Kevin Spencer (kspencer at s.psych.uiuc.edu) wrote:
:junior1 at ibm.net [Bernie Arruza] writes:
: [snip]
: >Universities have very little incentive to merge their departments to study the
: >mysteries of the brain.
: Excuse me, but you are quite wrong. I guess you don't know that many
: universities in the past 10 years have been establishing cognitive science
: and cognitive neuroscience departments and programs. Whole conferences and
: journals devoted to these new integrative disciplines have sprung up. The
: 1990s have been proclaimed the "Decade of the Brain" and the fed govt and
: private foundations have made funding cognitive neuroscience a priority.
Right, but a lot of these departments still are lost in the process of
identity establishment. I was trying to get into a school for my Ph.D.
where I could get my hands wet with animal models as well as try
computational models. While individual people adopt this approach, whole
programs do not run on these lines. The approach, I have found, in
cognitive neuro. depts is to blend a mix of people who do whole system
animal models (or some fraction thereof) and computational/psych. people,
but rarely people who do both -- which would be the ideal mix. I found
more biomed. departments catering to my interests of being an engineer as
well as a neuroscientist than any cognitive sciences program. (I ended
up in a science program, but thats besides the point).
Anyway, just my two bits and based only on my anecdotal evidence from the
past year.
For the original poster, the swiss group I was trying to locate was that
of R. Douglas. (who incidentally worked with carver mead, who
incidentally worked with Koch etc etc).
: [snip]
: >Unless things change, this train is going to slow down!. We are all waiting for
: >a scientific breakthrough. Wouldn't a technical breakthrough help to improve the
: >odds of success for all of us interested in how the brain functions?
--
Madhusudan Natarajan
..and still partly at..
Ward 5-223 : Ph (312) 503 0202
Dept. of Physiology Dept. of Biomedical Engineering
Northwestern University University of Akron
--
"I have no data yet. It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has
data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of
theories to suit facts." - Sherlock Holmes
