In this discussion, we first talk about the entire book writing process, as this is something that many of aspire to and is an elusive skill in itself. We then go into discussing specific ideas put forward in the book. Such as the types of models - from simply descriptive to more mechanistic, from too simple to overfitted. We also differentiate between models and more general constructs. We delve into how true understanding requires both data and clear and explanatory models. We go on to describe the challenge in neuroscience of network modeling - how there are so many unknowns and limited data and how output of the model may help inform its accuracy. We also discuss the challenge of modeling neuronal activity when we have ALL the data - such as with the Zebra Fish. We then go into specific models such as Deep Neural Networks and how this type of modeling may progress in the future. Lastly, Lindsay gives some thoughts on the future hopes, philosophies, and strategies of modeling - how doing it well is both an art and a science.

Guest:

Grace Lindsay, Ph.D. received her BS in neuroscience at the University of Pittsburgh. After spending a year at the Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience in Freiburg, Germany, she carried out her Ph.D. thesis work her at the Center for Theoretical Neuroscience at Columbia University in the lab of Ken Miller where she worked on building models of recurrent visual processing. 

She is currently a Sainsbury Wellcome Centre/Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit Research Fellow at University College London, working on building models of sensory processing.

Along with her active research, she’s a prolific writer and communicator - maintaining a podcast and a blog, writing extensively on the intersection of math, computational models, and the brain. She has found time to do all of this and write her very well-received book: Models of the Mind: How physics, engineering and mathematics have shaped our understanding of the brain.

Co-host: Brendan Richie, Ph.D. has been leading a book club a the NIH discussing Dr. Linday’s book every week. Brendan is a post-doc in the Laboratory of Brain and Cognition at the National Institute of Mental Health and has been researching, under Chris Baker, the neural basis of visual object categorization. Prior to coming to NIMH, he was a post-doctoral fellow at Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Belgium, and prior to that, he completed his PhD at the University of Maryland.