The Neuroscience of Worms, Lecturing, and French Cinema

The other day, I was talking about vectors in class.  I soon noticed one usually attentive and expressive student (nontrivial in these days of mask-wearing!) (SX) was clearly bored.  I instantly lost all interest in continuing the lecture and quickly transitioned over to having them do independent practice.  

As often happens, this particular professional experience triggers a strong memory I have from graduate school.  After passing my PhD qualifiers and chosen a field of study for my PhD, I rotated into the CMU Physics Department's monthly colloquium spot and did a presentation on computation neuroscience.  I was pretty nervous but I thought the subject pretty interesting (obviously), but I did notice one of my favorite professors (Dr. Garoff - also an expressive and attentive person) was looking a bit bored and slightly distressed.  I finished my talk as planned but didn't feel good about it.  When I ran into him a few days later and asked him if he thought I was going down the wrong path for my PhD or anything, he was very surprised and said something like "I really should monitor myself more because I don't want people reading into my expressions!  I was having a bad day for completely personal reasons and was distracted by my own thoughts during your talk - it had nothing to do with you."

So, why with a sea of faces to chose from and a captive audience and a mission to perform am I still so susceptible to random feedback from certain faces?  This was on my mind when I read about how neuroscientists have recently determined that worms, while eating their way thought the dirt will release a neurotransmitter when detecting high levels of nutrients in the local soil which causes them to slow down instantly.  

This mechanism suggests that neural pathways are constantly being adjusted by pretty simply cues from the environment.  I thought "Aha - I am the worm and when the soil comes back as not very tasty, my brain tells me something is wrong.  It is as simple as that."

It all comes back to Mon Oncle d'Amerique!