![We are piloting the experiment for these students thesis experiments. They were piloting Hannahs experiment. Shes interested in looking at the extent to which visual masking actually inhibits perception. So when you take a visual mask, you take an image followed by another image, youre impaired at understanding the first image. The question is why. So what were going to do is take the neural activity that were measuring. And the nice thing about EEG is that it measures millisecond by millisecond electrical potentials that are generated in the brain , we measure them from the scalp. And we can see over time what the brain is processing and we use machine learning, we put these signals into a computer system tha t reads out the extent to which there is information about what the picture is. Were wondering, does that information persist when you change the image? Does that persist over time? Hannahs made the experiment, and we are going to try it out to make sure everythings ready for participants.? Michelle Greene, assistant professor of neuroscience, says of three thesis students in neuroscience: Theyre all terrific, I might add.Hanna De Bruyn 18, Old Lyme, Conn. (black striped sweater with glasses)Katherine Katie Hartnett 18 of St. Paul, Minn. (wearing EEG cap with Bates sweatshirt)Julie Self 18 of Redwood City, Calif. (blue plaid shirt)Email from Hanna: Katie Harnett and I will be testing out our computational neuroscience theses and will be hooking each other up to the EEG tomorrow, Friday, at 12:45-2:30ish in the Bates Computational Vision Lab (Hathorn 108).](https://www.bates.edu/news/files/2018/10/171201_Neuroscience_EEG_0449-200x133.jpg)
Students named Philip J. Otis Fellows
Bates College sophomores Matthew Ensner of Asheville, N.C., and Takeshi Miyamoto of Tokyo, Japan, have been named Philip J. Otis Fellows and will receive $5,000 grants for research and travel to promote greater understanding of environmental issues and the connection between the environment and spirituality.
Before spending August 1998 in Alaska’s Denali National Forest, where he will document his back-country experiences in photographs and writing, Ensner will complete photography and writing workshops at the Creative Photographic Arts Center in Lewiston and the Rockport Art Institute in Rockport, Maine. Upon returning from Alaska, Ensner will complete a month-long nature and environment photography workshop at the Rockport Art Institute. His project will conclude with a portfolio presentation and lecture to the Bates College community in October 1998.
Miyamoto will climb Alaska’s Mount McKinley, North America’s highest peak at 20,320 feet, in June 1998. He also will conduct interviews with area Native American Indians and mountaineers who have climbed Mount McKinley — also known as Denali — to determine how the mountain and the act of “conquering” the peak have influenced the native culture and religion. Miyamoto’s project will conclude with a portfolio presentation and lecture to the Bates College community in September 1998.
Ensner, an environmental studies major with a secondary concentration in French, has been co-coordinator for the Bates College Environmental Coalition. A 1996 graduate of Asheville High School, he is the son of Amy Edwards and Mark Ensner of Asheville, N.C.
Miyamoto has been a rock-climbing instructor at Bates for new-student orientation trips. A graduate of Deerfield (Mass.) Academy, he is the son of Iwao and Yoko Miyamoto of Tokyo, Japan.
Established in 1996 by Margaret V.B. and C. Angus Wurtele, the Philip J. Otis Endowment commemorates their son, Philip, a member of the Bates class of 1995, who died attempting to rescue an injured climber on Mount Rainier in August 1995. Otis was deeply concerned about nurturing a sense of responsibility for the natural environment, and the endowment sponsors opportunities for study, exploration and reflection by students, faculty and other members of the Bates community. The endowment also supports an annual lectureship on environmental issues and the spiritual and moral dimensions of ecology.