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Christopher Madan is our “F1000 Specialist of the Month”. He obtained his PhD in Psychology from the University of Alberta in Canada, studying the influence of rewards on memory and decision making. More generally, Chris studies factors that make some experiences more memorable than others, using approaches from cognitive psychology, neuroimaging, and computational modeling. Chris is currently a postdoctoral research fellow at Boston College. Chris’ personal website can be found at https://www.cmadan.com.

F1000 Specialists are PhD students, postdocs, clinicians and researchers who help their colleagues use F1000Prime, F1000Workspace and F1000Research, and spread the word about F1000 within their institutes. If you’d like to become an F1000 Specialist yourself, you can sign up here.

What are some key features about F1000 that you suggest others take advantage of?

While many are aware of F1000, I have found that F1000Research isn’t as well known. F1000Research is a great venue for a variety of types of articles, including some that don’t fit within many traditional journals. I have found that I enjoy writing methods and tutorials papers, but many journals do not publish these types of articles. Two of my F1000Research articles that have been particularly well received have been on making 3D visualizations of MRI data and on developing an intuition for uncorrected multiple statistical tests using outcomes from a 20-sided die. F1000Research is also a great venue for publishing conference posters with a DOI.

Do you have any tips or advice for young scientists?

I think it’s important to realise that even though research can often be something you do alone, others also experience the same ups and downs of academia. You are not alone in having trouble getting scholarships, papers rejected, and other trials and tribulations of doing research. At it’s core, being a researcher is to discover things that are beyond the state of current knowledge, it’s hard work. In addition to your local colleagues that hopefully offer a sense of community, you may find others who are happy to be supportive in online communities. I have become a proponent of using Twitter to help one be a better scientist, by being more aware of recent advances, finding a supportive community, and sharing your work. Twitter has also been great for becoming more conscious of relevant opportunities such as workshops being organised at other institutes, which is why I recently wrote a blog about the benefits of Twitter. You can follow me on Twitter at @cMadan.

Finally, can you tell us a little bit about your work?

Memory does not serve as a veridical recording of prior experiences that can be played back, instead many factors can lead some experiences to be more memorable than others. Although many factors can influence memorability, it is well known that both emotion and reward influence memory. Their effects are often studied independently, but in my own work, I seek to advance our understanding of these distinct effects on memory, but also to investigate commonalities in their effects, with the goal of understanding domain-general modulation of memory for motivationally salient information. Although biases can provide insight into the functional role of memory, how these biases manifest in decision-making further demonstrates their importance. I have become particularly interested in developing more sensitive measures of inter-individual differences in brain morphology, with the goal of examining relationships between behaviour and brain structure.