Tink Hence, a relief pitcher, is a prospect in the Cardinal's farm system.
I hope that he makes the Majors, so that we can bring back more of these jokes. My favorite one was when Chin Lung Hu came up with the Dodgers; I always wanted him to reach first base.
And Hence's first name is also great. "Tink Hence" is such a great baseball name. Because.
My name is Mason Porter. I am a Professor in the Department of Mathematics at UCLA. Previously I was Professor of Nonlinear and Complex Systems in the Mathematical Institute at University of Oxford. I was also a Tutorial Fellow of Somerville College.
Saturday, March 26, 2022
Wednesday, March 16, 2022
Dodgers Sign Freddie Freeman!
The Dodgers have reached a deal with free agent Freddie Freeman. As usual with the Dodgers, it'a Moneyball with money.
Wednesday, March 02, 2022
"In-Degree Centrality in a Social Network is Linked to Coordinated Neural Activity"
Another paper of mine was just published in final form. Here are some details.
Title: In-Degree Centrality in a Social Network is Linked to Coordinated Neural Activity
Authors: Elisa C. Baek, Ryan Hyon, Karina López, Emily S. Finn, Mason A. Porter, and Carolyn Parkinson
Abstract: Convergent processing of the world may be a factor that contributes to social connectedness. We use neuroimaging and network analysis to investigate the association between the social-network position (as measured by in-degree centrality) of first-year university students and their neural similarity while watching naturalistic audio-visual stimuli (specifically, videos). There were 119 students in the social-network study; 63 of them participated in the neuroimaging study. We show that more central individuals had similar neural responses to their peers and to each other in brain regions that are associated with high-level interpretations and social cognition (e.g., in the default mode network), whereas less-central individuals exhibited more variable responses. Self-reported enjoyment of and interest in stimuli followed a similar pattern, but accounting for these data did not change our main results. These findings show that neural processing of external stimuli is similar in highly-central individuals but is idiosyncratic in less-central individuals.
Title: In-Degree Centrality in a Social Network is Linked to Coordinated Neural Activity
Authors: Elisa C. Baek, Ryan Hyon, Karina López, Emily S. Finn, Mason A. Porter, and Carolyn Parkinson
Abstract: Convergent processing of the world may be a factor that contributes to social connectedness. We use neuroimaging and network analysis to investigate the association between the social-network position (as measured by in-degree centrality) of first-year university students and their neural similarity while watching naturalistic audio-visual stimuli (specifically, videos). There were 119 students in the social-network study; 63 of them participated in the neuroimaging study. We show that more central individuals had similar neural responses to their peers and to each other in brain regions that are associated with high-level interpretations and social cognition (e.g., in the default mode network), whereas less-central individuals exhibited more variable responses. Self-reported enjoyment of and interest in stimuli followed a similar pattern, but accounting for these data did not change our main results. These findings show that neural processing of external stimuli is similar in highly-central individuals but is idiosyncratic in less-central individuals.