Resources

Reviews and lectures

I wrote a brief review of visual motion processing in primates with Ken Britten a few years back.
I put together a lecture on motion and contrast and their relation to neurophysiology and perception that might be helpful for people just dipping their toes into systems neuro.

Michael Bach’s illusion website - lots of great illusion demos
Akiyoshi Kitaoka’s website - the GOAT of artistic illusions
Clif Schor’s Oculomotor website - old but gold reference for all things oculmotor (axis conventions, Listing’s law, etc)

Neuromatch academy - great resources for computational neuroscience and deep learning
Anne’s list - systems neuroscience has a strong bias towards male PIs: Anne Churchland maintains a list of badass female PIs
Bialek/van Steveninck/Rieke/Warland’s Spikes - great computational neuroscience reference
Green & Swets’ Signal Detection Theory - absolute classic reference for neuroscience and psychophysics
Dayan & Abbot’s Theoretical Neuroscience - another great resource for computational neuroscience

Here’s a bunch of applications I’ve come to know and love (most are FOSS, all have at least some free version):

Inkscape (vector graphics software)
OpenBoard (virtual whiteboard - great with Zoom + Wacom!)
Zotero (library manager)
- I also use ZotFile and Zutilo to organize my linked file library so each PDF is renamed sensibly. Works great for syncing with a cloud library.
- To keep my library accessible on other devices (smartphone, tablet) I use Zoo for Zotero and rclone to sync the library with GDrive.
- Guide to set up the whole ecosystem here!
Function Generator (Android app) - Generates pure tones with smartphone speaker
Spectrum Analyze (Android app) - Runs FFT and visualizes mic input. Super helpful working with ephys noise!
CVSimulator (Android app) - Easy to use color blindness simulator
Overleaf (Web app) - Great way to collaborative write and visualize LaTeX docs

The Art of Electronics - THE hobbyist electronics bible: learned so much about how to fix and put together a homebrewed ephys and monkey behavior rig.
Zinn & The Art of Road Bike Maintenance - great resource for maintaining your whip. I find RJ the Bike Guy and Park Tool’s YouTube channels super helpful too.
Transitioning from MATLAB to python - Patrick Mineault’s really got a great site for all things neuro and AI. Check out this if you’re like many of us and trained to use MATLAB in lab and left feeling tethered by it. Also check out his Good Research Code Handbook!