Here is a list of some of the projects I am currently working on:
1. methodofloci.com. It's a secret.
2. Walking Meditation. I am currently working with several researchers in the laboratory of Dr. Diane Gromala at the School of Interactive Arts and Technology at SFU on a project by this title. Can't say too much more than that at the moment.
3. Metaplasticity. Coming soon! This project, currently underway, aims to use the knowledge base of wikipedia as a foundation for a larger visual of the knowledge network across the various fields of the neurosciences. It replaces the brainframe project (see below).
4. Fan Tweets. My adventures in twitter land. This is a visualization tool that allows you to see your own (or someone else's) fans: Friends who are not your followers. Still needs some more error catching (e.g., try submitting without entering a username).
5. overmeducated.com. This is a website that is both a visualization of a drupal installation and a repository for information about bipolar disorder in particular, and mental illness in general. Its functional, and growing. The content is developing VERY slowly at the moment.
6. Neurofloat: Real-time State-sensitive brain spaces. It was on hold for about a year, but Meehae Song and I are re-entering that project with an entirely new vision (thankfully).
7. QuadTree. I like the idea behind this one and hope to come back to it soon. I would like to redo it in actionscript 3.0 rather than Java. And I would like to make it recursive and with more layers.
Here is a list of some of the past projects I have worked on:
1. BrainFrame: A Knowledge Management Tool for the Neurosciences. Abandoned for the time being--replaced by Metaplasticity (see above). I might come back to it though...
2. The Role of the Cell Body in Presynaptic Forms of Neuroplasticity.
This project, which I undertook during my Postdoctoral fellowship at the Life & Brain research institute at the University of Bonn, used extracellular field recordings to examine the role of activation at the cell body in a presynaptic form of neuroplasticity: Long-term potentiation at the Hippocampal Mossy Fiber Synapse.
3. The Role of Time and Context in the Kindling Model of Epilepsy and Neuroplasticity.
This large project, which comprised the majority of my Masters and PhD work with John Pinel at UBC Psychology, looked at how stimuli in the environment and temporal stimuli can affect the expression of seizures as well as seizure-related-behaviours. An old review article written on the subject can be found below:
Barnes, S. J., & Pinel, J. P. J. (2005). Does inadvertent conditioning contribute to the major features of kindling? In Corcoran, M.E. & Moshe, S.L. (eds.), Kindling 6 (Advances in Behavioral Biology Vol. 55), Springer Science.
And a few other publications that resulted from this project are listed below:
Barnes, S. J., Pinel, J. P. J., Francis, L. H., & Wig, G. S. (2001). Conditioning of ictal and interictal behaviors in rats by amygdala kindling: Context as the conditional stimulus. Behavioral Neuroscience. 115(5):1065-72.
Barnes, S. J., Magyar, O., Pinel, J. P. J., & Takahashi, A. (2004). Anticipating the attack: Temporal conditioning during amygdala kindling in rats. Behavioral Neuroscience, 118(1):89-96.
Barnes, S. J., Hua, J. M., Pinel, J. P. J., Takahashi, A., & Wig, G. S. (2005). Conditioned effects associated with kindling three different sites in the hippocampal complex of the rat. Behavioral Neuroscience, 119(6):1572-9.
4. The Disruptive Effect of Kindling on Sensorimotor Gating.
I collaborated with several researchers from UBC Psychology and UBC's Brain Research Center on the following project a ways back:
Howland, J. G., Hannesson, D. K., Barnes, S. J., & Phillips, A. G. (2007). Kindling of basolateral amygdala but not ventral hippocampus or perirhinal cortex disrupts sensorimotor gating in rats. Behavioral Brain Research, 177(1): 30-36.
5. Transient Inactivation of Brain Structures Involved in Memory Storage and Recall.
This project used (at the time) a relatively novel technique for the focal transient inactivation of a brain structure. The rhinal cortex, a brain structure involved in object recognition memory was temporarily inactived during an object-recognition memory task.
Barnes, S. J., Floresco, S. B., Kornecook, T. J., & Pinel, J. P. J. (2000). Reversible lesions of the rhinal cortex produce delayed nonmatching-to-sample deficits in rats. Neuroreport. 11(2): 351-354.
