Alfredo Spagna
About
Dr. Alfredo Spagna is a Professor at Columbia University who researches the psychological and neural mechanisms of attention on cognition and consciousness. In this Nanochat, we discuss his scientific process and personal lessons he has learned through being a scientist during the COVID-19 pandemic. This interview was conducted by Emily Sherman.
Transcript:
00:00 hi everyone my name is Emily Sherman I
00:03 just graduated from Barnard College at
00:05 Columbia University and I’m the managing
00:08 editor for The Journal of stories in
00:10 science and today I’m going to be
00:12 interviewing Alfredo Spagna a lecturer in
00:15 psychology at Columbia University who
00:17 researches the psychological mechanisms
00:19 of attention and cognition
00:21 of attention on on cognition and
00:24 consciousness so thank you so much for
00:26 being here Alfredo thank you so the
00:30 first question that I just want to ask
00:32 you was how did you discover your
00:34 passion for science and what is your
00:37 background well my background is I’m a
00:42 psychologist I’ve always been interested
00:46 in psychology since Miami has six years
00:51 it’s been always something so
00:53 interesting interesting and something
00:57 that we knew and we still know so little
00:59 which is what drew my first interest and
01:02 you know knowing what’s going on in our
a01:05 mind and initially I actually was very
01:10 interested when I was a kid
01:11 study something as complex maybe but as
01:16 but way more studied was physics and
01:19 astrophysics and you know the universe
01:21 and all this stuff and until when I was
01:26 13 14 that was my main interest but then
01:28 I started making you know philosophy
01:29 studies and you know studying in high
01:32 school in psychology and then of course
01:35 Freud in the last year of high school
01:37 and that’s how I got to psychology and
01:39 said and thought again yeah this is as
01:42 complex as the universe but we really
01:45 know almost nothing and it was you know
01:49 meet 1990 so we didn’t even have a from
01:54 the Rio which was just talking so that’s
01:56 how I got into psychology and then
01:58 experimental psychology so the somewhat
02:03 the old way of calling what now is
02:05 cognitive neuroscience interesting yeah
02:09 that that’s really interesting I
02:10 actually have come across a lot of
02:12 neuroscientists who
02:13 and myself included who were first
02:15 interested in like physics and
02:16 astrophysics and then before wanting to
02:19 explore like the outside universe
02:21 starting with the inside universe so
02:23 yeah not separated but maybe they’re
02:27 studying cases you know separate
02:30 compartments yeah yeah um so how did
02:38 your scientific interest change how you
02:40 view the world on a personal level whoa
02:44 that’s a million-dollar question I it
02:48 keeps changing so maybe if you ask me in
02:50 a year another answer but let’s say that
02:55 I was I was never sure about about
03:00 wanting to be in academia I said what I
03:02 do now is I got in touch constantly with
03:06 colleagues as well as students every day
03:10 and it’s in it the more I do this job
03:15 the more I work in academia the more my
03:17 perspective of how our life is and what
03:22 happens in our life changes right now
03:26 definitely it’s been also a very
03:30 interesting and relevant being critical
03:32 moment the one we’ve been through the
03:34 pandemic right so thinking about how the
03:37 word the world changes based on this
03:41 current situation which is a health
03:43 crisis but at the same time how much the
03:46 life of our students changed and how
03:49 much difference you decide to adopt to
03:52 different circumstances working from
03:55 home was kind of easy for me but for
03:59 some students starting from home was
04:01 extremely hard and had a lot of
04:02 challenges so that was very very
04:04 important critical for for my critical
04:09 thinking about who my students are so
04:11 where do I work with what is the
04:13 material I’m working on and how many to
04:16 adjust constantly my teaching style and
04:21 my mentoring style for these various
04:24 circumstances
04:27 yeah and that’s really interesting you
04:28 brought up covid and something that I’ve
04:31 been thinking about a lot is how we see
04:33 in the news this pandemic a lot of
04:36 people sort of reject the science behind
04:38 it we see and with our leadership you
04:41 know there’s a lot of misinformation
04:42 going around so you know we sort of see
04:47 this mistrust of science and I think
04:48 it’s kind of stems from this like
04:51 elusiveness behind science and how it
04:52 actually works
04:53 so do you have any ideas on what
04:56 scientists on an individual level can do
04:59 to change the public perception behind
05:01 science and sort of get the public to
05:03 trust it more yeah I’m very happy you
05:10 asked this question because very often
05:14 the because you’re you I think your
05:18 friend in depression very you know in a
05:21 way that is very interesting they’ll
05:23 often the burden of understanding
05:26 science is put on the audience and
05:28 saying because people don’t understand
05:31 my fantastic nature article I just
05:33 published and but instead is actually
05:37 the role is is on the scientist in
05:40 making science accessible and we’re not
05:43 good at it because we are not trained
05:46 for it because we there is very little
05:48 in our curricula about science
05:51 communication and what how to makes
05:53 difficult things simple it’s like
05:56 actually the opposite we we tend to grow
05:59 from a very simple experimental design
06:02 to a very complex one and we we are
06:05 we’re trained to consistently deepen our
06:09 understanding on a specific topic in my
06:12 case attention but memory language and
06:15 so on but actually what happens is that
06:17 with this deepening of the understanding
06:19 it comes also a more complex
06:21 methodological background and complex
06:23 methodologies which makes our line make
06:26 our language even more difficult to
06:28 understand to the public but there is
06:30 never or very few problems have a moment
06:33 in which they in which we train our PhD
06:37 students and postdoc in making our
06:41 it’s simple and accessible to everyone
06:43 so this kind of drift it clearly
06:46 reflects on society around us there is
06:52 very little understanding of what’s
06:54 going on for example we got a copy
06:56 because science progresses has this this
07:02 constant progress process going on and
07:07 it’s very difficult to keep up this
07:11 constant building of knowledge on the
07:14 public
07:16 but maybe we’ll read one headline or two
07:19 headlines and it’s very difficult to
07:21 keep them updated with the latest of the
07:23 latest of the latest so what do we have
07:26 to do we have to train ourselves in
07:28 making things more clear and in making
07:32 clear the message that sciences it’s not
07:35 religious religion is it’s something
07:38 that keeps changing and again it’s
07:42 something that will keep changing again
07:45 funny that I go back to astrophysics and
07:48 physics but let’s look at how many
07:50 models they change about early universe
07:52 works and how the planets rotate and so
07:56 on and they kept on changing all their
07:58 models to refine them this doesn’t mean
08:01 that they were wrong at the beginning or
08:03 not necessarily you know there was
08:06 something wrong because just in
08:07 knowledge that we had at the time and in
08:09 your science as well as in immunology
08:12 and in Medical Sciences in general we
08:15 have to do we have to improve our way in
08:18 which we communicate new discoveries as
08:20 a milestone in a process that progresses
08:24 towards a more clear identification of
08:27 mechanism molecular biological
08:29 correlative rather than the truth and
08:32 therefore now we know how this thing
08:35 works I think that’s very important yeah
08:38 definitely no I agree with everything
08:40 you said and um I was thinking of this
08:42 idea where so you know in in nature and
08:45 cell and science and these journals like
08:48 they’re not really widely read by the
08:49 public and they’re just they give you
08:52 what they found
08:53 it’s very structured right like there’s
08:54 an abstract and introduction methods and
08:56 the data but I was thinking that what if
09:00 like nature or something
09:02 also had maybe half a page written by
09:05 the researchers themselves on just their
09:08 day to day experience or how this
09:10 project came to be and how they thought
09:12 of it and then what they did and like
09:14 all of their you know trial and error
09:15 stuff to sort of just show that this is
09:18 a human process it’s not just like
09:20 robots working in a lab and then here’s
09:22 that all the data like it you know
09:24 there’s setbacks and it’s just a really
09:25 just to humanize it um I mean do you
09:29 think that would be a good idea or do
09:30 you think that’s – like mundane or do
09:33 you have any specific stories of like
09:35 how you came to think of a research
09:37 project that then you published I think
09:41 it would be a great idea and we should
09:4 definitely work on it if there’s
09:45 something that is amazing
09:47 mesmerized me about science is that the
09:50 contribution of everyone is always
09:52 welcome or it must be always welcome so
09:55 any idea is good it’s good it’s really
09:57 any ideas worth you know moving it
10:01 forward it’s it’s it’s really fantastic
10:04 and now that we live in a in a period in
10:06 in in science in which things that were
10:11 impossible like open science open data
10:14 sharing your data sharing the data is
10:17 you collected for other people to use
10:20 them this was completely impossible ten
10:22 years ago fifteen years ago it was like
10:24 no I spent hours on this a less I’m not
10:28 going to share with you now instead we
10:30 are in this moment in which the
10:31 contribution of everyone is very work up
10:33 so good ideas fantastic we should
10:36 definitely work on it and and I think it
10:40 could help also scientists kind of work
10:44 on the metacognition right the process
10:47 of getting into a project and and that
10:50 is absolutely fantastic
10:52 and we don’t have any of that but what
10:56 we have right now is you know a system
10:59 that kind of pushes us and publishing as
11:01 as much as possible as fast as possible
11:03 that also hasn’t helped with the
11:06 you know with the discussion we were
11:08 having earlier about how much we can
11:10 inform the public because we’re really
11:12 running running running trying to
11:13 publish as fast as high impact factor as
11:17 possible meaning in very prestigious
11:19 journal so you’re it is great one
11:22 example that that I can give you that
11:25 it’s the project I’m working right now
11:26 which is kind of new to me but it’s
11:29 extremely I find it fascinating and it’s
11:33 imagination and I studied for so many
11:36 years for attention ease and then I
11:38 moved in for tension and consciousness
11:40 right which is attention we can only
11:43 find it as our ability to select out of
11:46 all the information we have we are in
11:48 front of us select things that are
11:50 important because we want to process
11:52 them better and also ignore things that
11:55 are not relevant because right now I’m
11:57 talking to you and I wanna check my
11:58 emails or my text so I’m selecting but
12:02 I’m also ignoring stuff and then the
12:06 question was about consciousness so
12:08 whatever I pay attention to it comes to
12:11 my conscious experience and now I’m
12:13 conscious of your face on the screen but
12:16 only a few years ago working with the
12:18 power of Bartolomeo a colleague now in
12:21 France in Paris we started thinking
12:24 about what is imagination and how
12:26 imagination relates to attention and
12:28 consciousness so imagine a shoe is kind
12:30 of the opposite of what attention is or
12:35 somehow imagination is paying attention
12:38 to a content that is not in the real
12:40 world but is inside yourself right so i
12:42 imagining means paying attention to to
12:47 something yeah that is the product not
12:49 of the monitor the scream the light the
12:51 sound but something that is already in
12:53 your mind and i find this fascinating in
12:56 this whole project started to read the
12:58 launch don’t keep going back to your
13:01 point about talking about yeah imagine
13:05 if we could do this thing and were
13:07 chatting and what is imagination again
13:09 and this is our frog lots of projects
13:13 actually start with just conversations
13:18 yeah
13:19 yeah that’s that’s really interesting
13:20 and especially yeah with imagination
13:22 that’s great I feel like science is kind
13:25 of like art in a sense that you kind of
13:27 have to create something out of nothing
13:28 like there’s no really rules for how you
13:31 go about designing an experiment
13:33 I mean besides like the obvious I mean
13:36 methodologies that are tried interested
13:39 in whatever but I think that like you
13:41 know coming up with something as
13:42 imaginative as your project about
13:44 imagination
13:46 it’s it’s really it’s really incredible
13:49 and it’s such a creative process that I
13:52 think a lot of people don’t realize when
13:56 it comes to creating scientific projects
13:59 so I wanted to ask you what are one or
14:03 two lessons that you’ve learned from
14:04 being a scientist in a pandemic well the
14:10 first one the first one no I wouldn’t
14:16 say as a scientist but as a
14:17 neuroscientist I know what a scientist
14:19 in general is learning right now and as
14:22 a psychologist and neuroscientist the
14:23 first base
14:24 tracking thing is how much we our
14:26 methodologies are somehow not prepared
14:32 for this additional are linked so much
14:36 to the laboratory setting that somehow
14:39 we have to stop the great majority is
14:42 not the totality of the project that we
14:45 remember ongoing in our laboratories
14:47 because we live in this setting that we
14:50 love because it’s controlled in our
14:52 laboratory excludes a lot of variables
14:55 that may be affecting your data and so
14:57 on but in a mere moment in which where
15:01 and then we can we cannot see patients
15:05 and we cannot see participants and we
15:08 cannot collect data we were completely
15:12 unprepared and the fact that we were
15:17 unprepared I think taught me to think
15:19 more creatively about how I administered
15:25 my experiments how I collect data
15:31 ecological environment this was the most
15:34 striking thing to see how much we all
15:36 struggled in thinking so so what so what
15:41 do we do now we cannot see any
15:43 participant anymore and and we started
15:48 asking our questions as history any
15:50 difference if I make this task and have
15:54 my participant you know recorded at at
15:58 home and this was the first thing that
16:02 was very impactful stop the research
16:05 activity the second thing is more of a
16:08 teaching thing and it’s absolutely
16:09 related and there’s more scientists of
16:12 Education which which is what I like to
16:16 be and it was again the situation of
16:18 students so how do you teach the content
16:24 you used to teach in a completely
16:26 different setting in which your
16:29 population or your students are not
16:31 living in a homogeneous kind of
16:34 environment in which you know that all
16:36 of them can attend your class have a
16:39 quiet environment and so on but instead
16:41 how much you adopt you of teaching
16:43 methodologies for the most extreme
16:47 situation including having students 12
16:50 hours ahead of time so taking classes
16:53 that you know needs to be recorded or
16:55 watching them at 2 a.m. in the morning
16:58 and so on so that those two things
17:00 really are those two are things that I
17:04 will keep with myself forever
17:05 I will forever for sure thing is this
17:08 project that I want to do able to resist
17:12 epidemic and this discussed that I’m
17:14 planning to teach able to step up that
17:17 this is something that wow wow that’s
17:23 really interesting do you think that
17:24 your colleagues and the scientific
17:26 community as a whole will also take
17:28 those lessons away and sort of plan
17:30 projects like with you know a back-up
17:32 plan or just in case something like this
17:34 happens again or do you think for the
17:36 most part people will just go back I
17:39 know I think that there’s no going back
17:42 in general maybe globally we can think
17:45 about it but there’s no real go back and
17:48 I think they’re also funding agencies
17:50 like the national easily repair a
17:52 National Science Foundation they will
17:55 all ask us require us to be more
17:58 thoughtful when we think about potential
18:02 pitfalls or not stuck holes in the
18:05 planning planned activities that we are
18:07 proposing in our grant also I mean not
18:10 maybe expecting another pandemic but to
18:13 be mindful about major things that can
18:16 happen because this is what just no some
18:21 projects are for example still ongoing
18:22 and but some of them are paused so some
18:27 NIH funds have now pause they say and we
18:31 got also the payments postdoc some
18:34 postdocs are not being paid and so on so
18:36 that’s a very very important thing we
18:38 need to think through this one more time
18:41 for sure mm-hmm
18:43 cool well I’m it was so amazing to hear
18:46 from you and thank you so much for
18:48 participating
18:50 yes so thank you so so much
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