Chrastil Lab publishes a paper in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (2022), “Linking global top-down views to first-person views in the brain”
Authors: Xing, J., Chrastil, E.R., Nitz, D.A., Krichmar, J.L.
*See link to paper under publications tab!
Neuroscience 2022, hosted by SfN, took place across 5 days in San Diego, CA, and many of our lab members presented their work. Shoutout to Nikki for taking photos of our poster presenters and a huge congrats to the presenters!
Talks:
Posters (click on the presenter’s name for their photo):
Liz presented her department-wide tenure talk titled “Spatial navigation as a window into human learning and memory” on November 8th, which neatly summarized the lab’s research questions, impact, current studies, and future directions. She talked about the lab’s complementary use of immersive virtual reality technology and neuroimaging techniques to study how humans acquire and use spatial knowledge. The talk included ongoing studies and recent findings led by various lab members and concluded with the ways that navigation lends insights to human learning and memory processes. Congrats on a great talk, Liz!
Chrastil Lab publishes a paper in Machine Learning with Applications (2022), “Who believes they are good navigators? A machine learning pipeline highlights the impact of gender, commuting time, and education”
Authors: Cheng, Y., He, C., Hegarty, M., Chrastil, E.R.
*See link to paper under publications tab!
The CNLM hosted its annual Halloween Brainfest with a lab costume contest on Friday afternoon. Labs from multiple departments came together for catered tacos, a zombie-brain cake, and a friendly costume competition. The Chrastil lab dressed up as Spiderman to recreate the popular meme, spreading laughs and winning hearts.
Pictured (left to right): Nikki, Sarvia, Vaisakh, Theo, Liz, Alina, and Daniela.
The lab decorated the community center to celebrate Halloween over the weekend. We started out the afternoon with some food, snacks, and Halloween candy and ended it with pumpkin carving. Thank you, Daniela, for organizing this event!
Top (left to right): Sarvia, Erica, Theo, Vaisakh, Liz, Alina, and Mike. Bottom (left to right): Rosana, Daniela, and Nikki. Not pictured: Olivia.
Chrastil Lab publishes a paper in Frontiers in Virtual Reality (2022), “A new psychometric task measuring spatial perspective taking in ambulatory virtual reality”
Authors: He, C., Chrastil, E.R., Hegarty, M.
The task, data, and analysis scripts are publicly available on GitHub. Check out our Lab Resources tab for more information.
*See link to paper under publications tab!
Chrastil Lab publishes a paper in NeuroImage (2022), “Theta oscillations support active exploration in human spatial navigation”
Authors: Chrastil, E.R., Rice, C., Goncalves, M., Moore, K.N., Wynn, S.C., Stern, C.E., Nyhus, E.
*See link under publications tab!
The RAs led the organization of a lab social at Irvine Regional Park last Sunday afternoon with the summer lab members. Folks brought pizza, charcuterie board, snacks, sparkling water, and other beverages for a relaxing get-together event outdoors. Thanks to the RAs who helped plan this event for the lab!
The Institutional National Research Service Award (T32) is a training grant for predoctoral and postdoctoral trainees to prepare for careers with significant impact in health-related research. Erica was recently awarded this grant for the Mathematical, Computational, and Systems Biology (MCSB) program specifically, which, according to their grant description online, “requests support for a pre-doctoral training program designed to produce Ph.D.s with sufficient skills in fundamental biology, mathematical and computational modeling, and data science to attack these challenges [in biomedical science] head on.” The training program will involve an extensive cirriculum, close mentorship, and collaborative learning. Congrats, Erica!
