[Comp-neuro] RE: Post-Doctoral position at Blue Brain Project, EPFL, in Mesoscale Cortical Synthesis

[Romain Brette]

Dear Ramana,

Perhaps you might be interested in this little text I wrote about 
reductionism on my blog:
http://briansimulator.org/what-is-computational-neuroscience-xi-reductionism/

Best,
Romain

Le 06/07/2013 00:16, ramana dodla a écrit :
>
> I don't know the answers to Jim's questions, but they touch upon 
> issues that are
> of importance to (neuro-) scientists. But as a matter of scientific 
> quest, and
> from a physics point of view, the idea of a cortical column is 
> appealing. I could think of them
> as a set of eigen-shapes that could interact with one another, and 
> define the cortical
> communication. For this approach, in fact any other shape would be 
> equally good/bad.
>
> This fits into the idea of methodological reductionism. Physics is a 
> nice example.
> The human body itself is another best example. Who knows what is best 
> for the brain,
> but I don't know why reductionism shouldn't work in the brain. Isn't 
> reductionism the idea
> behind electrophysiology?
>
> rmn
>
>
>
>
> On Thu, Jul 4, 2013 at 9:24 AM, james bower <bower at uthscsa.edu 
> <mailto:bower at uthscsa.edu>> wrote:
>
>     Why not, it's the summer, CNS meeting is coming up, and it has
>     been a long time since our previous discussion of 'noise in the
>     nervous system'.
>
>     So, why not:
>
>     Serious question:  do cortical columns actually exist? Is this the
>     right way to think about cortical processing?
>
>     More formally, is the idea of a cortical column, originally
>     proposed by Mountcastle in the 1950s as a "computational" (in
>     current lexicon)  building block for cerebral cortex:
>
>     1) supported by the data
>
>     2) the right way to think about cortical structure?  computational
>     or otherwise.
>
>     In case anyone is wondering, I think not - and have found it
>     mildly amusing that this project is devoted to reconstructing
>     something that probably doesn't exist.
>
>     :-)
>
>     Jim Bower
>
>
>
>     On Jul 4, 2013, at 7:43 AM, Shillcock Julian Charles
>     <julian.shillcock at epfl.ch <mailto:julian.shillcock at epfl.ch>> wrote:
>
>>     The Blue Brain Project has modelling infrastructure for
>>     constructing in silico neocortical columns containing about
>>     30,000 neurons, distributing the cells through the column and
>>     forming synapses. Several such columns have already been
>>     assembled into a planar hexagonal mosaic containing up to
>>     1,000,000 neurons. However, axons grow long distances along
>>     tracts within the brain's white matter, and the next stage of
>>     development is to populate three-dimensional mesh models of brain
>>     regions with appropriately-shaped mesocircuits, adjusting their
>>     dimensions and shape to match rodent brain anatomy, and
>>     connecting the circuits according to known large-scale
>>     connectomics data,  yielding a complete rat brain model
>>     containing on the order of tens of millions of neurons.
>>
>>     Please see this page for more deals:
>>     http://emploi.epfl.ch/page-94325-en.html
>>
>>     Julian Shillcock
>>     _______________________________________________
>>     Comp-neuro mailing list
>>     Comp-neuro at neuroinf.org <mailto:Comp-neuro at neuroinf.org>
>>     http://www.neuroinf.org/mailman/listinfo/comp-neuro
>
>     Dr. James M. Bower Ph.D.
>
>     Professor of Computational Neurobiology
>
>     Barshop Institute for Longevity and Aging Studies.
>
>     15355 Lambda Drive
>
>     University of Texas Health Science Center
>
>     San Antonio, Texas  78245
>
>     *Phone: 210 382 0553 <tel:210%20382%200553>*
>
>     Email: bower at uthscsa.edu <mailto:bower at uthscsa.edu>
>
>     Web: http://www.bower-lab.org
>
>     twitter: superid101
>
>     linkedin: Jim Bower
>
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