IUBio

What is computational neuroscience?

Arthur T. Murray uj797 at victoria.tc.ca
Mon Feb 19 04:33:50 EST 2001


"Isidore" <isidore at mailandnews.com wrote on Mon, 19 Feb 2001:

>    Hello everyone,
>
>            I'm a high school student looking to do some research
> at a Polytechnic University science program over the summer.
> One of the available research positions deals with computational
> neuroscience. From what I've seen of neuroscience, it seems
> like something I'd be interested in doing  research in.
> I also have an interest in computer science, so I suspect that
> computational neuroscience might be right up my alley. However, to be
> honest, I haven't been able to find a comprehensive defininition.

Computational neuroscience is the field of neuroscience when it
is treated of in the computational environment, in such endeavors
as computerized axial tomography (CAT) machines for brainscans,
positron electron transmission(?) (PET) scans for locating neural
phenomena by such clues as higher oxygen consumption; neural
modelling with neural nets in software, and so forth.

By way of contrast, forensic neuroscience would be the
neuroscience conducted in the forums of courtrooms, that is,
legal neuroscience. 

> If anyone could provide information about what research in
> computational neuroscience entails (in laymen terms, if possible),
> or can point me to a basic resource, I'd appreciate it.

A basic project for you to consider is the software emulation
of neural pathways resulting in artificial intelligence.  Please see
http://victoria.tc.ca/~uj797/jsaimind.html
http://www.geocities.com/mentifex/jsaimind.html
http://www.scn.org/~mentifex/jsaimind.html AI in JavaScript.

Disclaimer: The above links are to my pet project in creating
an "Artificial Mind" based both on neuroscience and on
Chomksyan transformational grammar from linguistics.

Other discussants in these forums may have more solid
advice for you than my own overweening ambitions permit.

> Also, does anyone have any recommendations/tips about if a high
> school student should work under a mentor to research this?
>
>
> Isidore






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