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The brain is far more complex than any electronic computer in existence or on the drawing boards. Even if we knew the complete wiring diagram of the brain and had a complete characterization of every brain-specific gene and protein, this information would not suffice to tell us how the brain works. This realization has helped neuroscientists to appreciate the importance of computational theory as an essential complement to experimental approaches to studying the brain. Computational neuroscience provides a framework for hypothesizing what information processing strategies may be used to carry out specific tasks, for suggesting how these strategies could be implemented by a particular neural architecture and for proposing explicit experimental tests that can validate, refute or lead to the refinement of the original hypothesis. For these reasons, it is particularly important to have strong two-way interactions between computational and experimental neuroscientists. At Washington University, interest in computational neuroscience includes efforts to model specific aspects of sensory processing, sensory-motor coordination, learning and higher functions such as attention.
* Program (DBBS) Faculty |
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