I got my PhD!
For my dissertaion, I studied the foundations of cognition in the roundworm C. elegans. By monitoring whole-brain neural activity and probing the functions of individual neurons with closed-loop optical physiology platform I developed, we discovered worms have distributed networks of neurons which implement a primordial working memory. Profoundly, these results might point towards an evolutionary explanation for the origins of cognition, by internalize (i.e. repurposing) neural encoding of motor control.
Want to hear more?
Lmao said no one ever. It’s a joke in grad school that anyone would ever actually read your dissertation, including your PI and committee.
But if you want to read it, it’s here.