Efsun Annac, Ph.D.

You are not alone in this journey I started writing blog posts on Ph.D. and stress because for a long time I couldn't find anything on the internet to guide me on this subject. Every post I found was about either quitting Ph.D., or being depressed during Ph.D. None of the posts could reflect what I have been through or were a translation of what I felt. Today's post is to remind you that you are not alone . Ph.D. stress is something all Ph.D.'s should be aware of. Many times we don't even realize how demanding Ph.D. can be with its regular stress. Deadlines, experiments, meetings and all the problems you encounter with occupy your mind and make you feel like having a stressful day is a normal routine. However, dealing with stress in those busy days is not easy when you are overwhelmed with the work. Sometimes the frustration of not being able to deal with everything in a limited time makes your life miserable, and accept it or not, you are the only person who has t...

Ph.D. life is quite stressful with its ups and downs. Deadlines, experiment problems, analysis, meeting pressures, presentations, future worries, anxiety, existential crises, mistakes etc. make your life miserable sometimes. As a Ph.D. candidate, I have spent a big part of my Ph.D. worried, frustrated and stressed about several issues. One day, I even decided to quit and talked to my supervisor, and I am not a quitter. After a while, I started to have health problems, and as my doctors told me, they were due to stress. (Okay okay, I admit, caffeine also had a big role! Never start your day with 2 cups of coffee and no breakfast....) After a while, you become better at dealing with problems. However, dealing with stress is not so easy when you are not even aware of it.  The physical effects of stress make you miserable. I remember many times I couldn't calm myself down for a long time even after solving a problem or submitting my paper. In the end, I decided to ...

The results of our new publication will be presented in ECVP 2017 with the title  "Local item density modulates adaptation of learned contextual cues "  Programme details:  http://www.ecvp.org/2017/programme.html Please find the details on the website of the conference:  http://www.ecvp.org/2017/

Local item density modulates adaptation of learned contextual cues Visual Cognition, 16 June 2017 Efsun Annac, Markus Conci, Hermann J. M üller, & Thomas Geyer Department of Psychology +  Graduate School of Systemic Neurosciences Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich Abstract : In everyday scenes, searched-for targets do not appear in isolation, but are embedded within configurations of non-target or distractor items. If the position of the target relative to the distractors is invariant, such spatial contingencies are implicitly learned and come to guide visual scanning (“contextual cueing”). However, the effectiveness of contextual cueing depends heavily on the consistency between bottom-up perceptual input and context memory: following configural learning, re-locating targets to an unexpected location within an unchanged distractor context completely abolishes contextual cueing, and gains deriving from the invariant context recover only very slowly with ...

This book is great. Let me explain why. First of all, please do not forget that it was written in 1897, and for its time this is a 'novel' book targeting graduate students or with Cajal's term "young investigators". Second, he tries to share all his experience and advice about how to survive as a young investigator in a complicated area, that is; Academy or any research environment. Third, he gives pieces of advice not only about how to do research but also how to cooperate or communicate with others to be able to feed your research. You may say some of his advice is too private or sometimes he is too sexist, and you might be right about it. However, conditions were completely different 120 years ago in research and you should consider every sentence he wrote was written in those times. I enjoyed this book a lot and as a "young investigator". I thought it is a nice and interesting journey for me from 2017 to 1897. It made me think how well we improved ...

I read this book as a non-native English speaker and enjoyed it very much. It is very well-written and clear enough. If you are a linguist or interested in languages, potentially it will be one of your favorite books. As a Ph.D., one of the most important benefits I got was to understand that there are several ways to structure my sentences when writing a manuscript; for instance if I want to sell/reflect an important idea, I should be careful with 'the one' sentence I choose, otherwise it might be reflected wrong or complicated. As a writer, you should be able to do empathy with the reader because it helps you to understand what to write and how to write your book (or in my case; your manuscripts). All in all, I want to say, you can learn a lot from this book.  

Darwin's Notebook is a great summary about Darwin and his theory of natural selection. Jonathan Clements, the Author of this book, combines Darwin's biography with his discoveries and writings and present them with illustrations that look like a real notebook. Besides the scientific part of the book, I really appreciate the artistic part as well. The book gives a detailed information about Darwin's early life, his journey on the Beagle, his observations, his questions and his famous book 'On the origin of species'. As well, it is possible to read the critics about his book, his ideas and how Darwin has gone through with all of it. If you are interested in learning about Darwin, or his theory of natural selection, I would highly recommend this really nice book. I guess you should have it in your library. Especially the ones who have little idea about Darwin and his theories should give it a try.