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Dec 14, 2006 |
Science Diary: Frontiers of the Brain - Replicating Data
A new model shows promise in helping Science Diarist John Beggs understand data collected from neurons. Music Ambience: Neuron chatter Welcome to Pulse of the Planets Science Diaries - a glimpse of the world of science from the inside. Were with John Beggs, a biophysicist at Indiana University, where he is studying the workings of the human brain. Were listening to the sound of neurons, brain cells, sending out signals. It might sound like static, but those popping noises are what add up to thoughts and memories. By learning more about how individual neurons communicate, John Beggs hopes to better understand how the brain accomplishes its more complex tasks. John Beggs: Im about to talk with David Jackson. And we are working on a hot paper that just broke in the journal Nature and everybodys been reading it and basically what they said is hey, we have a way of really understanding how lots of brain cells might be talking to each other by assuming that the models that we build are very simple. And so Im here talking to David. So, tell me what have you been up to? David Jackson: When we look at data from a neural system, be that a system in a lab, or a system in a living brain. We can look at the patterns of activation of the individual neurons. And for a long time, these patterns didnt make any sense. The basic statistical models that we tried to apply just didnt work. At all. And so, for the first time, in some senses, we have a model that is able to work really well and give quite good fits to the data, which is incredibly exciting. John Beggs: Yeah. One of the things we want to do is just basically replicate their findings, but with our data set. Weve got some human tissue in there, weve got some tissue from rat brains that have been grown in different ways. So, well see if this thing is going to fit their model. So far it looks pretty good. Pulse of the Planets Science Diaries are made possible by the National Science Foundation. music HUMAN BIOLOGY,Mammals,Behavior Scientist: John Beggs |
