About
This blog is serving as a space for me to flesh out my ideas about science, atheism, privilege, and other topics that go well with a pint and some friends. Apparently they’re pretty academic too, so you can have serious discussion about them.
As for myself, I’m living in Montreal, Canada, and I’m partway through my MSc starting my PhD in Neuroscience at McGill University. Previously, I was studying sleep spindles in children and their association with overnight memory consolidation. I’ve since moved to a new lab and am studying speech perception and production, with specific focus on the motor theory of speech and potential human mirror neuron influence on speech a focus on multimodal speech, prosody, and sensorimotor integration and adaptation.
Also, disclaimer: My opinions are my own, and should not reflect on any institution I am associated with, unless I explicitly suggest they ought to.
The field of neuroscience is becoming my one of my favorites. Right now I’m a big fan of the Brain Science Podcast and Dr. Steven Novella’s work. Physics is how my interest got started into science. While in college I came to a certain point that I became motivated to learn about everything that I had always wanted to, such as why E=MC2. Instead of merely sitting around wishing I knew more about things, I just started the process of learning more about them. Anyways, more to the point, I saw the following comment that was left on Greg Laden’s Blog,
“Oh, this is great. I have someone close who’s Native, and been told they can’t be Native and an atheist due to the fundamental intertwining of spirituality and culture.”
I would like to hear more about this perspective. As you can infer, I am somewhat of an anomaly. There was quite a long list of obstacles and dismal statistical odds that faced me, being A Native American born on a reservation and all. But, much like skeptics are a minority amongst the general public, we as critical thinkers face much of the same prejudices. I have gotten some responses that mention the notion of indigenous people being too deeply rooted in culture and spiritual tradition, so far that it classifies them as being beyond the reach the skeptical movement. Do you know of anyone addressing anything in this area?
I also have to say I find you site very interesting and thought provoking. I’m reading on mirror neurons right now and just begun to wrap my head around the different concepts of neuropsychology, such as illusions of the conscience mind and “apparent mental causation”.
Hi Noah!
Thanks for commenting. I feel all guilty for not having updated in a while – I have a couple posts in my head, but school and life have been keeping me pretty busy. Neuroscience is definitely pretty interesting to me, which is likely a good thing.
Dr. Novella is a good read – though I’m only just starting to read more neuroscience blogs instead of just skepticism / politics of science blogs.
I can’t tell you much about that perspective, that Natives can’t be skeptics or atheists, since I’m pretty white. I find that religion is entirely optional for me as part of the majority culture – I find I’m not pressured as much to identify with my culture’s religious roots in order to maintain my cultural identity. If you like though, I can put you in contact with the person who I was referring to. I sent her over to your blog, and I think the two of you would have a lot to discuss.
Yes, most definitely I would like to hear her perspective on this. I hear the viewpoints of the Native Americans in Canada are unique as well. I understand how things can take you away from keeping up with the blog, it can become just as time consuming as work, school, or life. I do appreciate the response and you referring your friend to my blog.