(1) How can we find out how the brain works? It’s hard to discover specific new facts about brains — how synaptic strengths change, how a population of neurons’ activity changes over seconds, how brain networks change over weeks and decades. But the biggest challenge for understanding “how the brain works” is making the right […]
Archive | Speaker interview
Five questions answered by Wei Ji Ma
(1) How can we find out how the brain works? I am primarily interested in understanding human intelligence, and from that point of view, I am worried about the massive move towards rodent models in neuroscience. While the abundance of available techniques makes this move attractive, there is not much evidence that rodents plan strategically, […]
Five questions answered by Nicole Rust
(1) How can we find out how the brain works? It all begins with thoughtful descriptions of the computations that the brain solves, which are often directly reflected in behavior. Ultimately, a description of “how” is formalized by a model that provides a non-trivial account of data. Crucially, while many of us have been taught […]
Five questions answered by Birte Forstmann
(1) How can we find out how the brain works? I believe that formal models that make simultaneous predictions about different modalities such as behavior and the brain are powerful tools. Such tools could help to gain a better mechanistic understanding of brain function. (2) What will your talk at CCN 2017 be about? […]
Five questions answered by Michael Shadlen
(1) How can we find out how the brain works? By testing neurobiological hypotheses that address the “how” question at a variety of levels. To me, “how the brain works” is a biological problem because I am less interested in mimicking the brain with a machine than I am in assessing what goes wrong when […]
Five questions answered by Alona Fyshe
1 How can we find out how the brain works? We will need to continue to study the brain at multiple scales, both at the neuronal level, at the macro level (via brain imaging), and at the behavioral level. And we need to continue to bring these worlds together. We also need to start pushing brain […]
Five questions answered by Tom Griffiths
1 How can we find out how the brain works? As a cognitive scientist I normally think about this question from the perspective of Marr’s levels of analysis. Understanding how the brain works is a question at what Marr called the “implementation” level, but I think a lot of insight can be gained by asking why […]
Five questions answered by Yoshua Bengio
1 How can we find out how the brain works? If there is a compact description of the computational principles which explain how the brain manages to provide us with our intelligence, this is something I would consider the core explanation for how the brain works – a little bit like the laws of physics […]
