Hello!

Here’s a thread about a learning technique that’s served me well. I think it’s intuitive and joyful, and hope you find it useful too.

Introducing

the Web of Awesomeness

A little context, for those unfamiliar: I’m a disabled person who takes an interest in neuroscience.

Recently, some people implied I must REALLY be a doctor and not a disabled person (untrue), assumedly because patients “shouldn’t” know this stuff.

Like many aggravating and pointless experiences, it also contains an opportunity to turn it into something positive.

So I’d like to show you how I approach learning new subjects, and how doing so can be surprisingly organic.

Would love to have your feedback at the end!

Rather than dealing immediately w brain science, which can be intimidating, let’s start w something most people enjoy: music!

Let’s say you literally didn’t know anything about music. You’ve been very sheltered and just now get to really explore it. Hey. It happens.

Let’s say, arbitrarily, you decide to start your explorations with the Beatles.

You listen to their albums, you become fascinated and read their interviews. Great start.

Then you read one day that their arch-rival back in the 60s was this band called the Rolling Stones. You listen and don’t like them as much. That’s ok.

By checking out the Stones, you discover that they were part of a booming London scene that included the Who, the Yardbirds, and Cream. You read about how all of them were rocked when guitar phenom Jimi Hendrix arrived from the States.

Now you start getting really into Hendrix! Rad.

You sign up for a streaming service and find a playlist called “psych-rock” cuz it has Hendrix on it. Then you discover something that totally blows your mind:

TAME IMPALA. It’s like that trippy stuff from the 60s you like, but it also sounds BRAND NEW. You check out Rihanna’s version of “Same Old Mistakes.” It’s great.

Then at some point you realize you can still go back to the Beatles. You return to Sgt Pepper again but now it sounds totally different.

You’ve gained a new perspective. You notice things you didn’t notice before.

Like: what’s the deal w all the horn sections and stuff?

You do some digging and learn about their producer George Martin, the so-called “Fifth Beatle”, who was classically trained, and you fall down a rabbit hole of early 20th century classical.

Plus, even cooler, it turns out those heart-stopping storms of orchestral noise in “A Day in the Life” were inspired by a classical contemporary of the Beatles: Karlheinz Stockhausen!

Turns out, Stockhausen is WILD. Is this even music? You’re unsure, but it’s interesting. https://twitter.com/komaniecki_r/status/1353390712407142400

Congrats!

Now, in relatively little time, you’ve gone from being a complete musical novice to a burgeoning enthusiast of classic rock, indie rock, and avant-garde classical.

Another year of this exponential growth goes by. You’re now ... kind of a nerd.

And that’s a good thing, because a nerd is just someone who gets really excited about something and maintains an interest in it.

Which honestly, when you find something you love, isn’t hard to do. Because the web can go on forever.

That’s how I was able to start learning about brain stuff without formal training.

I just picked one thing I was interested in (“how does the brain control the voice?”) and went from there.

Is it enough to make you a professional? No, that’s what formal schooling and testing is for.

But it is enough to gain an understanding of what’s going on, and gives you the context to evaluate new information as it comes along.

Here’s my Web of Awesomeness, w/ each major influence listed roughly in order of when I read them. Maybe you can figure out how everyone connects.

Murray Morrison
Nelson Roy
Robert Sataloff
Rob Knight
Emeran Mayer
Bud Craig
Norbert Wiener
Claude Shannon

Around here I studied the textbook “Neuroscience: Exploring the Brain” and afterwards realized I could understand what neuroscience papers said. HOLY COW

Then, shortly after, came my Functional Neurological Disorder diagnosis, so I read things by

@jonstoneneuro
@AlanCarson15
Mark Edwards
and @PerezMGHLab

After that:

@LFeldmanBarrett
@theamygdaloid
@anilkseth
@manos_tsakiris
@Katlab_UCL
@fluff35
Mark Micale
Karl Friston
@fluffycyborg
@danieldennett
and Elizabeth Barnes

and now I’m learning a lot about the wider spectrum of mvmt disorders from Parkinson’s advocates like @Neuronologist1 and @topdresearch, and reading Eric Kandel

and loving it!

What’s fun is that while this might read like a list, every time you add someone to yours, you’ll start noticing connections. Hence, a web.

Barrett, Friston, and Craig’s work make a really fascinating trio, for example.

It’s a powerful way to learn, and is (at least) a little backed by brain science too: we know learning is strengthened by multiple associations. Here, that kind of enriched context is built right into the process.

(A quick tip: the fastest way to get started is to find someone whose work you admire and then ask,

“Who taught them?
Who inspired them?
Who did they collaborate with?”)

If you choose well, pretty much everything you find will add some new depth to the stuff you thought you already learned. You’ll keep getting value out of a book or YouTube video long after you put it away.

So that’s my own personal Web of Awesomeness.

Yours will be different - and unique. Just don’t be afraid to dive into something because it’s new or seems daunting.

You don’t have to take on too much.

Your web can be as big or small as you want.

And you can start with just one thread.

A quick addendum: you may find that you get to a point where reading individual authors still leaves you feeling a bit lost, because you haven’t yet had a comprehensive-enough introduction to whatever subject you’re interested in.

That’s where a field-wide survey can be really useful (“Neuroscience: Exploring the Brain” was that for me.)

When you reach that point, it makes sense to set aside time to learn that “here’s the field in a nutshell” material. Everything you do after that will be much easier for having acquired that baseline level of knowledge.

Good luck!

and don’t let anyone tell you you can’t