Konnichiwa, my dudes.

I'm going to be abusing this website as kind of a research blog on a neural decoding project I'm working on. I come from a programming background, but non-programming people should be able to follow along as well. It's super interesting stuff imo. Of course, this doesn't necessarily imply I'll be able to restrict myself from posting the occasional off topic post or spicy memeo. 

What the hell is neural decoding?

To quote Wikipedia:

 Neural decoding is a neuroscience-related field concerned with the reconstruction of sensory and other stimuli from information that has already been encoded and represented in the brain by networks of neurons. 

Specifically we're going to be decoding the visual cortex. That means that the model we're building will be able to take data from brain imaging techniques (like fMRI for example) and find out what the subject is seeing. This is called reconstructing visual stimuli. Previous techniques exist for this, but few use deep learning and even fewer use high resolution imaging techniques like calcium imaging. Here is a little test program I wrote for some fMRI data. I know its kinda lame, but that just means there's plenty room for improvement. :) If anyone wants the code or even a little tutorial just ask.

Well now I guess I should introduce myself.

Who am I?

Programming has been my hobby since I was very little. Similarly, I can't remember not being interested in artificial intelligence. This year, I started playing around with deep learning frameworks like Tensorflow.  The first time I heard of neural computation was some weeks ago so this will be a learning experience for me. You're welcome to join me on this journey.   😘 

Hobbies I'm proud of:

• Learning Japanese
• Scuba Diving
• Going to the gym  💪💪💪 
• Reading (not exclusively) Science-Fiction
• Consuming ridiculous amounts of educational YouTube videos
• Challenging my political views
• Being a little pseudo-artsy and ironic on my Instagram

Hobbies I'm not proud of:

• Consuming ridiculous amounts of unnecessary YouTube videos
• Maintaining an unhealthy sleep cycle
• Thinking about death
• Procrastination

 I haven't written anything in a natural language since high school and I don't spend a lot of  time reading blogs so if my posts seem like they were written by aliens, please tell me in a comment before you call the FBI.  Also, I don't know how frequent I can keep my posts, since I have a bachelor's degree to get through in parallel. My goal is posting around three times a month.

Let's have some fun learning together. Have a nice weekend everyone :)))

Thank you for reading. Here are some cool pictures.

P.S. I browsed through the introduceyourself tag and saw that anonymity isn't too fashionable on this website, which is a pity because that's one of the most beautiful things about the internet in my opinion. For all you know I could be a professional roller-blader, a Pakastani midget or both. :)