CNS*1997
The Annual Computational Neuroscience Meeting
July 6 - 10, 1997, Big Sky, Montana
CNS*1997 Workshops
Quantitative Neuroanatomy.
Claus C. Hilgetag
Knowledge of neural structure is essential to understanding neural function. The workshop will look at (i) the current state of data that can bear on the organization of neural systems and (ii) the computational approaches that exist to analyze these data to produce reliable knowledge. The seminar should attract people working on any species and all levels of nervous systems: at the cellular, circuit or area level.
Problems that could be addressed during the workshop include:
* Which data are most urgently required to describe the structure of different neural systems? (For example, progress at the systems level relies on compilations of area-to-area connections, preferably including some information about connection densities and about sites of cell origins and terminations.)
* Which principles of simplification can be chosen for describing the structure of brains, despite their overwhelming complexity? Are systems level (i.e. grey box) neuroanatomical or circuitry models good starting points?
* How great is the variability of neural structures between different individuals of a species? How does variability effect the study of brain organization on different system levels? (For instance, individual variability may suggests a probabilistic approach to circuitry studies, whereas area level organization may be analyzed in a deterministic way?) How can descriptive approaches take into account brain development and neural plasticity?
* What quantitative data can be obtained from new (immuno-) histochemical methods studying receptors and transmitter systems? Is there hope for unraveling the anatomy of the human brain in the foreseeable future?
* How can anatomical data be formalized, exchanged between different groups, and compiled into databases that are easy for everyone to search and to update?
* Once quantitative data are assembled, which computational methods are available to represent and to analyze the data?