Unsupervised Thinking

On this unique episode of Unsupervised Thinking, we talk not about a particular area of science, but about the process of doing science itself. In particular, we're discussing how scientists take in information from their niche research areas and beyond. The topic for this free-form conversation stemmed from interviews we collected at the latest Computational and Systems Neuroscience Conference (Cosyne), where we asked people to tell us about a research finding from outside their area that they thought was cool. You'll hear those interviews in this episode, along with our motivation for asking that question and our reaction to the responses. We then go on to speak broadly about our experiences at different conferences both big and small. In particular, we reveal how attending talks from far-reaching areas of science is a great way to build appreciation for your field and contextual your research. Ultimately, influence from talks and colleagues is how scientists choose their projects, and so decisions of what