there was anything I liked. Thursday night, the lab went out to say goodbye to one of our beloved lab members, Elia. We went out to Chequers, a pub on High Street for dinner and drinks. It was a bittersweet goodbye, and the lab is slowly becoming empty again. 

  

Goodbye, Elia

Friday was another long day: I woke up at 6am to catch the bus to the Rail Station, as earlier that week I had finalized my plans to visit some family friends in the Lake District for the weekend. I had a lovely time seeing and exploring a different part of England. Pratima Aunty, a good friend of my mother's from their medical school days in Bhopal, India, picked me up at the Penrith train station. I was surprised by how easily she recognized me, but apparently, I haven't changed much since she last saw me 20 years ago. I came home to delectable samosas (Indian food!) and met the rest of the family. Later that day, we all went to a nearby lake-the surrounding area was breathtakingly beautiful and reminded me of the days of Seattle, WA.

Saturday, we went out to the town to do some shopping for her daughter, Ambika, who is heading to Nepal in a couple of weeks. England is known for its small shops and cozy feel, and the town of Keswick was much the same. Going to several different outdoor stores to find different things was fun, but made me miss the larger stores in America, where you can find everything in one place. Closeby was another of the surrounding lakes, and once we were done shopping, we sat down by the lake for a nice afternoon snack. It was a very relaxing day. I even learned how to make one of my favorite Indian dishes-paneer butter masala. Hopefully, I remember the recipe for when I am craving Indian food again..

Our Sunday started off a bit lazy, since it was my last day there. Nevertheless, we spent the day walking around the rolling hills and the grassy paths in the surrounding area to see one of the other lakes. After our climb up, they showed me William Wordsworth's house. After a weekend of enjoying the beautiful scenery of the Lake District, I can see how he was inspired to write about nature. I recall a part from one of my favorite Wordsworth poems:

"The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon."

Contrasting my previous busy weekend in London to my quiet weekend here, I could understand what Wordsworth meant.

Wordsworth's House

Sadly, I had a short stay and had to say goodbye and returned to Oxford Sunday night. Monday was another long day of reading and learning about covariance. The highlight of my day yesterday was attending Professor Steven Rose's talk "Are you your brain?" at the Sherrington Library. Professor Rose, a Cambridge alumnus, is a Professor of Biology and Neurobiology at the Open University and University of London and is a very accomplished neuroscientist: in 1969, he was Britain's youngest full professor and chair of department and in  2012, the British Neuroscience Association gave him a lifetime award for "Outstanding contributions to neuroscience." As an NBB major, learning about the mind-body problem and the implications of neuroscience is always fascinating. I spent an hour and a half with 50 inquiry-driven neuroscientists and researchers debating whether or knowledge of the brain's complex mechanisms can be applied to predicting outcomes of the mind. It was a riveting discussion that could have gone on for years if it had not been cut off. Professor Rose argued that the brain and body are component of our physical selves that are embedded in our biosocial world. He explained the different schools of thought of the connectome (NBB 302:) !!) in the brain-mind debate, and came to the conclusion that we cannot distill human social behavior and consciousness to neuromodulators and action potentials.  If I hadn't had insight into the reasons for creating the interdisciplinary NBB program, I did now: neuroscience definitely has its limitations, and we need to approach questions of human behavior from different perspectives: anthropology, psychology, biology and many more. 

As Albert Einstein once said, "The mere formulation of a problem is far more often essential than its solution, which may be merely a matter of mathematical or experimental skill. To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle requires creative imagination and marks real advances in science." What do you think-can the human experience truly be defined by mathematical models? Some food for thought...