neurodudes

Nature Neuroscience’s editorial board posts a call for a change (doi:10.1038/nn0406-457) in the incentive structure of neuroscience in favor of funding initiatives that foster synthesis.

A quote from the article:

“To shift the emphasis toward quality rather than quantity of scientific results, funding agencies could support specific integrative initiatives, such as large-scale meta-analyses in unresolved areas or experiments to tackle particularly contentious conflicts in the existing literature.”

It goes on:

“Simply having more time to think and interact with colleagues could foster consolidation and conceptual breakthroughs. Unfortunately for many academic researchers, such ruminating might carry the stigma of inactivity or, worse, speculation. However, science is largely a creative process, and the minds of scientists are ultimately its greatest resource. Legitimizing time for creative synthetic thought through funding might be an inexpensive way to shift the current incentive structure.”

This could be the beginning of an important change in the culture of the field.

PLoS Biology: Men, Women, and Ghosts in Science [open access article]

I don’t agree with all of the conclusions of this article but it is the #1 article on PLoS biology right now. (For example, I’m not so sure that the genetic differences in “thinking style” predisposes physics to be a field with less than 50% women.) But there are several interesting thoughts here, including a bit on autism as an extreme form of the “maleness” in the brain.

Neurodudes reader John sent us this nice link to a high-resolution online atlas with human, macaque, and mouse brains.

I haven’t explored the site very much, but the quality seems very impressive and you really can’t beat the price. It also looks like the authors are planning to expand the atlas soon and have already started building desktop tools for easy 2D and 3D navigation. Thanks, John!

Myomancy is my blog on research into ADHD, dyslexia and autism. Its aim is to take the scientific research and make it accessible for parents, sufferers and educators. My background is in computers but my interest in nueroscience comes from a lifetime of trying to understand how my dyslexic brain was different from everyone else. This interest grew into a hobby and it now threatens to become semi-professional involvement following my successful dyslexia treatment and the lauch on Myomancy.

Chris Tregenza

In the same vein as the all science is computational science (previously we talked about this in the context of an NYT article on the rising dominance of computation), Science has an article this week on the inadequate mathematics preparation of biology students. One of the authors in computational neuroscientist Bill Bialek. Click below for the abstract or here for the whole article.
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