Hello, my name is….

TEDMed 2015

So a bit of a humble brag - I’m super excited about being lead panelist at the   ‘Brain Hack, Big Data’ discussion during TEDmed2015 

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/tedmed-live-melbourne-tickets-19340267260

WHEN: Saturday, November 21, 2015 from 9:30 AM to 4:00 PM (AEDT) - Add to Calendar

WHERE: Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research - 1G Royal Parade Parkville, VIC 3052 AU -

Thanks to an introduction from Fiona C Tweedie I am talking to the marvelous Dr Grace Lai about brain computer interfaces in a fireside chat. I have clear instructions to point out that my bit isn’t a “Ted Talk” - capital T. It is a fireside chat at a Ted Talk event….kind of a Ted associated chat beside an official Ted Talk….allegedly. Still excited!

I was forced, in the nicest possible way, to write a bio about myself and thought I might tick off two todo items at the same time. I have been promising Dejan our wizard social media manager at Research Platforms I will do my introductory Tumblr blog for several weeks now and I just really need to get these things done. So…

Hi my name is….

Once upon a time, in a land far far away called Warrnambool, lived a family of dairy farmers going by the name of Walsh.

Things were peaceful in the land of Warrnambool until one day, a baby was born and they named him Alistair.

I had an intense fascination with Computer games when I was growing up. To the point that I think my parents were quite worried about me. Despite not understanding why I was so fascinated by video games and their badly drawn graphics and repetitive movement, they did buy a Commodore 128 for the family one christmas and I got to see what was making those graphics and the repetitive movements for myself. It further fueled my passion to understand how computers worked.

Digital Synthesisers became available just as I was starting to realise those piano lessons might just pay off by getting me into a band. But I wanted to be Rick Wakeman not Elton John.

I worked weekends cutting lawns until I could buy a Korg Poly-800 and started learning how to create sounds with subtractive synthesis. The “poly” was the first in a long line of computerised keyboards that I owned and although I was unaware of it at the time, this was my introduction to the world of signal processing for profit and pleasure.

I was just thinking about being a rock star!

Digital Music and sequencers were my first experience with programming too, chances are most people wouldn’t recognise it as programming but it had all the elements - it just didn’t look the same and the keyboard had piano keys other than typewriter keys.

While I was working as a musician and audio engineer I first started thinking about Brain computer interfaces. Of course, I didn’t know that’s what they were called till later. Technology was changing everything and was a fantastic tool. It was also often difficult to interact with and I thought that one day “someone” would make a device that could read my thoughts and transfer that directly to a computer.

After an anxious period wondering what was going to happen to me, my parents were relieved to hear I wanted to go back to study and get a “real job”. I decided on Psychology and started to call universities looking for somewhere to study it. On the day that I called Swinburne University to ask about the new Psychology/Psychophysiology dual degree, I was put through to Dr. Joeseph Ciorciari. I realised later how odd it was for the course convener to be taking calls from future students who randomly called the switch board. At the time I had no idea that to talk to the person running the course was a fluke that didn’t happen often.

I simultaneously enjoyed and hated studying subjects with both reductionist and dualist ideas. Psychology refers to both the mind and the brain almost as if they were interchangeable terms.

Physiology and neuroscience don’t believe the mind exists - there is only the brain and thinking there is a disembodied entity called the mind is superstition and sloppy thinking.

I eventually came to sit more on the dualist side.

That has now been mirrored by working with people and computers. I have to tell them if I’m a people person or a technical person - as if it’s not possible to be both. Even when I say I’m both things - I’m a social sciences researcher who also programs. I can see them still trying to work out which I am. I think I fall more on the side of being a people person but when the robots become self aware I will support their calls for personhood. I will also ask them make me into a cyborg. Shortly after that I will make a reality TV show about it called “Cyber-pimp my Ride”.

Anyway, back to the story. Joe, along with Dr. David White, became my Honours supervisors and guided me through creating my first BCI using a neuroscan 64 channel EEG system in the labs at Swinburne. The idea was to use BCI in depression research but building the BCI took the entire year. I realised I needed more skills in the software side, if I was going to work this out.

I started learning Python. Actually I blankly stared at Python scripts without any level of understanding for a long time. Then I went to a Software Carpentry Workshop run by DR. Climate - Damien Irving.

That’s when it all started to fall into place. Having come from a low level language (C++), I had failed to grasp how simple python syntax was. I was overthinking it. Once I got the hang of it, I started encouraging others to learn it. This XKCD comic sums it up really

I went to workshops, I helped at workshops, I eventually did the teacher training at ResBaz2015 and now I work at Research Platforms teaching Python to researchers.

If that sounds a little bit like you, the teacher training is happening again just before Resbaz 2016 and the application is here Train the Trainer 2016

Since I started working with BCI, there have been two main things I work towards.

BCI will allow us to interact with computers more fluidly, possibly more naturally. This sometimes gets called IoT or the “Internet of Things” We will have the stored knowledge of the internet at our neuron-tips. We will live in a world where devices and appliances are attentive to us and hopefully we will take it all for granted (it will be that good).

The other goal for me is to develop the therapeutic possibilities of BCI - usually referred to as Neuro Feedback. It’s been know since the 60’s that if you show a persons brain activity to them, they can learn to consciously change it. If you show somebody with a disorder like Autism an image of what neuro-typical brain activity looks like and ask them to make theirs like that - they can reduce the symptoms of Autism. I’m gonna let that sink in for a moment.

I get very excited about methods of treating disorders that are in the hands of the individual being treated. The change is driven by their efforts and as shown by a growing number of experiments, brings about permanent (or at least long term) change even after the treatment is over.

Hi! My name is Alistair Walsh and I am a ResCom at Melbourne Uni. If you would like to talk about learning Python for yourself or your department, please send me an email - alistair.walsh@unimelb.edu.au

or sign up here for Python or any of the other courses we offer