Why grad school is hard
2012 December 10
My cohort of PhD students at the UC San Diego Cognitive Science department started with nine members and only two of us finished. This isn't an indictment of the department or those who left or moved. The department is great and so was my cohort. It's because grad school is hard. Most students figure it's hard, but going in it's not obvious why.
A Great Earthpig Effort
2012 November 13
A Triton Day Take-over
2012 April 10
Triton Day 2012 was marked by an outpouring of departmental participation, as Cognitive Science undergraduates, graduates, faculty, and staff spent their Saturday showcasing the interdisciplinary research of the department. The booth highlighted the many ways Cognitive Science approaches the study of the mind, having demonstrations of concepts in neuroscience, artificial intelligence, brain-computer interfaces, and human computer interaction.
Ever wanted to know more about the CSSA?
2011 October 21
Our Cognitive Science undergraduates are active and involved in our department. From academic groups to social gatherings, check out what the CSSA is up to now!
Welcome, first years!
2011 September 22
At the beginning of this school year, the Cognitive Science department is excited to be welcoming seven new first year graduate students! Learn more about each of them here on the CogSci blog!
CogSci at CogSci 2011!
2011 September 05
UCSD CogSci's standard-bearers bore down upon Boston this July to represent at CogSci 2011, the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society.
CogSci in the Summer!
2011 August 03
Over the summer, the UCSD campus quiets down. Fewer classes means fewer students wandering our halls, but a peek into the Cognitive Science labs and offices will show you that we’re making scientific progress year-round.
Neurobiology vs. Free Will
2011 June 14
Where do we draw the line between interpreting "bad" behavior as based on "biology gone awry" vs. someone's "bad choices" ?
"Could Conjoined Twins Share a Mind?" (from nytimes.com)
2011 June 14
Sharing a brain: The unique case of conjoined twins Krista and Tatiana Hogan
Government interest in metaphor
2011 May 26
Beware your digital tail (and tale)
2011 March 05
UCSD Cog Sci raids Portland, represents at CSS, and refreshes at food trucks
2010 November 16
August, 2010: Like a horde of Matlab-maddened Mongols, Cog Sci’ers (grads, faculty, and research staff) moved out from La Jolla to descend on Portland, OR, for the 32nd meeting of the Cognitive Science Society. Donning dun duds and puce plaids to infiltrate the alt-sleepy town, department denizens dazzled with a deft display of cognitive science.
NLC 2010 talk: Birdsong as model of language (via R. Kluender)
2010 November 13
Seek you humans through all your days for all the ways you may be unique and tho language may be one you thought you had under your belt the writing is on the wall and no matter the language in which it's spelt, the answer is remarkably few if not NO So embrace the animal within; it's not necessarily a sin!
The little department that does
2010 September 09
Cognitive Science is a relatively small department chock-full-of internationally renowned researchers and scholars who are here to teach YOU what they know – and that’s a lot! There are many virtues to being a member of a small department of academics and researchers.
Cultural Practices Make Human Cognition
2009 October 08
Many accounts of how humans became the creatures they are rely on speculations about changes in the neural architecture of the human brain. For example, Clark (2001, Ch 8) says, "The idea is that some relatively small neural (or neural/bodily) difference was the spark that lit a kind of intellectual forest fire. The brain is, let us assume, wholly responsible (courtesy, perhaps of some quite small tweak of the engineering) for the fulfillment of some precondition of cultural and technological evolution." While it is certainly possible and productive to study processes that are internal to individuals, cognitive outcomes, including category assignments, inferences, decisions, judgments, and so on, are often better understood as properties of the distributed cognitive system that includes objects, patterns, events, and other living beings in the setting in which human (and nonhuman) cognition takes place (Hutchins, 1995, 2006).