IRR: Neuroinformatics and Computational Neuroscience

Neuroinformatics and Computational Neuroscience

What differentiates Neuroinformatics rom the other programmes on the Informatics MSc portfolio. 

This programme area encompasses research at the intersection of computer science and neuroscience, a field with a long and successful tradition. One of the main directions is the study of brain function in terms of computation and information processing, using simulations and mathematical analysis. Artificial intelligence is both inspired by this work and yields new insights that can be applied to understand cognitive processes. The models developed in this area are also successfully applied to better understand  common psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia, autism and depression. At the same time, the field also develops new machine learning approaches to analyse and interpret the increasingly complex experimental data sets collected in neuroscience laboratories. Applications of this work are prosthetics and other assistive technologies where neural signals are used to control computers or other devices. 

Are there go-to sources to find reviews and perspectives on these research topics. i.e. are there any good review journals that are worth browsing to get topic overviews. 

Current Opinion in Neurobiology has regular special issues that cover current research in computational neuroscience (https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/current-opinion-in-neurobiology/special-issues). The course materials produced for the Neuromatch Academy summer schools give an excellent introduction into the field (all content is available online at: https://academy.neuromatch.io/). 

What are the key journals or conferences in the field for finding high quality research papers in these topics 

eLife: https://elifesciences.org/subjects/neuroscience  
Nature Neuroscience: https://www.nature.com/neuro/ 
Neuron: https://www.cell.com/neuron/home  
Neural Computation: https://direct.mit.edu/neco 
PLoS Computational Biology: https://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/ 

Are there any particular high profile or rapidly growing research areas in the programme that you would suggest might be worth looking at for potential IRR themes. 

• Brain <-> computer interfaces at a wide variety of levels including neuroprosthetics
• Real-time simulation of large-scale neural circuits.
• Functional prediction of predicted circuits from reconstructed connectomics datasets.
• Structure-function mapping in human brain imaging datasets particularly looking at altered spatio-termoral activity patterns in neurological diseases.
• Automatic reconstruction of 3D neurons and their synapses from large-scale high resolution electron micrograph series.
• Data analytics and simulations across multiple scales of organisation (e.g. from molecules to synapses to neurons to circuits to brain regions and ultimately behaviour).
• The ethics of brain running brain simulations as they approach the levels of complexity seen in more complex nervous systems.
• The development of neuromorphic computing and new computational methods / chipsets based on, or inspired by, computation in biological brains.