In 2023, I worked as a researcher in the Department of Psychobiology at the Federal University of S?o Paulo. My main research in the Psychobiology Department was understanding social cognition in tasks involving mental state attribution, decision-making, and emotion recognition by integrating physiological measures such as eye-tracking, electrocardiogram, and neuroimaging.
I was approved to be funded by the Brazilian government to be a guest researcher at the University of Oslo for a 3-month training, which I was super excited about because I knew before how amazing RITMO was. For this period, I aimed to improve my knowledge of how electrophysiological signals, such as intracranial electroencephalography (EEG), scalp EEG, and behavioural measures, are used to investigate cognitive functions by accompanying the activities of the "Oscillatory mechanisms supporting human cognition" project.
I had the opportunity to be supervised by Alejandro Blenkmann and to participate in many activities with his group, with enriching knowledge provided during all meetings and discussions about cutting-edge signal processing techniques related to intracranial cortical recordings.
I also learned a lot through the seminars I participated in during the period there. As part of my learning time, I could also implement an online GLO experiment with the aid of Alejandro and the colleagues.
Beyond the rich academic experience, I had a unique personal experience. My colleagues were always friendly and supportive, and I could see the Norwegian Christmas traditions. I participated in the Tour de RITMO—Xmas edition at Sjusj?en, where we had workshops about diversity and career development, and I could listen more about incoming projects. As a Brazilian, snow is not something I see in our winter, and that probably explains my terrible ski talents, which I miserably failed, but I promised to keep practicing.
Being part of this RITMO experience made me grow as a professional and also as a person because of the amazing cultural input and friends I made along the way. I will never forget, and I hope to see you all again. I thank you with all my heart for receiving me!
Many thanks,
Mariana