Churchland lab

I attended the Neurofutures 2016 conference at the Allen Institute for Brain Sciences in Seattle last week. The conference that focussed on new technologies in the field and how they will drive new discoveries. I gave the opening plenary talk at the conference, a public lecture which you can see here. Following my lecture, I was part of a panel consisting of olfaction hero Linda Buck, blood flow guru (and recent marmoset pioneer) Alfonso Silva and eCog sage Jeff Ojemann. It was exciting to hear their take on the most exciting technologies in neuroscience. Some of the exciting new developments were highlighted by the panel included optogenetics, powerful transgenic animals (mice, marmosets and beyond) and high-throughput sequencing, just to name a few.

I share my colleagues’ enthusiasm for those techniques, but also held fast that these techniques must be accompanied by advances in theory to support out ability to understand the incoming data. Theoretical neuroscience has historically played a fundamental role in the field as a whole, and its importance going forward cannot be understated (I have argued for this before).