Swami said:

Mainly because math isnt real; it is an abstraction.

Do you ever count your change? Let's play poker some time...

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hope you like losing money

fractions arent that hard; I learned to calculate probability and permutations in grade school.  Thats not math; thats just obvious

zee_werp said:

So what specifically are you studying? Are you at a university? If so, what stage of your degree are you at? Are you just reviewing previous research, or are you conducting research of your own and publishing your findings?

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I'm through with psych.  I'm studying nueroscience now.  I've already completed all the necessary hours for my psych degree and am currently pursuing my masters via the fast track program.  I read all kinds of research; I have to stay curernt on that shit.  I'm fairly new to nueroscience, so most of the research I can understand fully at this point is cognitive or social psych.  I dont really feel qualified to evaluate nueroscience research as I have not completed all the classes to have any qualifications in that area.  However, this semester I am helping a prof design and administer a cognitive experiment (explaininjg the exact nature of the experiment would give away which university I attend, so I wont divulge that info).  Tenured professors always make the students do the grunt work. 

Eventually I would like to get my PhD in molecular nuerobiology, but at the rate I'm going it will probably be a year or thee or four...  fuck itll get done when its done.  Degrees arent as important to me as obtaining a thourough understanding of the field. 

I would rather not divulge which school I attend as I generally like to keep my academic and drug lives separate. 

my specified areas of interest are: drugs that alter the synaptic transmission system (of course ), and memory storage in the brain. 

I liked psychology, but it just wasnt a hard enough science for me.  Too many castles in the sky.  But I do think that cognitive and social psych are very useful fields.  Abnormal psych is fucked up; I shudder to think of what the DSM-5 is going to be like.  Evolutionary psych is very interesting.  Freud and Jung were both full of shit, but Jung had some decent ideas.  Anyway, I wasnt satisfied with what I had learned in my undergrad psych classes, so I decided to start taking nuero classes.  Luckily I had a good enough GPA to be able to have this opportunity.

MrTryptastic said:

I think it would be a bit frustrating going into neuroscience considering that some of the most useful means for understanding how our brains work have become outlawed.

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pshhhhh...  the government is decades behind science, dude.  Shhhhhh.  Dont tell anyone


Anyway, other than doin R & D on newer, cleaner recreational drugs, I would also like to look at memory. 

the latest theories on memory storage in the brain rely upon nueral networking.  Basically, the theory goes that the brain stores data much like a computer; nuerons are either excited or unexcited, so its kind of like a binary computer, except a little more complicated.  The simplest analogy I can think of for this model is the way numbers are represented on an old LED calculator or alarm clock.  When the whole number thingy lights up, it looks like this:

_
|_|
|_|

except with diagonal lines, too. 

take out a few lines, make a number:
   
|
|

_
_|
|_
_
_|
_|

|_|
  |

Nueral networks are kind of like that.  Thats kind of abstract, I know, but its a solid analogy.  Nuerons become linked to eachother via axons and dendrites; they communicate messages to eachother which either cause excitation or inhibition.  The specific nuerons in a network which 'light up' determine the information being presented to the user (ie- the number, or, in this case, the memory). 

Personally I think that the nueral network model is good, but its only part of the story.  I believe the brain has deeper levels than are currently observable.  The nueral network model is belivable because it is partially true.  But I honestly believe that these theories cannot account for the detail and amount of information humans are capable of storing.  I've read some theories of memory that revolved around quantum mechanics, which basically suggested that there is more to the brain than basic chemistry.  I think that further work will illuminate these trains of thought, but right now they are just glints in the eyes of crazy nuerogeeks such as myself.  Basically I think that the nueral networks are like ram; they account for our processing power, but storage is another can of worms.  I think that memories are stored outside the brain, or perhaps in a different level of the brain's existence which is not currently observable.

DoctorJ said:

have you been taking methamphetamines or derivations thereof for your add?

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