Applied Math Professor Eric Shea-Brown shares his research groups work with SIAM News:
“The brain has long presented an amazing challenge for applied mathematics: A complete model would require ~1011 highly nonlinear neurons, interacting nonlinearly and stochastically through rapid voltage fluctuations (called “spikes”) on a complex and dynamic network. But we are in an especially wonderful time for the field, as technical breakthroughs are yielding unprecedented data about both the brain’s network architecture and about its activity. There is a major opportunity to integrate this data into a new understanding of how the connectivity among neurons leads to their collective dynamics and, eventually, to their astonishing collective function. Mathematics and scientific computation will play a key role; researchers worldwide, including members of the SIAM community, are hard at work. Our group and our collaborators have the joy of being a part of this effort, and I describe some of our experiences in what follows.”
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