Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Neuroscience/Archive 3

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

Archive 4

Archive 5

Archive 6

Neural correlates of consciousness article from Scholarpedia?

It appears that our Neural correlates of consciousness article is very similar to that from Scholarpedia, here. Do we have permission to use it? I suppose it is possible that Fmorm (talk · contribs) is Florian Mormann who coauthored the Scholarpedia article. AxelBoldt (talk) 19:47, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

Are you sure that the Scholarpedia article came first? WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:11, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

I am wondering whether it is a problem at all. As far as I understand the Scholarpedia is also licensed under GNU Free Documentation License, see [1] — fnielsen (talk) 18:32, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

It seems that I did not clearly understand the Scholarpedia Copyright. As far as I read it (now) an author of a Scholarpedia article can select different licenses, — not necessarily the GNU Free Documentation License. Other Wikipedia editors seems to take care of the issue, see Talk:Neural correlates of consciousness. — fnielsen (talk) 22:50, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Action potential

Action potential has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here.

Unsigned comment: dummy time stamp for future archiving: 00:01, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Reactive attachment disorder

I have nominated this article for FAC, here [2]. SandyGeorgia suggested I approach your Project to find reviewers. Its a slightly obscure subject but it does cover early development and is one of those areas where although there's been insufficient research so far there really ought to be alot more, of the neuroscientific variety. I'd be very grateful if someone would take the trouble to review it. Thanks in advance. Fainites ^barley 23:02, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Pages for individual scientific articles

In my sandbox I have been experimenting with representing data contained in a neuroimaging paper on a Wikipedia page. The idea is to construct templates and/or tables with this data, and make functions that can up and download it. One sandbox example is available here that contain the so-called Talairach coordinates (In this case it contains excerpt of data from a paper where I am a coauthor). In a database that I have built there are numerous other papers from different research groups, for an example see here. I am wondering whether other Wikipedia editors think it would be a good idea to have such articles. Are such articles appropriate or they will quickly be deleted? — fnielsen (talk) 00:56, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Help needed with Action potential

Hi all,

You might be unaware, but action potential is due to be delisted as a Featured Article very soon, possibly as early as this Saturday, April 5th. A small band of non-scientists is working to save it; perhaps some of you scientists like to help out? The article is still very rough and patchy, as you'll see, but your contributions would be very welcome. Referencing is especially needed; thank you! :) Willow (talk) 22:16, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Has action potential reached FA-quality? You decide!

I would appreciate commentary and critique on whether the current action potential article is worthy to be a Featured Article. It's a long article, I know, but please read through it and vote your conscience, Keep or Remove, at its FAR. If you don't like it, then let me know what needs to be fixed! Willow (talk) 19:07, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

clinical depression rename

Please add 2c here Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 19:14, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

New related WikiProject!

Hi folks, i've managed to get WikiProject Neurology up and running in about a day but it's still in a basic state and needs a lot of work! Those of you who are more interested in the disease and treatment side of things may wish to join up to the project! (plus any laypersons who just want to do the hard work!) Thanks! Regards, CycloneNimrod^Talk?_Sign? 18:52, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

Related media

The Psychology Wiki.

The Psychology Wiki is a Wikia project, meaning that it is hosted by Wikia Inc., which was founded by Jimmy Wales and Angela Beesley. You can think of the project as a daughter of the wikipedia site.

The Psychology Wiki's mission is to create an online resource placing the entire body of psychology knowledge in the hands of its users, be they academics, practitioners or users of psychology services. It is intended to be a meta-textbook, with full academic referencing and extensive cross linking between different subject areas.

The Psychology Wiki differs from Wikipedia psychology articles in that:

• 1) It is intended to contain all of the discipline of psychology, like a giant meta-textbook, rather than an Encyclopedia.
• 2) It will therefore go into much greater technical detail than one would have in an encyclopedia. It will have full academic referencing.
• 3) It will have Personal Experiences relating to psychology issues on seperate user pages, protected by admins, allowing POV to be expressed on these pages only. The rest of the wiki is NPOV, but expression of personal experience is nessesary and desireable on our wiki.
• 4) It will have course content pages from academic and clinical courses with links to internal wiki articles.
• 5) It will be a place for researchers to discuss latest papers etc...
• 6) As the site will mainly be of interest to people who study or work in psychology, we expect that the majority of our contributors will be psychologists by training. Of our current contributors, approximately 80% are psychologists. This means that the community works very differently from Wikipedia, due to a much greater level of expertise.

Please have a look at the Psychology Wiki and let us know what you think. Mostly Zen [originally added to main page, moved here by User:OldakQuill Oldak Quill 19:32, 5 June 2008 (UTC)]

couldn't WPMED and WPANATOMY be related to your wikiproject? maybe link them

see title. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.174.42.22 (talk) 01:30, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

Changes to the WP:1.0 assessment scheme

As you may have heard, we at the Wikipedia 1.0 Editorial Team recently made some changes to the assessment scale, including the addition of a new level. The new description is available at WP:ASSESS.

• The new C-Class represents articles that are beyond the basic Start-Class, but which need additional references or cleanup to meet the standards for B-Class.
• The criteria for B-Class have been tightened up with the addition of a rubric, and are now more in line with the stricter standards already used at some projects.
• A-Class article reviews will now need more than one person, as described here.

Each WikiProject should already have a new C-Class category at Category:C-Class_articles. If your project elects not to use the new level, you can simply delete your WikiProject's C-Class category and clarify any amendments on your project's assessment/discussion pages. The bot is already finding and listing C-Class articles.

Please leave a message with us if you have any queries regarding the introduction of the revised scheme. This scheme should allow the team to start producing offline selections for your project and the wider community within the next year. Thanks for using the Wikipedia 1.0 scheme! For the 1.0 Editorial Team, §hepBot (Disable) 21:09, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Active participants?

Are there any active participants of this project? Would anyone like to become one? delldot on a public computer talk 20:25, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

I would like to become an active participant. Please advise me how to do so.FrancineEisner (talk) 17:52, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

I might try to join up here and become active. Perhaps we should get started with creating a new section listing members and go from there. I'll see if I can't find who started the project. Chupper (talk) 20:08, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Movement of wikiproject

Hi: Please see my note at the Village Pump. As I see it there are several Wiki projects occuring: genetics, neurology, and neuroscience. I would argue that neuroscience is an atttempt to establishg description of the operation of healthy (if I can use that term) nervous system function, whereas neurology is more focused on human illness. The general division between neurlogists and psychiatrists is that, in general, neurologist have focused on a subset of illness (epilepsy, and illnesses in the CNS that are expressed as visible motor symptoms.)

The difficulty with this definition is that by and large, psychiatrists see the same group of patients, unless their primary illness is in the peripheral motor neurons or sensory neurons.

I'd suggest, unless otherwise, that the proper place for a psychiatric neuroanatomy Wiki Project would encompass the framework of neurology, neuroscience, and neuroanatomy.

One that basis, I'm inclined (although the neurologists may object) to place psychiatric neuroanatomy within either neurolgy or neuroscience. However, some structures of the CNS are described in more detail for humans. If neuroscientists make the alternate argument that neuroanatomical structures are artifacts of differentiation in an ecological context, then the anatomy articles would eventually drift from neurlogy to neuroscience (which I would consider to be a reasonable outcome). Thanks (user name Menelaus2) 20:40, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

Menelaus2, I'm having trouble understanding what you are proposing. I think you are assuming no overlaps here. I do understand that you say its important to differentiate a healthy nervous system from a disabled one and that neurology will cover the latter. But I think that is already the way it was. Remember, though, that articles and subjects can be involved in multiple wikiprojects. A subject may be related to the psychology, neuroscience and neurology wikiprojects and that is OK. Chupper (talk) 20:08, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Neuroplasticity

The article on Neuroplasticity needs a good deal of work but IMHO it also needs reassessment. If Synaptogenesis has a high importance ranking, so must Neuroplasticity. Synaptogenesis is a form of brain plasticity but Neuroplasticity is the more inclusive topic. I have made a few changes to the page in the past few days, including some useful external links, minor editing in style (wording, grammar, and paragraph construction) and citations. I am not an expert on the subject, but have done quite a bit of research on current findings. The article does not reflect the dynamic nature of these findings, although new articles related to the subject appear almost daily on such sites as HHMI, ScienceDaily, and EurekAlert. I intend to assist in the improvement of this article, and I invite other, more knowledgeable persons to do so as well .FrancineEisner (talk) 17:51, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

Major headache at major depressive disorder - please reply at WT:MED to keep all in one place

Folks, I bring this up now as I want to get this sorted here and now rather than at FAC. In psychiatry here in Oz we all use DSM IV, like the US, and as far as I can tell, there is a lot more written and researched using DSM IV criteria than ICD 10. Thus, we have major depressive disorder aka major depression, which has loads of epidemiological/treatment effectiveness etc. research, and MDD sorta fits somewhere between 'moderate' and 'severe' depression on ICD 10. Unfortunately, we have a naming convention using ICD 10...

• Thus, options are:

leave as is and (a) ignore all rules or (b) look at addressing naming conventions by at least noting DSM IV-TR is internationally recognised.

change to depressive disorder, with a confusingly close title to depression which serves as a sort of disambiguation page which needs embellishing, and have an article with a huge chunk of details on epidemiology/treatment response etc. referring to MDD all through it and try to explain it.

Also, the situation is even more of an issue when we get to borderline personality disorder (DSM IVTR) vs the stubby ICD 10 article Emotionally unstable personality disorder - the former has a much higher profile and common usage. Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 13:56, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Alzheimer's disease

I've just added this WikiProject template to the AD talkpage, if that's appropriate. We're currently buffing it up before going to FAC and could use a few more eyes engaged. Thanks.LeadSongDog (talk) 16:50, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

The evolution of nervous systems

Should there be an article on the evolution of nervous systems? Richard001 (talk) 10:36, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia 0.7 articles have been selected for Neuroscience

Wikipedia 0.7 is a collection of English Wikipedia articles due to be released on DVD, and available for free download, later this year. The Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team has made an automated selection of articles for Version 0.7.

We would like to ask you to review the articles selected from this project. These were chosen from the articles with this project's talk page tag, based on the rated importance and quality. If there are any specific articles that should be removed, please let us know at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.7. You can also nominate additional articles for release, following the procedure at Wikipedia:Release Version Nominations.

A list of selected articles with cleanup tags, sorted by project, is available. The list is automatically updated each hour when it is loaded. Please try to fix any urgent problems in the selected articles. A team of copyeditors has agreed to help with copyediting requests, although you should try to fix simple issues on your own if possible.

We would also appreciate your help in identifying the version of each article that you think we should use, to help avoid vandalism or POV issues. These versions can be recorded at this project's subpage of User:SelectionBot/0.7. We are planning to release the selection for the holiday season, so we ask you to select the revisions before October 20. At that time, we will use an automatic process to identify which version of each article to release, if no version has been manually selected. Thanks! For the Wikipedia 1.0 Editorial team, SelectionBot 23:01, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

Mental health promotion

Could some expert take a look at that article? It's been nominated for deletion and has quite a few problems. VG ☎ 14:21, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Seems eminently deletable to me -- and not very strongly related to Neuroscience. Looie496 (talk) 17:02, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Sorry for the semi-spam, but there's no WikiProject Psychiatry AFAICT. VG ☎ 22:48, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Photo issue in schizophrenia article

OK, we have an interesting photo of a house with lots of writing of apparently delusional material which can be seen on an olde version of the page before being reverted.

It is being discussed about here at Talk:Schizophrenia#I_like_the_image_but.... - all input most welcome. Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 13:43, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

Two featured article candidates - Brain and Major depressive disorder

Both of these articles are at FAC currently. Many wikiprojects have a dashboard or area on the project page where this would be noted, but couldn't see one so noting it here. Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 01:57, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

Question about High metabolic rate in brain, need to know some keywords for google

Ok, I was reading on one of your articles about the theory of high IQ and a "cooler running" brain which produces less heat for the same output. I'm trying to find information of how much heat the brain can produce though very highly stimulative brain activity. Specifically I want to know the upper limits of heat that can be produced by the metabolic activity of the brain (during mental stimulation like solving a puzzle). Thanks, I don't know what to query. When I search for terms like GMR, the material is too complicated and technical. Biologicithician (talk) 10:24, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

PMID 17429680 answers most of it. --WS (talk) 13:07, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

And another one specifically about the theoretical boundaries of the temperature changes: PMID 16880401 --WS (talk) 13:21, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

Thank you very much, just what I needed to know. All I needed to know was the heat of combustion of oxygen, and the resting combustion rate in the brain during non-activity. I think the way I tried to figure this out was flawed. There's no way I can figure out my own %increase above resting brain activity, by a subjective measurement of my own temperature. I've been playing a single song on piano for 18 months and use a click track to push the limits of my speed while maintaining full accuracy. It is physically exhausting and I turn red and sweat (and I'm young & in good shape--does the same increase in my body temperature as 25 pushups). Additionally, I can sit on the piano bench and wave my hands around aimlessly for the same 15-25 minute duration and get no body temp increase. I doubt that my brain is burning this much oxygen, its probably just the fact of the proximity of the heated blood is too close to the sensors so my body incorrectly responds. I'll be studying neurology and might have to wait a few years to learn my answer. Thanks for the links, the second article was a very good read. Biologicithician (talk) 14:25, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

As far as I can tell, in spite of many statements in the popular literature to the contrary, there is little evidence that intense mental activity causes a large change in brain metabolism. Most likely the reason for the physical effects you describe is that intense concentration increases muscle tone and activates the autonomic nervous system, producing an increase in metabolism throughout the body. See this article for refs. Looie496 (talk) 16:15, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

Bingo! That's a much better explanation than my heat proximity to sensors guess. I replicated the experiment another time trying to pay closer attention to what you said. When I'm in the hyper-alert state, my entire body is extremely tense and ready to move, just like a sprinter before the gun goes off. I also didn't want to make this a medical question, so I omitted the relevant information about caffeine and my stimulant medication which I'm prescribed. I already know their effect on brain activity, but their effect should be constant, and I wouldn't imagine it to vary with rapid piano-playing. I too am extremely skeptical about the popular literature about puzzles significantly raising brain combustion rates of O₂. Thanks WP:neuroscience, I plan to help you guys in a couple years, when I get more educated. Biologicithician (talk) 14:59, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

FYI: New articles

A bot has been set up, which looks through the new Wikipedia articles and picks up those that are likely related to neuroscience. The search results are available at User:AlexNewArtBot/NeuroscienceSearchResult and are normally updated on a daily basis. Colchicum (talk) 21:46, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Wade Regehr

An article about Wade Regehr, PhD Professor of Neuro biology has been started. His research includes Neuroplasticity, Serotonin Evokes Endocannabinoid Release and Retrogradely Suppresses Excitatory Synapses, Sodium action potentializes in the dendrites of cerebellar Purkinje cells, and Control of neurotransmitter release by presynaptic waveform at the granule cell to Purkinje cell synapse, and calcium dependent processes which control the release of neurotransmitter. If anyone can help develop it, that would be awesome. His clinical physiological research assists in the understanding of neurological disorders such as epilepsy, shizophrenia and depression, as well as learning and memory..SriMesh | talk 15:56, 25 December 2008 (UTC)

Naming conventions

The Unipolar cell article is named Unipolar neuron. The Bipolar neuron article is named Bipolar cell. The Pseudounipolar cell article is named Pseudounipolar neuron. The Multipolar cell article is named Multipolar neuron. The Pyramidal neuron article is named the Pyramidal cell. The granule neuron article is named the Granule cell. The Anterior horn cell article is named Anterior horn (spinal cord). Is it ok to flutter back and forth? SriMesh | talk 01:18, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

I responded at Talk:Unipolar neuron -- let's discuss this there. Looie496 (talk) 00:47, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

What is the difference between neuronal circuitry and neural circuitry?

Hi: I'm working on the Wiki article about the essay "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" and I have been unable to determine the difference between the adjectives neural and neuronal. The question has also been posed at WikiAnswers by someone other than me. If you could enlighten me about the differences I would appreciate it. Nicholas Carr, in his essay "Is Google Making Us Stupid?", says "Over the past few years I’ve had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry, reprogramming the memory." However, in an email, he told me that "Given what we know now about neuroplasticity, it seems certain that internet use is changing our neuronal circuitry." So he even seems to use the terms "neural circuitry" and "neuronal circuitry" interchangeably. The same goes for "neural network" and "neuronal network", as well as "neural level" and "neuronal level"—terms which are used on page 117 of Norman Doidge's book The Brain That Changes Itself without any apparent differences. I can't see any at least. Sincerely, Manhattan Samurai (talk) 19:56, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

If there is any difference, it's quite subtle. For practical purposes the two terms are interchangeable, but "neural" is more commonly used than "neuronal". And by the way, since most neuroscientists believe that memory is stored in the brain by altering connections between neurons, it follows that anything whatsoever that you remember produces a change in neural circuitry. Looie496 (talk) 23:36, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. I added your comment to the ongoing discussion at WP:RDS.Manhattan Samurai (talk) 09:35, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

Proposing delisting of rabies as Good article

I was surprised to find rabies was listed as a Good article. In its present state, I believe it fails to meet the criteria, and would therefore propose delisting. Please add your comments to the appropriate section of the rabies talk page. Espresso Addict (talk) 15:54, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

It has definitely accumulated a lot of cruft since it passed GA in Feb 2006. Could perhaps use a thorough housecleaning. Looie496 (talk) 18:21, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Content dispute at Mismatch negativity

There has been a minor content dispute at Mismatch negativity over the inclusion of two references. In the beginning, an editor was removing two references because they were formatted differently from the others; after agreeing to discuss, he said the articles in the refs are not seminal and are not relevant to the issue being discussed (specifically, whether or not the mismatch negativity is dependent on the subject's attention). Personally, I feel at least one of the two removed references is relevant (it is a report of an experiment specifically designed to test the effect of attentional resources on MMN magnitude) and that even though it's not seminal it's still good to provide converging evidence.

The refs in question are currently commented out (the other editor has added another ref, which he says is superior to these other ones, so at least the original statement isn't unreferenced), and you can find a summary of the discussion at Talk:Mismatch negativity. An outside opinion would be much appreciated. Politizer ^talk/_contribs 16:47, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Stub sorting (cross-posted at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine)

I've noticed that there are a lot of articles in Category:Neuroscience stubs which would be more properly placed into Category:Neuroanatomy stubs. I started doing some of this myself but I'm not an expert in the field, and I may make mistakes. You folks should have a look at this. --Eastlaw ^talk · _contribs 06:26, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

Other Wikimedia resources?

If our guiding purpose is to provide useful information about neuroscience, I think the scope of our project should include the development of other Wikimedia resources. For example, I've been developing neuroscience courses on Wikiversity. IMO a course is a particularly useful format for gaining a basic background in neuroscience, perhaps more useful than the Wikipedia articles. I've changed the project page accordingly. --AFriedman (talk) 14:37, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Your changes look fine to me. Cross-fertilization can only be a good thing. Glad to see that you've joined the project. Looie496 (talk) 18:40, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Coordinators' working group

Hi! I'd like to draw your attention to the new WikiProject coordinators' working group, an effort to bring both official and unofficial WikiProject coordinators together so that the projects can more easily develop consensus and collaborate. This group has been created after discussion regarding possible changes to the A-Class review system, and that may be one of the first things discussed by interested coordinators.

All designated project coordinators are invited to join this working group. If your project hasn't formally designated any editors as coordinators, but you are someone who regularly deals with coordination tasks in the project, please feel free to join as well. — Delievered by §hepBot (Disable) on behalf of the WikiProject coordinators' working group at 06:07, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Biological psychology vs Behavioral Neuroscience

The article on Behavioral Neuroscience currently redirects to Biological psychology, which I think is erroneous. If the two should remain merged, then at least the title should be "behavioral neuroscience", as this is the more commonly used one. But I actually feel that the two fields (despite much overlap) are distinct and would appreciate input from other editors at Talk:Biological psychology. Thanks. --Guillaume2303 (talk) 08:57, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

Consciousness article

Dear all,

I have proposed new text for intro on consciousness article on the related discussion pages. I think that I managed to articulate it in line with the latest findings in psychology and neurology, but would like others to review it and comment.

Kind regards, Damir Ibrisimovic (talk) 06:56, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

LCM4MP

I just came across LCM4MP while new article patrolling. Is it salvageable? I was thinking of taking it to AfD, but thought I'd flag it here, first. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 17:23, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

It's a brand new article by a brand new editor, and Google Scholar shows enough hits to establish that good sources exist, so I think the author should be given time to fix it. Taking it right to AfD would be a bit bitey. Looie496 (talk) 17:39, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

Article request: PharmaGaba - a newly popular food supplement for insomnia

Hello Project members - I am not a member of this particular project but in trying to figure out who to ask about this topic, it seems you folks have the requisite knowledge and mad skills necessary to do a bang up job. I have an interest in this stuff called PharmaGaba because I had some success taking a supplement called Dreamerz that contains a propriatery blend of PharmaGaba and melatonin. Of course the manufacturers claim the stuff is miraculous and safe with no bad side effects etc. and so forth. I decided to do a little googling and I see that this PharmaGaba supplement is available all over the place as pills, drinks and other forms. I was hoping that you folks could do a basic article on the supplement, it's proposed method of action, any potential side effects that have been documented and anything else worth mentioning. If it's the latest insomnia supplement craze, it would be worth covering. Of course, it could also be covered under the article on Gaba. Whatever you think is best. Thanks!LiPollis (talk) 21:58, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

The melatonin might have an effect if there is enough of it, but the GABA is a placebo, since GABA doesn't cross the blood-brain barrier, and even if it did the GABA uptake mechanisms in the brain are so powerful that it would disappear almost immediately. The drugs that are most commonly used to treat insomnia act to increase the effectiveness of GABA in the brain, but giving GABA directly is useless. Looie496 (talk) 02:19, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

RE: melatonin. "[I]f there is enough of it" might be misleading, depending. The old standard 3mg for circadian rhythm sleep disorders is now down to one or a half mg, and people who use it report just as good effects of 0.2 mg. For use as a sleep aid, the timing of administration of melatonin is more important than the dosage. - Hordaland (talk) 20:33, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Toxic encephalopathy figures

I peer reviewed Toxic encephalopathy and the images used in it are claimed as free, but do not seem to be so. Please see the peer review for a more detailed discussion, and the article the images are taken from is here. The journal is "Environmental Health Perspectives" and it is "free online" but I do not see any notice that the images are free to use here (freely licensed). COuld someone double check this? Also if the images are not free, does anyone know of another source of free images? Thanks, Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 20:47, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

It looks to me like it's okay, see the journal's copyright info. Looie496 (talk) 21:52, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks so much - I missed that, Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 01:48, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Archiving

I just read about this in the Signpost. I would suggest archiving old discussions to make room for the new ones. There are bots that can do this automatically (see Category:Wikipedia archive bots). Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 04:38, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

I'm doing a little hand-archiving, and then I'll set up a bot (or try to!). Perhaps a 180 day timer for automatic archiving? It can always be changed later. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:36, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Looks like the archiving is working! I had been thinking about doing that, nice to see it happen. Looie496 (talk) 14:22, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

need help at Brain-computer interface

I could use an assist dealing with an IP who is trying to make an unacceptable edit -- a look at the article history should make the situation obvious. (I'd rather ask for help than single-handedly edit-war.) Looie496 (talk) 14:52, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

Society for Neuroscience is Coming

I just read that the Society for Neuroscience (SfN) has started a large initiative to re-write and re-organize all neuroscience related articles in Wikipedia. This massive coordinated effort will involve SfN members as contributors and maybe a bit troubling as content facilitators whose role is to organize and sort out various subject areas. While this effort is commendable on the part of SfN, it somehow seems to leave out all the "non expert" contributors to neuroscience articles in WP over the years and the initiative apparently has no plan to coordinate with ongoing WP efforts to organize and expand neuroscience content. I was curious what the reaction of amy of the contributors to these pages and to get a survey of other usuers opinions on the matter. Here's a link to the SfN initiative: http://www.sfn.org/index.aspx?pagename=wikipedia_main

Nrets 17:30, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

• Their instructions clearly state that their members will have to integrate with the existing Wikipedia community. The only problem I foresee is that for a while we may have a bunch of inexperienced editors. But we've all been there, so if this initiative helps WP to recruit valuable contributors, so much the better. --Guillaume2303 (talk) 17:54, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

I basically agree with Guillaume2303. I would add that any current WP editors who also happen to be SfN members might want to, as I just did, sign up at SfN to be content facilitators. I think that will improve communication and hopefully help to avoid the kinds of pitfalls that Nrets points out. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:12, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

• Hah, tried to do that but didn't work. Will have another look at the SfN site. Perhaps someone should create a category fro Wikipedians who are SFN members... --Guillaume2303 (talk) 18:15, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

I had the impression when I did it that the website was getting busy, so it may be a question of waiting for traffic to quiet down. It is necessary when you are there to login using the current SfN login system (not, of course, your login from WP). --Tryptofish (talk) 18:19, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Yikes, would have been nice to get some warning of this. I'll try to register as a "content facilitator" as soon as I can figure out how to log in on the SfN site. Looie496 (talk) 18:27, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Better wait till tomorrow or something, as Tryptofish said, it looks like their site is crashing... I get consistently a "wrong password" notice, then when I have it reset the email confirmation sends me the password that I chose and then I get the "wrong password" notice again. Earlier this afternoon I could get into the system, but then the section where you could register as a facilitator was empty. --Guillaume2303 (talk) 18:35, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Based on past experience, not much will happen for the next two weeks anyway -- May 14 is abstract deadline, and people are usually pretty preoccupied until then. Looie496 (talk) 18:50, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

Well, I managed to register as a facilitator for Behavioral Neuroscience, and then register for the forum. I made a test post, which was the first post at the forum -- we'll see if anybody else shows up. Looie496 (talk) 23:04, 29 April 2009 (UTC)

It might be worth posting in some of the SfN forums something to direct them to this page, so that efforts could be better coordinated with ongoing WP efforts. I could probably register as a facilitator too at the SfN site, although I haven't been very active in editing WP for the last couple of years, but have worked in the past in neuroscience-related WP articles. Nrets 13:36, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

I'm a facilitator for Molecular/Cellular. I discovered, not easily, that one has to register separately for the discussion forum, in addition to registering at the SfN site. That turns out to be the solution to the very annoying "wrong password" business. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:27, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

• Not completely: I recently switched to Firefox, but when I switched back to IE, the wrong password thing was solved and I could get into my SFN account. You're right that it then takes a while to figure out how to register and I find their site not very clear, but I think that I am registered now as facilitator for behavioral neuroscience :-) --Guillaume2303 (talk) 17:31, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Next step is to solve the spam problem. I sent an email to "webmaster@sfn" just a few minutes ago, we'll see if it gets any response. Nobody seems to be moderating the forum right now. Looie496 (talk) 17:40, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I use Firefox. Yes, the spam there is a mess. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:50, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Looks like the spam has been removed, along with the actual messages, which is no problem because they didn't really have any content. I've tried a new message that actually gives some information, and points to this page. Looie496 (talk) 00:04, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

I looked at your message there, and I think that it is very good. Thank you for that. --Tryptofish (talk) 14:47, 1 May 2009 (UTC)

Overall, I think this sort of push is fabulous, but new editors often find Wikipedia frustrating and overly complicated. Could someone point the SfN folks at WP:MEDRS and WP:MEDMOS? I'm sure they'd be happy to know about these -- both as 'fair warning' that "I'm an expert, and I say so" isn't good enough, and as a reminder that any unsourced-and-probably-wrong information in an existing article needn't be treated with respect.

On a less content-driven note, and perhaps more importantly, they need to know where to find help when they encounter 'complicated' editors, so perhaps a "where to find friends" note, and information about simple things like WP:3RR and where to find talk pages, might be helpful. They might benefit from a few tips about things like Diberri's ref tool and simple wikification tips -- like "{{whatever}} inserts the contents of Template:whatever" or "==Something== makes a section heading called Something". WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:08, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Those are all very good points. Thank you for that. I think that Looie's post at the SfN site already points them to this talk, so hopefully some of them will see what you just said. And I've been thinking along the same lines. It occurs to me that it will be just a matter of time until some of these new editors find pages that are not just neuroscience, but things like pseudoscience, animals in research, and so on, and the issue of "complicated" editors will indeed come up for them. I think that, at what is now a very early stage, it's best not to WP:BEANS, but I expect that I will put up pointers of the sort you mention at the SfN site as interested editors start to show up there. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:24, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Yes, we don't want to overwhelm people with information. Also, there probably isn't much of a hurry to get things arranged -- if nothing else, as I said above, the deadline for abstracts for the annual meeting is May 14, and it's customary for SfN members to be pretty busy the week or two before the deadline. Also, as we have learned, getting into the forum there is a nontrivial matter. Looie496 (talk) 22:54, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

I definitely support the goal of not overwhelming people with details that might not be immediately useful, and I see that SfN is providing general links. But I really don't want these new editors to get frustrated or feel abandoned if they run into problems. Neuroscience isn't too far removed from neurology and psychiatry, and those areas can attract editors that have an anti-science/anti-mainstream axe to grind. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:11, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Fantastic! Welcome SfN contributors - the more the merrier ( and accurate , balanced, comprehensive, ...) I spent awhile at the end of last year in the realms of the help contents and tutorials ( an unfortunately much untrodden route ) and saw a few attempts to address the issue of providing directed academic introductions to editing. Certainly there should be an avenue for this scenario and the help pages should cater for all needs and levels of knowledge. There are a few dedicated editors and regular influxes of interest. but no real active hub for the help pages (a few subprojects exist but these focus on disperate areas) so a lack of general coordination, so please update as you see fit. It would be hood to hear feedback on how this project goes, which parts of the help sytem where used, and keep track of any issues so it can be used as a case study for improving or creating a help system that addresses similar projects. L∴V 00:51, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

As your brother/sister project WP:MCB is of course willing to help out as much as we can. Tim Vickers (talk) 21:30, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Looking at the SfN website, I just realized that they have now posted a listing of content facilitators by subject area, and there is already quite a large number, although not all subject areas are equally represented yet. I hope that this is a good sign that (post-abstracts) there will be a high level of participation. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:28, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

Portal:Neuroscience

Anybody noticed that the last time the portal was edited was on June 16, 2007.... (and disregarding vandalism and categorization, it actually never has been edited since it was created in August 2006.... It's a pity, because it actully does look pretty good. I have no time to do this, but perhaps somebody else can do it? --Guillaume2303 (talk) 19:09, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

It does look pretty good. Is there anything there that needs further editing at this time? (By the way, I've been thinking about creating a userbox for the SfN initiative, although I'm waiting to see if it really takes off.) --Tryptofish (talk) 19:55, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

You're just looking at the base portal code -- the featured content of the portal has been edited a lot more recently than that. For a little while I made an effort to keep it sort of current, but let it slide after realizing from page view stats that few people ever look at it anyway. If we had a more salient connection between the key neuroscience articles (such as nervous system and brain) and the portal, it might be worth putting some effort into. Looie496 (talk) 20:15, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

• You're right! I'm unfamiliar with portals, so I didn't notice this, sorry about that. What would be the best way to get the connections between the key neuroscience articles and the portal more salient? --Guillaume2303 (talk) 20:38, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

The only way I'm aware of is to make sure that the portal link is near the top of each such page. For a lot of them, it already is. I just added it to brain and human brain, and we can all do likewise as we notice other examples. Are there any other ways? --Tryptofish (talk) 21:14, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

That's probably the best thing to do, short of changes in the server software. By the way, it's probably best to use the {{Neuroscience portal}} template I created a while back, because it would allow the form of the portal link to be changed at one centralized location if we ever decided we want to do that. Looie496 (talk) 22:22, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

Is there more than one such template? (Uh-oh, did I use the wrong one?) --Tryptofish (talk) 00:07, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

Some (most) of the articles use {{portalpar|Neuroscience|Neuro logo.png}}. The problem with that is that if we ever decide we want to change the layout or image for the portal link, we would have to do it in every article. Just in case, I created Template:Neuroscience portal, which is defined as {{portalpar|Neuroscience|Neuro logo.png|break=yes}} -- that is, identical except for a line break. I don't claim that this is any better, but the advantage of using a portal template of our own is that we can change the appearance of the link in every article all at once simply by changing the template. It wouldn't do any harm to use the other template, it would just look different. Looie496 (talk) 02:48, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

I found that alternative "{{portalpar|Neuroscience|Neuro logo.png}}" in some of the articles that you tagged and have used it now myself. The reason was that the template aligns left and this alternative aligns right, which in some cases gives a nicer layout. Is there a way to use the template and determine where it should align? --Guillaume2303 (talk) 08:09, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

I changed the template yesterday to make it align right -- it should be usable now. I'm certain it would be possible to add an optional alignment parameter to the template, but that goes beyond my current level of template-coding skills. Looie496 (talk) 15:21, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

Fit brains

I just removed a large chunk of unsubstantiated material from this article, which I just discovered. I think it isn't too bad now, but I expect a dedicated IP editor to revert my edit shortly, and it would be nice to have some extra eyes on the article for a while. Not of key importance since the article gets very little viewership, but we ought to try to get a handle on this sort of thing. At some point I'm going to make another attempt to fix Brain fitness, which will be a lot more challenging. Looie496 (talk) 00:05, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

• Note that a probably similar article, Fit Brains, was deleted after an AfD (so the current article could therefore be speedied as a re-creation of a deleted article). The article creator, User:Fitbrains, was blocked indef for using a spamname. The same user created Paul Nussbaum, which I just cleaned up a bit. --Guillaume2303 (talk) 08:42, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

Right now I feel it has enough refs to not delete it; however I have also made some more clean up.--Garrondo (talk) 10:07, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

Welcome SfN! Userbox

Welcome to all new editors from SfN!
Editors, new and old, who would like to be identified with the SfN initiative are invited to add the following userbox to their user pages:

This user supports the Society for Neuroscience Wikipedia Initiative.

To do it, just enter this:

{{User Soc Neurosci}}

on your user page.

--Tryptofish (talk) 19:16, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

Category

• Well done! Is there also a category for "SfN users"? --Guillaume2303 (talk) 20:08, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

Thank you so much! As for a category, I've started looking at that, but no, not yet. In that light, let me pose this question. It is possible to set up a category that everyone who uses the userbox goes into automatically, or, it is also possible to set up a category separately, whereby one has to add it manually to one's user page. Any thoughts on which is better? (By the way, categories that exist already include "Wikipedian neuroscientists" and "Wikipedians interested in neuroscience," but nothing specific to SfN.) --Tryptofish (talk) 20:17, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

• Stupid me, I actually have that "Wikipedian neuroscientists" on my own userpage :-) However, I remember that it took me a while to figure out what categories are (and although I have created a few, somebody else needed to clean up my mess afterwards) and probably it would be the same for any new people coming over from SfN. So an automatic thing, that I guess people also can add independently of the userbox, would perhaps be best. It would perhaps make it easier for more experienced Wikipedians to keep an eye on newbie SfN editors and offer assistance when needed. --Guillaume2303 (talk) 20:41, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

Yes you can include everyone with this template on their user page in a category. Simply add the category brackets ([[Category:SfN members]] inside the User Soc Neurosci template itself. Jean-Francois Gariepy talk) 01:05, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I know, thank you. I'm just waiting a bit, to see talk here and make sure no one objects to being added to a category automatically. Any preferences between calling the category Society for Neuroscience members, or Society for Neuroscience Wikipedia Initiative members? --Tryptofish (talk) 17:07, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

Society for Neuroscience Wikipedia Initiative members is more specific, I like it. Jean-Francois Gariepy (talk) 21:54, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

Good, so do I. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:00, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

I've created the category [[Category:Wikipedian members of the Society for Neuroscience Wikipedia Initiative]] (link at bottom of this talk page). If you put the userbox above on your userpage, you are automatically listed in the category. You can also put yourself into the category manually by typing the name of the category (with "Category:" at the start) in double square brackets, near the bottom of your page. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:39, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Question: when using the template to list the category automatically, does anyone know how to control the order in which the category name appears among the list of categories at the bottom of one's userpage? I'm stumped by that. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:39, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

I'm afraid this is not doable without DPL, an extension that is not installed on Wikipedia. Too bad I really love this extension. Jean-Francois Gariepy (talk) 23:54, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

That's OK, thanks! --Tryptofish (talk) 15:47, 20 May 2009 (UTC)

Hippocampus is at FAC

I have just nominated Hippocampus at FAC, and opinions from the people who participate here would be valued. Note while I'm at it that Benzodiazepine is also currently nominated as of May 26. Looie496 (talk) 17:52, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Telepathy and war

This new article needs our attention, I'm afraid -- see WP:FTN#Telepathy and war. Looie496 (talk) 17:31, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

Unsolved problems AfD

Some editors here may be interested in Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Unsolved problems in cognitive science (2nd nomination). --Tryptofish (talk) 18:24, 8 June 2009 (UTC)

RFC: merging the Neuroscience and Neurobiology articles

This question has been discussed extensively at Talk:Neurobiology. Please indicate now whether you support merging the contents of the two articles and turning Neurobiology into a redirect to Neuroscience. Justify your position briefly if you feel a need to, but let's avoid cluttering this section if we can. Looie496 (talk) 23:58, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

This was implied, but let me suggest that any editors who have not commented before but want to comment at length, do so at Talk:Neurobiology rather than here. --Tryptofish (talk) 01:02, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

Support:

1. Support merging per discussion. Looie496 (talk) 23:58, 13 May 2009 (UTC)
2. Support merging per discussion. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:53, 14 May 2009 (UTC)
3. Support merging per discussion. Jean-Francois Gariepy (talk) 01:50, 14 May 2009 (UTC)
4. Support merging per discussion. --Guillaume2303 (talk) 06:27, 14 May 2009 (UTC)
5. Support merging per discussion. -- Xargque (talk) 15:53, 14 May 2009 (UTC)
6. Support merging per discussion. --Kpstewart (talk) 21:53, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Oppose:

1. Do not support merging per discussion. mezzaninelounge (talk) 00:07, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

Just asking: do we feel that this question has been settled yet, or not? --Tryptofish (talk) 18:29, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

After a week, it seems not very likely that there will be more responses. Looie496 (talk) 18:44, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Suggestion (and nothing more): perhaps this is done, and the redirect can go ahead. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:17, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

I just noticed a lot of time has passed. I see no obstacle to going ahead, if someone wants to. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:23, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

WikiProject Neuroscience editing as part of an undergrad class

Hi all, I'm new to the scene here. I would like to take up the SFN call for action and have my upper level undergrad neuro students participate in adding/editing content this fall as part of our survey course. I have seen the list of other faculty members using Wikipedia editing as part of their course requirements and will ask some of them the same question, but I thought I would also ask it here: Where is the best place to start? Thx NeuroJoe (talk) 19:49, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

Just to make sure I understand, you're asking where the best place is to start learning how to organize something like that? Looie496 (talk) 20:38, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

It sounds like NeuroJoe is asking for help with how to award credit, how to verify that the students have contributed, and/or how to actually organize their editing. Let me take those in slightly reverse order here:

I guess the best place to start would be to familiarize your students with the basic rules of wikipedia, or what are called the five pillars of wikipedia. The most critical issues here on wikipedia are that the statements be verifiable and that they be cited with reliable sources. This could include statements from a general introductory textbook, as long as the page number is given (say something like Kandel or Squire, whatever you use in your course), but primary sources, like, say an article in J. Neurosci. would also be appropriate (and preferred) for specific points. Here on wikipedia, because we cannot assume that anyone who edits is actually an expert, even things that seem like fairly basic truisms may need to be cited. Next, you would want to introduce your students to the ideas of building consensus, how to use the article talk pages to do so, and the three-revert rule which will come into play if their edits lead them into an edit war. I can see by looking at your user talk page that someone welcomed you here when you created your account, and this welcome message contains all of this information, and then some. Another thing that might help is you have a couple of more experienced editors who can "adopt" your students, and help them to understand how wikipedia work.

One thing that might be critical is whether you want them all to work on parts of one big important article, like neuroscience or if you want each of them to take articles that they are particularly interested in, like synapse or Capgras delusion and give them credit for the improvements that were made to the article while they were in the class by comparing just the before and after versions of the page. This might be a good way to go, since it might be a way of rewarding not only students that add specific material, but also students who can inspire people to collaborate on improving a particular page.

Now, going back to how you would give credit, you can see a given user's contributions either by looking at their edit history (for example, mine is here: [[Special:/Edhubbard]Contributions]]. In order to most effectively do this, your students should probably sign up with a wikipedia user name. However, they should know that, whether they are editing something like synesthesia or Kings of Leon, it appears in their edit history. Another way to verify that the students are working on the things you are giving them credit for is to look at the article page history, which you can see is a tab just to the right of the "edit this page" tab at the top. However, you cannot simply count up edits, and use that as a proxy for participation, because some edits can be as simple as removing an extraneous period like this one, while others can involve fairly large-scale changes to a page like this one. So, you will probably have to spend a fair bit of time reviewing and assessing not just the quantity of edits, but also the quality of those edits. I hope this gives you some good starting points, and feel free to ask if you have other questions. Cheers, Edhubbard (talk) 21:57, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

You may also want to take a look at Wikipedia:School and university projects. --Arcadian (talk) 22:15, 24 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the suggestions. Rubric creation will be a bit of a challenge and Edhubbard's ideas will certainly help along those lines. @Arcadian, I have browsed that page a bit and will contact a few of the profs on there to pick their brains. I will certainly chime in with more questions/comments as I continue to develop the assignment throughout the summer. Please feel free to post any more info you think may be helpful. NeuroJoe (talk) 14:05, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

Workshop at SfN Chicago meeting

There will be a workshop at the SfN meeting in Chicago (on Monday afternoon of the meeting) about writing for Wikipedia. It's not clear to me whether those of us who already write are going to be asked to be part of it (I'm going to ask at the SfN website forum), but those of us who will attend the meeting might want to be aware of the event. --Tryptofish (talk) 16:47, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Still debating whether to go (just started a new post-doc and don't have any new data to present) but if I do go, I certainly would like to be part of any workshop. I'll keep you posted (feel free to e-mail me off-wiki, too). Cheers, Edhubbard (talk) 04:21, 27 June 2009 (UTC)

Hi, thank you both for wanting to help out! Anyone from this WikiProject who would like to be involved in the SfN workshop, please e-mail me; we're just beginning to make plans. Thanks! We'll be making a more formal announcement of the workshop in a short while. Proteins (talk) 00:24, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

Pageview stats

After a recent request, I added WikiProject Neuroscience to the list of projects to compile monthly pageview stats for. The data is the same used by http://stats.grok.se/en/ but the program is different, and includes the aggregate views from all redirects to each page. The stats are at Wikipedia:WikiProject Neuroscience/Popular pages.

The page will be updated monthly with new data. The edits aren't marked as bot edits, so they will show up in watchlists. If you have any comments or suggestions, please let me know. Thanks! Mr.Z-man 20:31, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

Cool! A quick glance shows drugs and diseases at the top, as I expected. There are certainly some surprises, though: who would have thought that lobotomy and Bupropion would be more frequently viewed than pain? Looie496 (talk) 21:10, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

Very cool indeed! I've created a link from the main project page. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:51, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

Cool indeed. How about putting that link also under ==Areas to cover==? --Ettrig (talk) 06:15, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

Done, easily enough. (But is it redundant?) --Tryptofish (talk) 14:04, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

Changes to popular pages lists

There are a few important changes to the popular pages system. A quick summary:

• The "importance" ranking (for projects that use it) will be included in the lists along with assessment.
• The default list size has been lowered to 500 entries (from 1000)
• I've set up a project on the Toolserver for the popular pages - tools:~alexz/pop/.
  • This includes a page to view the results for projects, including the in-progress results from the current month. Currently this can only show the results from a single project in one month. Features to see multiple projects or multiple months may be added later.
  • This includes a new interface for making requests to add a new project to the list.
  • There is also a form to request a change to the configuration for a project. Currently the configurable options are the size of the on-wiki list and the project subpage used for the list.
• The on-wiki list should be generated and posted in a more timely and consistent manner than before.
• The data is now retained indefinitely.
• The script used to generate the pages has changed. The output should be the same. Please report any apparent inconsistencies (see below).
• Bugs and feature requests should be reported using the Toolserver's bug tracker for "alexz's tools" - [3]

-- Mr.Z-man 00:22, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

Merger discussion

Editors interested in this project may want to look at the discussion at Talk:Neuroscience#Merger proposal, about merging the page on Neuroscience studies. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:04, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

History of Neuroscience (SfN call for members)

This is a early description of the History of Neuroscience project. Project has been moved here if you want to follow the progress. 72.0.216.87 (Jean-Francois Gariepy) 17:27, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

Hi everyone! Well I'm one of those SfN members who received the email and I was interested in being part of the initiative. I have a lot of knowledge on Wikipedia editing (altough my contributions are not under this nickname). I managed 3 GPL-licensed-wikis in my life. If you want a complete description of my projects here it is (description is in french, but projects are in english). I was mainly interested in history of informatics and sociology of internet-based subcultures. These experiences allowed me to acquire some knowledge about the MediaWiki software and I contributed to many MediaWiki extensions, which, if used in combination, can make of MediaWiki a true content and database management system. I also know about the Wikipedia specific rules, principles, and methods of editing / debatting. I think that makes me a good candidate to be a 'content advisor'. This expression makes me laugh a little bit, it does show some ignorance of the Wikipedian culture from the persons who started this initiative, and I think it was a little bit rude to start this without coming here first and talking to people that were already here, but I don't blame them; for such a big organization to be able to say : 'Hey let's call our members and tell them to contribute to Wikipedia', I think it's just wonderful and the intention is noble. You don't see that kind of opening from big organizations very often.

Beside my hobbies, my main job is neuroscience research in the field of respiration and locomotion (rhythm generation, CPGs, modulation, etc...). In the last year I became progressively interested in history of neurosciences. In part as a hobby and in part because I'm preparing a thesis on respiration, I started collecting old books and journal articles about motor control, especially locomotion and respiration. But reading these books is like a drug and eventually you start collecting more and more books even outside your own area. So I end up with a list of about 200 books of motor control physiology written between 1700 and 2000, and I find some very interesting treasures that need to be shared with the world. I also started reading some older works from the greeks like Aristotle, who did write a book about respiration. At that time the debate was whether respiratory movements were generated by our own body/brain or if the environment (air) was pushing itself into the lungs (that was 'the vital spirit' entering our body to keep us alive). Lots of works were made in 18th, 19th, 20th centuries about motor control, some of the authors are the main authors that are always cited everywhere you read about the history of neuroscience but some of them have just been forgotten. Most books in my collection are available as PDF file through Google Books. As a matter of fact, Google took a great initiative to scan all books on the planet since a couple of years. They are a very good ressource for old physiology books because the copyright has expired on these books and most of them can be searched for specific terms using the google search engine. I also had to buy some books I couldn't find and the universities library remain a good ressource. I also ended up with some interesting articles that were published by scientists in general interest journals; in these years, some scientists were publishing directly in political or general interest journals to expose some scientific ideas. That list of 200 books / articles I regrouped is just a starting point. I'm pretty sure during the next year if we coordinate the efforts with whoever is interested, we might come up with more than 2000 books / articles that need to be read and from which we need to extract information about the authors, the ideas, etc... Right now I'm concentrating on writing my abstract for Neuroscience due for May 14th but from there I'll be able to build something so that anyone who wants to contribute to the historical section on neuroscience knows what tasks need to be done. I'll probably divide the work in 3 categories, and these works will be done paralelly and not serially :

• Find the interesting books / article titles about neuroscience/physiology from Egypt and Greece, up to occidental societies in the 1950s. Create a list and indicate whether the book was just obtained, scanned, read, or not obtained at all (then we will obtain a sublist of books that need to be found and scanned).
• Author-based encyclopedia editing. We will go through each book obtained in step 1, find the names of the authors writing the books or the authors cited in the books. Create biographical pages for these authors, and go back to step 1 to improve the list, by adding more and more references to it.
• Concept-based encyclopedia editing. Once our readers (if people join the project) have went through writing a couple of biographical pages and read some parts of the books / articles, they will start having a general idea of what was going on at certain periods of times in the different fields and then we will be able to cover some eras of neuroscience/physiology in these years. The information will be first added to a historical sub-section on the principal pages for the subjects (example : Locomotion, Respiration), and eventually as the historical section will grow, it may be put in separate pages such as 'History of locomotion research', etc...

If you have any comment about this, do not hesitate to contact me. I wonder whether I should start a portal/project page or if I can just join the neuroscience project page and create a subsection on history of neuroscience to organize the works. I personaly would prefer joining the project page that's already there. Jean-Francois Gariepy (talk) 19:51, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

Welcome! I agree with your opinions about how SfN got this going, but I would encourage you very much to sign up with SfN as a "content facilitator" in History of Neuroscience. At the moment, they don't have anyone in that subject area. Here, I think it would be fine to work from this talk page as a start. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:22, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

Yes, welcome! Thanks for your interest, and do please stay in touch. This initiative is indeed noble, and we do wish SfN contributors the best of success. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:03, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

I did subscribe as a content facilitator, I guess there is some kind of delay before it's displayed! The forum is pretty inactive too I guess I'll post something in the hope of regrouping post-may14 people interested in contributing! Jean-Francois Gariepy (talk) 22:06, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

This is a early description of the History of Neuroscience project. Project has been moved here if you want to follow the progress. 72.0.216.87 (Jean-Francois Gariepy) 17:27, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

SfN Wikipedia Initiative Update

Hi guys, just to keep it coordinated between here and the forums.sfn.org, here's a copy of my answer to the Wikipedia Initiative team that was asking about feedback and everything. Of course most of the comments I make are not addressed to those who are actively reading this talk page, more to those who subscribed as content facilitators but that have not been in contact with us at all - even not by email :

I don't have precise ideas on what could improve that, but the current state of coordination is pure anarchy. We have no communication at all with most of the content facilitators who did subscribe but from whom we have no feedback. Even in my own section, history of neuroscience, we are 2 content facilitators and the other one does not answer my emails, neither does he/she contact us through any kind of Wikipedia page. You should not make the feedback and plans reporting volunteer, it should just be obligatory for anyone who subscribe as a content faciliator : what do you want to do, on what time scale you want to do it, and how many volunteers would you need for that. Also, there should be more coordination between those who stay after that. Not that coordination is THAT important for Wikipedia editing - in fact Wikipedia has been relying in big part on anarchy to improve its content and it works great - but somehow it would be interesting to measure the impact of this whole initiative. For example on my project page I'm starting to list all books we are/plan adding to the encyclopedia and I'm preparing a list of biographies that will be written and sections that need to be edited... It's not that I want SfN to impose its control over all this - it's that humans tend to be very lazy when they don't report their progress and I know that for myself, that's why I report everything on my page even if it's not that important that people read it. Without any form of plans and no report of progress, this initiative is becoming a big circus. You're too kind with the facilitators : You did post their name as content facilitators ? They do write this proudly on their C.V. ? Well then you should expect a minimum from them - that is to know something about what they're doing. If everyone is a facilitator the work will never be done. We're like a bunch of enzymes with no substrate.

Jean-François Gariépy

Jean-Francois Gariepy (talk) 11:18, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

There is going to be a workshop on Wikipedia at the SFN meeting in Chicago, and I doubt that there is going to be any really serious progress in organizing things until then. Certainly the middle of the summer is a bad time to expect people to work hard -- the chances will be better once school sessions begin again in the fall. But there is another important point: the biggest problem with attracting scientists to Wikipedia is that they are afraid, deep down, that people will laugh at them. This means that we must make every effort to keep a positive attitude. If we criticize people for not contributing as much as we would like, they will simply go away. I think we will get the best results by welcoming and encouraging anything positive that happens, and doing our best to ignore the negative. Regards, Looie496 (talk) 16:08, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the alert and call to action, Jean-François! We'll try to address your concerns in the coming weeks; please be patient with us. :) I've just returned from a week-long vacation following rather intense work preparing for the NIH Academy. Many of the lessons we learned there and at the earlier ASCB workshop will shape the planning for this 3-hour workshop, and many of the elements that I prepared for the NIH Academy will carry over. For example, you might take a look at the Welcome page I created for the NIH at Wikipedia:Academy/NIH_2009/Welcome, which I intend to replicate and specialize for the SfN. The gold box at the top discusses how to find help and will also install a few useful scripts for you. The "Popular pages" in the the WikiProjects near the bottom of the page will give hints for articles that are viewed frequently but which might be of poor quality. Now that the NIH event is over, we'll begin more focused preparations for the SfN workshop, and we'll keep everyone posted. Thanks again, Proteins (talk) 17:43, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

No problem guys, and do not take this alert like I expect anything from people; I don't, I'm a solitary worker and I have no problem with that. But I always hate it when I see projects going down because of bad communication / orgnanization and I would not like people from this initiative to wake up later (like in 1 year) and realize that in the end less than 50 pages have been created / edited and that the editing work is pretty much the same that would have been done without the initiative. The feeling that Looie496 describes is true; not only that but also that working for Wikipedia is not something that is recognized at all (for example on C.V.). Anyways, if it shakes up some people in the initiative just so that these facts are known, it's enough for me. I might be thinking too industrial here, but if you have 100 content faciliators and 5 pages on Wikipedia that were actually improved, it's not a good result. Jean-Francois Gariepy (talk) 19:04, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

(ec) To clarify, because I don't think it has been stated in Wikipedia space yet, Proteins is the main academic organizer of SFN's Wikipedia initiative and the Chicago workshop, and has worked with Tim Vickers at organizing other academic Wikipedia workshops in the past, including the one he just mentioned. Proteins is a molecular biologist who has been contributing to Wikipedia since early 2007; Tim Vickers is an admin with a deep technical knowledge of Wikipedia internals. Looie496 (talk) 19:11, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

I agree with Looie that things may move slowly until the Chicago workshop. Until then, though, I do hope that the people who signed up at the SfN Initiative page will also consider editing here. In particular, you may want to look here on this talk, and consider adding the userbox to your userpage, which will become helpful in keeping in contact with one another. I also know that Proteins is working on a "switchboard" that interested users will be able to use on site here to communicate. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:06, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Following Looie496's comment, I would like to specify that I'm not saying the organizers are doing a bad job. I'm saying that their kindness might lead to a lack of results from the content faciliator team. And as I said in the original message, this is clearly not a message addressed to those who were working on Wikipedia before the initiative and continue to do so as we are speaking, they are doing a great job. I basically question the additionnal value of all those content facilitators who don't even answer emails, neither do they talk on any Wikipedia page. Jean-Francois Gariepy (talk) 22:44, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

I think we all understand and appreciate that now, Jean-Francois, thanks. I guess what I would point out is that Wikipedia is entirely a volunteer process. Consequently, we are unlikely to be able to insist that people who sign up do anything. I'm guessing that, going forward, the initiative will actually be largely a matter of to-do lists, but without deadlines or assignments, and of welcoming new contributors and helping them with their questions. And in my individual opinion, just having a lot more scientifically-trained contributors will actually be a very good thing in itself! --Tryptofish (talk) 12:53, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Paul Bach-y-Rita

Would it be useful to create a separate article for Paul Bach-y-Rita, considering he is an important figure in neuroplasticity? He already has a fairly sizeable chunk here and also in the sensory substitution article; perhaps the first of these could be split off and expanded into a separate article? Jhbuk (talk) 22:01, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

I'd be in favor of that. I'm also in favor of eventually getting rid of those bio-chunks in the Neuroplasticity article, which don't seem very encyclopedic. Looie496 (talk) 22:07, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

I have created an article here:(Paul Bach-y-Rita).

Merge discussion on Cerebral_Hemispheric_Dominance and Lateralization_of_brain_function

Editors who are part of the project might be interested in this discussion about merging Cerebral Hemispheric Dominance and Lateralization of brain function. Edhubbard (talk) 19:22, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

IUPHAR links

Editors here may be interested in this discussion of a proposal about links to IUPHAR databases. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:22, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

Comments needed on a source for the Alzheimer's disease article

I have asked for imput on the usability of a review as a reliable secondary source for the Alzheimer's disease in the Reliable Sources Noticeboard here

The article is Kheifets, L; Bowman, Jd; Checkoway, H; Feychting, M; Harrington, Jm; Kavet, R; Marsh, G; Mezei, G; Renew, Dc; Van, Wijngaarden, E (Feb 2009). "Future needs of occupational epidemiology of extremely low frequency electric and magnetic fields: review and recommendations". Occupational and environmental medicine 66 (2): 72–80. doi:10.1136/oem.2007.037994. ISSN 1351-0711. PMID 18805878

Specific concerns have been raised by an editor that states that the author can not be considered an expert according to wikipedia standards of WP:MEDRS; while I disagree. Since the discussion directly affects one of the FA articles of the project I would greatly acknowledge any comments on the matter. Thanks to everybody in advance.--Garrondo (talk) 16:35, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

To be more clear the exact question is if she is "someone widely recognized as a reliable source of technique or skill" in the "Alzheimer's disease" field--Nutriveg (talk) 14:28, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

List of neuroscientists

I'd like some second opinions about this edit to List of neuroscientists. I cannot make up my mind whether or not a contestant on "Big Brother" who happens to be a neuroscientist, but who is not identified as being notable as a neuroscientist, should be included on the list. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:37, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

I don't see the value of lists like that in the first place, so I'm afraid I'm pretty much indifferent. I suspect the only people who look at the list are those who add names to it and those who have it watchlisted. Looie496 (talk) 00:20, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

• I am very much in agreement with Looie496 (and in addition actually think that anybody ever involved with Big Brother drivel should best be forgotten about as soon as possible:-), but as long as the list exists, we'll have to think about issues like this. How about moving the list to "list of notable neuroscientists" and delete neuroscience-irrelevant entries like this? --Guillaume2303 (talk) 07:36, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

• Even when you consider only "relevant" people there should probably be hundreds of people in that list. Additionally the definition of notable is quite difficult. On the other hand I am sure that anybody who has ever published a paper thinks it was important enough to be remembered for it (and according at least to notability guidelines for articles he could even have an article for himself). I would simply eliminate the article.--Garrondo (talk) 08:04, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the input. As for the point raised by Garrondo, my experience with people lists is that there tends to be agreement that no one should be on a list if there is not a bio page about the person (ie, no red links), and simply being anyone who has published a paper (like us, I would guess!) would fail WP:BIO etc., and so would be a red link. What threw me here was the fact that the link does exist, but I think the consensus here is pretty clear that I should delete the Big Brother person from the list, at a minimum. Because there are a lot of other lists like this one, of scientists in various disciplines, I'm not personally going to put the page up for AfD, but if anyone else wants to try it, don't let me stop you from trying. Thanks again! --Tryptofish (talk) 13:29, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

(outdent) By the way, let me suggest that one good reason for having such lists (or at least a good reason for watch-listing them!) is as one way to keep an eye on new bio pages as they come up. For an example of what I mean, that list let me notice this page, which struck me as an example of someone "who has published a paper," and allowed me to tag it for notability with the possibility of future AfD. For whatever that's worth. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:03, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

Nice trick: I won't be the one deleting it. Not worth the effort (I only receives a hundred of visits every month). Bests.--Garrondo (talk) 06:24, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

SfN workshop, call for volunteers

As many of you already know, there is going to be a Wikipedia workshop at the Chicago meeting, Monday afternoon from 2 to 5 PM. The first half of the workshop will consist of a few short talks; the second half is intended to be a "hands-on" tutorial in writing for Wikipedia. It would be great, especially for the second half, to have experienced SfN-Wikipedians available to help out and answer questions. Anybody who would be interested in doing that, could you let us know? Either saying so here or emailing me would work. Regards, Looie496 (talk) 17:15, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

We've already e-mailed, but I'm in! --Tryptofish (talk) 19:56, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

SSRI

I feel that the articles for several SSRI's ( paroxetine, etc.) contain a negative POV. These articles are less about science and more about drug industry politics. Care to help Wikipedia be an encyclepedia? Neurofish (talk) 14:45, 27 August 2009 (UTC)Neurofish

I take it you're referring to the ongoing controversy regarding the "Controversy" section? Looie496 (talk) 17:51, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

Hello Neurofish, and welcome to Wikipedia. I've looked at your pages, and I see you've already asked for editor assistance and gotten a supportive reply at your talk page. You may also want to comment at WP:WikiProject Pharmacology, but most importantly, at the talk pages of the individual articles in question. That way, you can work with other editors to see if there's balance in those criticism sections. I'll take a look when I get to it, but my plate is pretty full right now. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:09, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

Brain Development

Hi. Can someone answer Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Science#Brain_Development from a neuroscientific point of view? I can't find any wikipedia articles related to it. Thanks. 86.139.54.213 (talk) 10:56, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

I thought I already did. If the answers there don't address your question, could you clarify the question? (But do it there, not here, please.) The article neural development in humans is on the topic, but doesn't have enough detail to answer your questions. Regards, Looie496 (talk) 16:56, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

Tanycytes

Tiny tanycytes need help. I've added an image. If somebody copy-edits and all, would be great. (0: --CopperKettle 05:01, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

Brain GAR notice

Brain has been nominated for a good article reassessment. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to good article quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status will be removed from the article. Reviewers' concerns are here.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 03:01, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

Wiki work days?

I would love to have a wiki work day where we focus on adding references to and generally improving the article on the Human brain! Where would we announce this? How is this normally done? Could we set up a chat? --Bcjordan (talk) 17:14, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

Hi Bc, this is, at least, a partial reply from me. Bringing it up in this talk is a very good way to start. (I can't resist making a facetious observation that some of us (me!) should be making our wiki work days shorter, not longer...) The closest thing I can think of to what you describe would be a collaboration, if you want to try starting one. Activities like the good article review for Brain (see just above) are sort of like that too. My personal take is that, given that Wikipedia is an all-volunteer enterprise, it's probably not realistic to expect other editors to set aside a particular day, or to do much of anything on demand, and the best way to get things moving is often just to start doing it yourself. That's what I can think of, but I'm sure others will have more to add. (P.S.: I noticed your user-page, and think you might perhaps be interested in this, just a little above.) --Tryptofish (talk) 18:39, 15 September 2009 (UTC)

WikiProject Medicine does "weekly focus" articles, and I suppose we could try something like that, but I'm not sure how much good it would do. As for the human brain article, I've pretty much exhausted my knowledge of the sources of info -- I'm a lot stronger on sources for the rat brain. Regards, Looie496 (talk) 00:48, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

Problems with neuroplasticity

The article has a section called Applications of neuroplasticity, which is largely a sequence of subsections describing the work of individual people. The whole thing seems like kind of a hash to me and I am inclined to remove it, although some of the people are quite notable. The particular impetus behind starting this section is that an IP editor tried to add a section about a doctor named Paul Nussbaum -- it seems to me that listlike sections of this sort are practically an invitation to that sort of thing. Any opinions? Looie496 (talk) 18:07, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

I've taken a quick look at it, and I see what you mean. This is a tough call, because it's more substantial than just a list, and, as you say, some of the people -- and the work! -- are notable. My suggestion would be to put a tag on the section (there must be one about notability for sections, although I haven't looked), rather than to delete the whole thing. Then, I think all the biographical material about investigators should be removed, leaving only research findings. Finally, perhaps with some talk on the page's own talk page, some of the less notable sections could be removed or greatly shortened, and all the sections that remain should be re-named by subject matter, instead of by person. Obviously, those would not be quick edits. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:27, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

I have added a 'reorganise' template to the section and have added a relevant section to the talkpage to hopefully get this going. I agree with your suggestions, but I think the whole section (and some of the articles linked therein) are not written in an encyclopedic mannar. Many aspects of it are more relevant in other articles, so there should be less information and more links. I think the section on Paul Bach-y-Rita for example is more relevant to the sensory substitution article, and requires less detail about the actual procedures he used. Jhbuk (talk) 15:56, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

Attachment theory at FAC

All comments /advice welcome.Fainites ^barleyscribs 14:57, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

WP:JOURNALS needs help

There are several neuroscience-related journals missing in Journals cited by Wikipedia. If you're interested, I can go through them and build a list for this project. Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 01:56, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

I looked at the links you provided, but I'm afraid I don't understand what the point is of having such a list. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:03, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

• I think what Headbomb means is that it would be good at least to have articles for those neuroscience journals that are cited as reliable sources by WP itself. Of course, the end goal would be to have articles on all neuroscience journals... --Guillaume2303 (talk) 17:21, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

Oh, I get it now, thanks. But I assume that is not to say that deciding to include a journal on the list means deciding that it is an RS? --Tryptofish (talk) 17:25, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

• Not explicitly, although if a journal meets the proposed notability guidelines for journals, it would most probably qualify as an RS, too. In any case, many journals that we would consider a reliable source don't have an article yet. To mention just one prominent one: Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews... And for many other articles, we only have stubs with the bare minimum of information. --Guillaume2303 (talk) 20:21, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

Alright well I went ahead and did it anyway. Here goes

See the writing guide

• Neurosci. Lett.
• Brain Res. Mol. Brain Res.
• Brain Res.
• Mol. Cell. Neurosci.
• J Autism Dev Disord
• Eur. J. Neurosci.
• Neuroreport
• J. Neurosci. Res.
• J. Comp. Neurol.
• Acta Neuropathol.
• Studies in Intelligence
• Neuroscience Letters
• Brain Research
• Neuropsychobiology
• J. Neural Transm. Suppl.
• J. Neuropathol. Exp. Neurol.
• Neurobiol. Aging
• Neurochem. Res.
• Cell. Mol. Neurobiol.
• Prog. Neuropsychopharmacol. Biol. Psychiatry
• J. Neurophysiol.
• Acta Neurol. Scand.
• J. Neurosurg.
• Pediatr. Neurol.
• Brain Res. Bull.
• Journal of Neurophysiology

Have fun. Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 05:19, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

I just did a couple (hence blue links), will try to do a few more in the near future. Looie496 (talk) 20:32, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

AfD of interest

I have started this AfD, and I think editors in this project may wish to give input. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:53, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

Neuroscience and Neurobiology

The article Neurobiology makes, to me at least, a rather artificial distinction between Neuroscience and Neurobiology. To me, all of neuroscience (studying a biological system, after all) falls in the realm of biology and I consider Neuroscience and Neurobiology to be mere synonyms. Some editors on Talk:Neurobiology disagree. Anyone care to join the discussion? --Guillaume2303 (talk) 09:22, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

I'm just a lowly undergraduate studying psychology and neuroscience, but I have been told that neuroscience is not the same as neurobiology - it is broader. The main reason is that not all neuroscientists can be called biologists. A biologist is someone who got a PhD in biology from a biology department. Remember that many neuroscience programs are not in biology departments these days. Many psychology departments, cognitive science programs, and interdisciplinary neuroscience programs offer a PhD in various areas of neuroscience. Would you really call someone a biologist if they were never a biology major? Also there are physicists, chemists, anthropologists, engineers, and computer scientists who work on neuroscience. You would not call them biologists. So I think it depends on the degree acquired. Arcadian Genesis (talk) 01:28, 8 November 2009 (UTC)Arcadian Genesis

• I find that a strange way of defining a field. I have a PhD in Zoology. My neighbor has a PhD in Psychology. We both do the same experiments, but I do neurobiology and he does neuroscience? --Guillaume2303 (talk) 12:43, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

It's a moot point now anyway, since neurobiology is now a redirect. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:12, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Maybe my point is that neuroscientists =/= neurobiologists, even if they are both "doing" neurobiology. I refer to the people and not the field itself. Also, there is never a "moot point" on wikipedia because it is dynamic, constantly changing. You're assuming everything is going to stay the way it is now, but I guarantee more changes will be made in the future. My suggestion is to leave it as a single article, but include a paragraph about neuroscientists who are not biologists. Arcadian Genesis (talk) 00:48, 9 November 2009 (UTC)Arcadian Genesis

I got my Ph.D. from a neuroscience program, and in fact never even took a university-level class belonging to a biology department (I did math as an undergraduate), but I still have often referred to myself as a neurobiologist. Maybe that's wrong, but I don't think it's uncommon. Looie496 (talk) 01:10, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

My moot point comment referred to the fact that this talk thread was started while a decision was beginning about whether to change the neurobiology page from a separate article into a redirect to neuroscience; that decision has now been made. As I understand it, no one is arguing for reversing that decision, and I certainly do not want to do so. Since this talk page is not a forum, and since the ways we professional scientists refer to ourselves can sometimes be a rather, well, academic matter, let's look instead at what should be done for the content of the page. I think that neuroscience already does provide information on the numerous disciplines within the field, but, by all means, please feel free to WP:BE BOLD and go ahead and add anything you feel would improve it. --Tryptofish (talk) 15:44, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Draft welcome page for SfN members

User:Proteins has been working on what I think is shaping up to be a superb welcome page for the new editors from SfN, and I've been making a few minor tweaks to it. The draft page can be found here. Perhaps other editors involved in the WikiProject might want to take a look at it before we make a link to it from the Wikiproject page. Thanks. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:08, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

ConnectomeWiki Released

Recently this year (March 2009), there has been a paper published by a number of neuroscientists entitled:
"A Proposal for a Coordinated Effort for the Determination of Brainwide Neuroanatomical Connectivity in Model Organisms at a Mesoscopic Scale".

The ConnectomeWiki is an open and collaborative platform concerned with the goals of this proposal.
Please see User:ConnectomeBot for the discussion! --Unidesigner (talk) 13:57, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

A discussion about this bot at the Village pump

I opened a discussion at the VPR (Village Pump Proposals) about this ConnectomeBot's RFBA. --IP69.226.103.13 (talk) 03:32, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

I have commented there. It might be better for future discussions to take place here, because the people who watch this page probably have a better understanding of the neuroscience-related issues than the people who watch the Village Pump, and are less likely to give an automatic negative response. Looie496 (talk) 18:41, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

I agree the people here are less likely to give an immediate negative response. This is a direction for en.wiki to start linking to specialist knowledge in a useful way, and we need to AGF when it is in evidence, as it is in this case.

However, the discussion has to be in high visibility location, so, I think, in the future, initial discussion should be at VPR, with notices on the specialist boards. If you think I've missed notifying, anyone, please addnotification as needed. I appreciate your taking the time to consider the issue and offer an opinion that contributes to more knowledge for the community, and I will make sure we notify this board in the future about bots with neurology related issues. --IP69.226.103.13 (talk) 22:58, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

I agree that the discussion has to be at a high-visibility location, but I think you are more likely to succeed (in the future, not now) if you recruit support here before bringing it up there. Regards, Looie496 (talk) 17:24, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

My job isn't to get support. I think the community can figure out what is wanted without my putting up a biased issue for discussion. My primary concern is that the decision for linking externally be a community decision, and that any bots performing such tasks have the blessing of the community. There may be times when coming here first is appropriate, though, for example, if this wiki were already stable, in which case I will. I thank you for your time considering this bot issue, and I will post notices about related bots here. --IP69.226.103.13 (talk) 19:20, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Peer review for book Brainwashing: The Science of Thought Control

I put the article about the book Brainwashing: The Science of Thought Control up for peer review. Input would be appreciated, at Wikipedia:Peer review/Brainwashing: The Science of Thought Control/archive1. Cirt (talk) 01:51, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

List of neuroscience topics

I've just spent a few hours expanding and reformulating this into a general guide to Wikipedia's neuroscience coverage. Comments would be welcome -- no doubt I've missed at least a few important things -- and also opinions about whether it would be appropriate to put a pointer to this at the top of the Neuroscience article, and perhaps even Nervous system as well. Looie496 (talk) 19:49, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for doing that. It looks like a big improvement. I haven't gone through it carefully yet, but I will when I have time. I like the idea of pointing to it from other pages. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:38, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

Wikilinked image map of synapse

Postsynaptic
density

Voltage-
gated Ca⁺⁺
channel

Synaptic
vesicle

Neurotransmitter
transporter

Receptor

Neurotransmitter

Axon terminal

Synaptic cleft

Dendrite

Structure of a typical chemical synapse

I'd like to note that I just set up this wikilinked image map of a synapse, with the aim of replacing the simple image that is used in many articles. I've already put it into a couple. My grasp of template syntax is limited, so if you spot any problems or possible improvements, please let me know. (Or fix it if you want to, of course!) Looie496 (talk) 19:52, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks again, great work! (And after I went and copyedited the caption for the old image! :-) ) --Tryptofish (talk) 19:58, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

Nice one! well done --The.Filsouf (talk) 01:05, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

Inhibitory Control Test

Started an article about Inhibitory Control Test. Help is welcomed. Cheers, --CopperKettle 23:52, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

Category:Fish nervous system

I have proposed deleting Category:Fish nervous system.

See the discussion at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2010 January 7#Category:Fish_nervous_system, where your comments would be welcome. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 17:32, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

Reelin trouble

• nl:Reeline is proposed for deletion again at the Dutch Wiki.. D'oh. Please help. --CopperKettle 09:55, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

WP 1.0 bot announcement

This message is being sent to each WikiProject that participates in the WP 1.0 assessment system. On Saturday, January 23, 2010, the WP 1.0 bot will be upgraded. Your project does not need to take any action, but the appearance of your project's summary table will change. The upgrade will make many new, optional features available to all WikiProjects. Additional information is available at the WP 1.0 project homepage. — Carl (CBM · talk) 03:41, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Request for help with Nervous system#Development

I've been working on Nervous system for the last few weeks, and feel like I've been making pretty good progress, but the Development section has really been giving me hell. Development has always been my weak point, and I don't have much confidence in being able to put together a section that is both correct and accessible to a typical reader of such a high-level article. If anybody would be able to help out with this, I would be very appreciative. I think that in other respects the article is getting close to GA-class. Unfortunately the Neural development article is even more incoherent than what I have been able to accomplish, so it isn't very helpful. Regards, Looie496 (talk) 19:40, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

I've been following your work on that with much appreciation, and have been feeling guilty about not pitching in more myself. But I'm over-extended on other pages, and will be for some time (plus development is a weak area for me too). At some point, I'll go through it carefully, though. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:51, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Neurodegeneration and Neurodegenerative disease

I'm inclined to think these two articles should be merged. Neurodegeneration is a pretty decent article; Neurodegenerative disease is pretty much junk except that it contains a useful list of disorders. What I would like to do is convert Neurodegenerative disease into a redirect to Neurodegeneration, while extracting out the list as a new article List of neurodegenerative disorders. Any opinions? Looie496 (talk) 19:38, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

I'd support the merge, but oppose creation of the new article. It would probably be better to just delete that list. Almost any condition could be considered neurodegenerative, so there's not much benefit to having an unreferenced list. --Arcadian (talk) 02:03, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

I'd also support the merge. I also agree with Arcadian that there isn't a strong case for a separate list page, but there's an alternative to just deleting it entirely (and, no, not all conditions are degenerative). Instead of deleting the list or making a list page, how about just merging the list to a section at the end of the merged article? --Tryptofish (talk) 20:15, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Hmm. How about if I create a Neurodegenerative disorders category and simply put those things into it? Looie496 (talk) 19:46, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Yes, that's much better than a list page. I would then be ambivalent about a list in the new merged article. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:09, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Okay, I have created and populated the category, moved the useful stuff over, and converted to a redirect. Looie496 (talk) 19:15, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

FAR for Action potential

I have nominated Action potential for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Pyrrhus 16 18:52, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

GA reassessment of Prion

I have conducted a reassessment of the above article as part of the GA Sweeps process. You are being notified as this project's banner is on the article talk page. I have found some concerns which you can see at Talk:Prion/GA1. I have placed the article on hold whilst these are fixed. Thanks. Jezhotwells (talk) 21:35, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

Magnetism

Magnetism (neurological sign) has been nominated for deletion here as a possible hoax. There are no refs, but the editor's usual standard was quite high, e.g., [4][5][6], so I really doubt that it's a hoax. Is there perhaps another name for this phenomenon? WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:44, 25 March 2010 (UTC)

Whether an intentional hoax or not, it's utter BS, and should be deleted as such, which I'm going to suggest at the AfD. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:52, 25 March 2010 (UTC)

Retinal ganglion cells

Can someone from this project take a look at Parvocellular part, Magnocellular part, and Koniocellular? The terminology and article names don't seem to match, among other issues. I'm not sure the best way to organize these articles. Cmcnicoll (talk) 02:53, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

I've taken a look, but I'm not the best person to advise about visual pathways, so I'm just commenting here, without making any edits. Retinal ganglion cell#Types lists these three kinds of cells in what seems to be a reasonable way, although there are a bunch of red links that need to be changed. I do not see any problems with Parvocellular cell or Magnocellular cell. However, Koniocellular cell makes it sound like these are cells whose cell bodies are within the Lateral geniculate nucleus, whereas Retinal ganglion cells makes it sound like they are a type of ganglion cell, ie, post- versus pre-synaptic, so something would appear to need correction there. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:50, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

The Parvocellular, Magnocellular, and Koniocellular cells are not retinal ganglion cells, but are the next cells in the central visual pathway, which is named after them. The retinal ganglion cells are the midget, bistratified, parasol, and photosensitive cells. Cmcnicoll (talk) 08:33, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Gah, parvocellular cell and magnocellular cell are not very good terms; they're redundant. Parovcellular part and magnocellular part are correct, they mean the part with the small cells and the part with the large cells respectively. But the articles are bogus in any case in suggesting that there are systematic evolutionary differences between large and small cells that apply across nuclei -- this is specific to the LGN as far as I know. Looie496 (talk) 04:21, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Ah, I am glad that you have brought this to my attention. I am in no way an expert, and am not even a member of this wikiproject, but I was just trying to clarify the info as best I could. It would be great if you could bring your expertise to this problem. I made some changes to the articles, can you take a look and see if it is even close to being correct & clear? I thought that distinct cell types are specific for the LGN, which is what I made the article about. Would changing the article titles to Parvocellular/Koniocellular/Magnocellular lateral geniculate nucleus be better? This is a little less vague than just "Parvocellular part." Or is Parvocellular layer etc. better? At any rate, are the articles factually incorrect as is? I mean, are there not discrete neurons in the layers of the LGN called parvocellular, koniocellular, and magnocellular neurons? In that case, lateral geniculate nucleus needs a lot of work too. If you have time, please take a look at the disambiguation pages Parvocellular and Magnocellular too.Cmcnicoll (talk) 08:33, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Notification regarding Wikipedia-Books

Hadronic Matter An overview

An example of a book cover, taken from Book:Hadronic Matter

As detailed in last week's Signpost, WikiProject Wikipedia books is undertaking a cleanup all Wikipedia books. Particularly, the {{saved book}} template has been updated to allow editors to specify the default covers of the books. Title, subtitle, cover-image, and cover-color can all be specified, and an HTML preview of the cover will be generated and shown on the book's page (an example of such a cover is found on the right). Ideally, all books in Category:Book-Class neuroscience articles should have covers.

If you need help with the {{saved book}} template, or have any questions about books in general, see Help:Books, Wikipedia:Books, and Wikipedia:WikiProject Wikipedia-Books, or ask me on my talk page. Also feel free to join WikiProject Wikipedia-Books, as we need all the help we can get.

This message was delivered by User:EarwigBot, at 00:43, 8 April 2010 (UTC), on behalf of Headbomb. Headbomb probably isn't watching this page, so if you want him to reply here, just leave him a message on his talk page. EarwigBot ^{(owner • talk)} 00:43, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Article in need of attention from an expert

I encountered the article Marijuana and the brain and found several statements in the article to be false, not supported by the references given, and many more statements which I believe are misleading. The article presents many interesting studies, but I feel the primary author of this article may have misunderstood some of the findings, presenting them from a personal bias. The organization of the article is also confusing. I believe many terms and concepts are not properly introduced and may further confuse readers. I would appreciate the assistance of another editor to help resolve some of the issues in the article. --Tea with toast (talk) 00:44, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

I see what you mean. It will take rather a lot of effort, so I may not be able to help quickly, but I will try to help. I've added some other WikiProjects to the template at the top of the page; in particular, you might want to repeat this message at WT:PHARM. I read the lengthy comment by the IP on the talk page, and it strikes me as mostly an unsupported rant, however. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:01, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Missing neurology topics

I've updated my list of missing topics related to neurology - Skysmith (talk) 13:22, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. I'm keeping a link to it. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:45, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

History of neuroscience, starting to write biographies

Hey guys, maybe you remember me from last year I started collecting works from the 18th - 19th - 20th century concerning pre-history and history of neuroscience. I'm now starting to write the biographies. Paul Souriau is my first one, started from scratch. So if you have a minute, have a look and come back to me with some comments, the more errors we correct now, the better the next biographies will look! Jean-Francois Gariepy (talk) 23:33, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

update: also I just finished Henri-Étienne Beaunis's biography, if you want to check it out. Jean-Francois Gariepy (talk) 23:24, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

For those who want to participate in some of the tasks identified as TODO in the history of neuroscience project, I'm starting to make lists of subjects and biographies that we need to cover here Jean-Francois Gariepy (talk) 04:09, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for filling this previously overlooked gap in our coverage of the subject! --Tryptofish (talk) 16:26, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

Cool! Henri-Étienne Beaunis article nominated for Did you know! Jean-Francois Gariepy (talk) 23:42, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

Neuroscience of free will

I thought everyone here would be interested in lending constructive criticism to a newish page called the Neuroscience of free will. It discusses any studies that have direct, interesting implications for the free will hypothesis.Tesseract2 (talk) 17:57, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

Requested move: mesencephalon → midbrain

Hello, I wish to find out what people think of the idea of renaming the article on “mesencephalon” to “midbrain”? Please to go talk:mesencephalon to offer your input. Bwrs (talk) 04:18, 30 June 2010 (UTC)

Brain cell illustration

We are devising an illustration of a brain cell and would appreciate input here. Anthony (talk) 19:46, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

Equivalent word for illegible with respect to images

Please see Wikipedia:Reference desk/Language#Equivalent word for illegible with respect to images (permanent link here, section 7.8).
—Wavelength (talk) 16:07, 23 July 2010 (UTC)

New Neuroscience Article

Hello, I just recently made the Dynamical Neuroscience wiki article. Please consider giving me input on the page and updating relevant neuroscience articles that you may curate to link to this new article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Xurtio (talk • contribs) 04:55, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Cool, it's a nice start. The Hopfield stuff and Attractor Neural Network stuff also count as dynamical neuroscience, don't they? Looie496 (talk) 06:10, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Would be great if you used inline citations, but nice work.--Garrondo (talk) 06:38, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Thank you both for your input:

• inline citations added, will try to make a habit of that
• will do some research on your inquiry Looie

Xurtio (talk) 09:18, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Looie, Attractor Networks seem to be what I'm talking about when I mention dynamic networks but I should probably double check with my advisor. From what work I've done on the Morris Lecar model, it seems to fit the description. It also seems to be a Hopfield network. Either way, I should probably include these terms once I confirm this and sleep on their definitions. -X Xurtio (talk) 11:48, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

I should probably just add a whole dynamical neural network subsection. -X Xurtio (talk) 11:52, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

There is a couple of major issues with this new article. In some sentences, it looks more like a live discussion about your opinions on dynamical systems in the field of neuroscience rather than an actual encyclopedia-style article about what it is really. There are a lot of "wishful thinking" sentences that are typical of new articles bent at promoting a certain view rather than describing encyclopedically the facts. Do you think that most people making computational neuroscience and using non-linear equations define themselves as "dynamical neuroscientists" ? I personaly read Dayan & Abbott and others, and although it is not my primary field of research, I didn't end up with the impression that dynamical neuroscience is a term that is accepted by the whole community, am I wrong ? What I see described in this article is Theoritical neuroscience, Computational neuroscience with what is often referred to as Hodgkin-Huxley-like models and more simplified versions of the model. I am not approaching the problems in this article with a closed mind but I would like you to prove your point and give us references which show that dynamical neuroscience is a term that is generally accepted. From what I could gather, this is a rather new term and simply googling it shows that you are one of the only persons who actually use it. The SfN did use it as a title for poster sessions in their meetings, but from your article it seems a pretty new term and it is not clear how it is really a useful denomination considering that computational neuroscience already encompass these kind of models. Moreover, even if you would in fact bring the references showing that this is a generally accepted term by people using these models, the article needs a major restructuration and I would say, a merge. If people here end up with the decision that dynamical neuroscience does in fact deserve a wikipedia article (I don't see the point since this is just computational neuroscience with non-linearity ... Computational neuroscience have always been non-linear), even if people choose to keep it, I would definetly suggest rewriting the whole article, especially the historical part which looks more like a fantasmed view of how this field developed rather than a true description of what happened. The nomenclature part needs to be completely deleted, it is not pertinent and actually makes it less clear what you really mean, and the relation of dynamical neuroscience with respect to other fields. It is typical for new Wikipedians to want to define everything the way they want, thinking they will clarify the situation, but it makes the article extremely tendentious and makes it look more like a promotion pamphlet rather than an encyclopedic article. The other sections are also of very low quality, everything looking as it was thrown out there. An article about a subfield of theoritical neuroscience is not the place to make small comments about the current view on glia, neuromodulation or cognitive neuroscience. Do the authors cited in this section consider themselves as "dynamical neuroscientist" ? I doubt it. So this article becomes a primary research article where a given author (you) tries to argue about why all these works should be placed in Dynamical neuroscience. Unfortunately, Wikipedia is not the place to argue. Even the hallmark books that you cite in the text do not use the term Dynamical neuroscience, they use theoritical neuroscience and "dynamical systems in neuroscience", so beside the name of 1 conference, I don't see what would justify a separate article for dynamical neuroscience since most of the models used in computational neuroscience are already non-linear by nature. Jean-Francois Gariepy (talk) 02:05, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

I suggested a merge of the article to Computational Neuroscience. Please participate in the discussion here. Jean-Francois Gariepy (talk) 02:29, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

The term dynamical neuroscience has been around for a while, but most of the uses I've seen have been about the application of dynamical systems theory to neuroscience -- the article probably construes the term a bit more broadly than I would. Looie496 (talk) 02:57, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

Looie, that's exactly what it's supposed to be. The emphasis is on the nonlinear part because most linear systems don't need a computer for the analysis part (they just do standard analysis). In nonlinear analysis, computation is used to approximate nonlinear equations. Xurtio (talk) 04:04, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

I just consulted the Encyclopedia of Neuroscience edited by Binder et al., a more than 4000 pages collective work that seeks to index all concepts and words used in the field of neuroscience and give a short explanation about it. It is a very specialized encyclopedia that contains explanation for many subdisciplines of theoritical neurosciences, and was written by hundreds of leading experts in the field. Just a couple of concepts that are indexed, to give you an idea of the level of specialization, it goes from : actinopterygian, mammals, vertebrates to the across-fiber pattern code hypothesis, the actin-associating protein kinase, or balance laws. There is no mention of dynamical neuroscience, not even as an indexed substitute word. It would be weird if a general encyclopedia like Wikipedia seeked to be more specialized than a specialized encyclopedia made for people in the field. They do mention dynamical systems as a concept used in engineering which is relevant to modelisation in computational neuroscience, but clearly they don't mention Dynamical neuroscience, and they tend to be very bold in defining substitue words. Jean-Francois Gariepy (talk) 05:16, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

At this point, it is good that this talk section is notifying interested editors of the discussion elsewhere, but this talk is no longer the right venue to discuss the Dynamical neuroscience page, or the merger proposal at Talk:Computational neuroscience. --Tryptofish (talk) 15:07, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

Neural Oscillations

Well, ironically, the new article I made is very relevant to the neural oscillations article in a strange way. The article used to be called neurodynamics and includes some of the history of neurodynamics, but then specializes in neural oscillations. It even redirects from neurodynamics.

I have my page at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Xurtio/Dynamical_neuroscience

The proper name for the what I've been calling 'dynamical neuroscience' is indeed 'neurodynamics'. 'Dynamical Neuroscience' is used as well by the neurodynamics group, but it's not very common. My allure to it was that 'neuroscience' seems more broad then 'neuron' to me and today it's grown to encompass more than just neurons, but I desist.

But I think we might consider sorting out the two pages so that one is actually neurodynamics in general, and one is the specific concept of 'neural oscillations'.

Anyway, as always, I'd like to hear the communities opinion. Xurtio (talk) 07:30, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

Neurophysics

In addition to this, I think the neurophysics page needs attention. There's several Theoretical Neurophysics departments that do what I'm specializing in (neurodynamics) but there's also quantum consciousness approaches being labeled neurophysics (which I guess makes sense). But then there's also neurophysics as a sort of biotechnology practice. So we need a disambiguation page as well. Xurtio (talk) 08:10, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

The term Dynamical neuroscience is familiar to me (maybe that's just because I've attended the SFN symposiums), but the terms neurodynamics and especially neurophysics seem very little used in the community. Wikipedia ought to follow standards of terminology rather than trying to shape them. Looie496 (talk) 16:34, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

I agree that we need to follow standards of terminology of course, but those standards have proven to be a bit elusive as far as internet research goes. See on my discussion page above about the history of the term "neurodynamics" (it originated in cognitive sciences). "Neurophysics" is a term you're more likely to see in a physics department where the actual nonlinear analysis is likely performed. The cognitive scientists seem to take the results from the physicists and make interpretations based on their cognitive experiments, but I'm still trying to put all this terminology together. We might want to continue this discussion at the relevant page: User talk:Xurtio/Dynamical neuroscience Xurtio (talk) 17:12, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

I think the point about needing a disambiguation page is a good one. I'd like to see that, too. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:05, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

Here's a start to it; I've crammed all three pages (disambiguation, theoretical, and applied). If you have any comments, read the discussion first and post there please:

User:Xurtio/Sandbox Xurtio (talk) 08:42, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

Discussion about pathways templates

Users here may be interested in the discussion at Wikipedia:WikiProject Molecular and Cellular Biology/Proposals#Adding interactive pathway maps, which may affect page content at pages involved in this project. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:21, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

Definition Efference copy and article throughout

I have raised some basic questions at Talk:Efference copy about the article's lede and some other passages. Since you assess the article C/Mid and it is written from a neuroscientific perspective I would like to bring this to the attention of your project, and I would be glad if there is some interest. Best, Morton Shumway—talk 23:30, 11 September 2010 (UTC).

Neuroscience articles have been selected for the Wikipedia 0.8 release

Version 0.8 is a collection of Wikipedia articles selected by the Wikipedia 1.0 team for offline release on USB key, DVD and mobile phone. Articles were selected based on their assessed importance and quality, then article versions (revisionIDs) were chosen for trustworthiness (freedom from vandalism) using an adaptation of the WikiTrust algorithm.

We would like to ask you to review the Neuroscience articles and revisionIDs we have chosen. Selected articles are marked with a diamond symbol (♦) to the right of each article, and this symbol links to the selected version of each article. If you believe we have included or excluded articles inappropriately, please contact us at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.8 with the details. You may wish to look at your WikiProject's articles with cleanup tags and try to improve any that need work; if you do, please give us the new revisionID at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.8. We would like to complete this consultation period by midnight UTC on Monday, October 11th.

We have greatly streamlined the process since the Version 0.7 release, so we aim to have the collection ready for distribution by the end of October, 2010. As a result, we are planning to distribute the collection much more widely, while continuing to work with groups such as One Laptop per Child and Wikipedia for Schools to extend the reach of Wikipedia worldwide. Please help us, with your WikiProject's feedback!

For the Wikipedia 1.0 editorial team, SelectionBot 23:23, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

RfA

Most people who watch this page will be familiar with Looie496's work. If you're interested in expressing an opinion, please see Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Looie496. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:32, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

Need some help

There are three outstanding "expert assistance" requests related to neuroscience:

• Autonomic nervous system
• Central pattern generator
• Holonomic brain theory

{{Expert-subject}} sometimes gets spammed to articles that just need some attention from anybody, but if someone here could please look over these three and figure out what help, if any, was wanted -- and to either fix the articles or to remove the tags, if you can't figure out what's going on -- I'd appreciate it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:58, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

The ANS article is in need of major help. It has large section that are completely unsourced. It needs more than an expert- it needs help. I'll pick a section and see what I can do. Basket of Puppies 18:02, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Personally, I don't think the first two listed are much worse than many other pages that are around, and are better than many. I removed the tags on those two. After doing so, I came here and saw Basket of Puppies' comment. Seems to me that that could be addressed simply by an unreferenced-section tag. As for the Holonomic page, phew! Looks bizzaro to me, and I'm leaving it tagged. Given the extent of my other unfinished Wiki-tasks, and given that all three are a little peripheral (no pun intended!) to my neuroscience interests, I'm not going to give any of them any further time, but maybe others here will. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:09, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Too many misconceptions??

Editors in this project may be interested in a merger proposal at Talk:List of misconceptions about the brain#Merger proposal. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:19, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

Importance of the LGN

I am not sure how "importance" is decided, but making the LGN lowest importance is completely crazy. All the visual input to the cortex (the nest studies part of the brain) comes through the lgn. This would be like ranking the "gravity" article in Physics unimportant!!Paulhummerman (talk) 00:49, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

Those importance ratings are actually not very important themselves -- they aren't really used for anything. But I agree that, on a scale where Top=Brain and High=Cerebral Cortex, the LGN should probably come in at Mid rather than Low. Looie496 (talk) 03:25, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Book:Neurochemitry

Some help would be appreciated to decide the fate of this book. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 16:13, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

Wow, I was completely unaware that Wikipedia even has a "Book" space. I hardly seems worthwhile spending any effort on these things unless they are given a bit more publicity. Looie496 (talk) 18:36, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

Well actually this has been covered by multiple press releases, and several Signpost articles (see full list) , so... The Book: namespace has been around since...last January I think, although books themselves date from March 2009. Like everything on Wikipedia, quality varies (Book:Canada, Book:Messier objects are great, some have weird scopes Book:Animals in warfare but are nonetheless nice, and a couple just suck Book:Demons and Angels), but with feedback from both WikiProject Wikipedia Books and the book's topics' WikiProject, books usually end up closer to the "great" side of things. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 22:58, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

Intelligence Citations Bibliography for Articles Related to Human Intelligence

I wasn't aware of this WikiProject previously. Keep up the good work. Meanwhile, since I've begun editing a half year ago, I've seen several requests for more neuroscience perspective in articles such as Intelligence (which is badly in need of a top-to-bottom rewrite), Intelligence quotient (better, with editors already suggesting some helpful changes on the talk page), Race and intelligence (the subject of a recent Arbitration Committee case, and full of citations to primary research studies, including neuroscience studies, that may not have been replicated), and several of the other articles in the same categories as those. You can help other Wikipedians by suggesting new sources for the Intelligence Citations bibliography through comments on that page. I have been digging into the psychology literature for a while to build up that citation list, and you can tell me all you want to say about the neuroscience literature, the better to share good sources with other wikipedians. It will be extremely helpful for articles on human intelligence to edit them according to the Wikipedia standards for reliable sources for medicine-related articles, as it is important to get these issues as well verified as possible. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 23:28, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Retinohypothalamic tract

is at present not a part of any WikiProject. Can neuroscience adopt this orphan? Thanks, Hordaland (talk) 19:21, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

Done. Thanks for pointing it out. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:49, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

Copied from Category talk:Wikipedian members of the Society for Neuroscience Wikipedia Initiative‎

Hi all, I will be presenting a poster in San Diego on Saturday detailing the experience we had in my inro to neuroscience course during the fall 2009 semester with Neuroscience stub expansion and editing. If anyone from this group is attending and is interested, it will be shown during the public outreach session. -Neurojoe

Great! I'll look for it. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:48, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

Parkinson's disease

I have just nominated Parkinson's disease for good article, as a way of improving it before taking it to FAC. While I believe that sources and scope are a strong point of the article, I know that my prose is far from being as professional as it should. Any kind of comments or copy-editing would be most useful. A commited reviewer would also be great, since the article is quite long. Thanks to everybody.

I was also thinking of an image for the symptoms section, and I thought of a writting by a PD patient with micrography. I do not have such kind of image, but maybe somebody from the project is capable of getting one directly from a patient. Best image would be a short text with some rule on it to show scale...--Garrondo (talk) 20:07, 8 November 2010 (UTC)