Ask Slashdot: DIY Computational Neuroscience?

An anonymous reader writes "Over the last couple years, I have taught myself the basic concepts behind Computational Neuroscience, mainly from the book by Abbott and Dayan. I am not currently affiliated with any academic Neuroscience program. I would like to take a DIY approach and work on some real world problems of Computational Neuroscience. My questions: (1) What are some interesting computational neuroscience simulation problems that an individual with a workstation class PC can work on? (2) Is it easy for a non-academic to get the required data? (3) I am familiar with (but not used extensively) simulators like Neuron, Genesis etc. Other than these and Matlab, what other software should I get? (4) Where online or offline, can I network with other DIY Computational Neuroscience enthusiasts? My own interest is in simulation of Epileptogenic neural networks, music cognition networks, and perhaps a bit more ambitiously, to create a simulation on which the various Models of Consciousness can be comparatively tested."

Re:Study and practice this in private.

[Travis Mansbridge]

It sounds like the "professional" is sick of his job.

Good start, now....

[Improv]

Good start, now go do some formal study and get a degree. There's too great a risk, with self-taught people, for them to only expose themselves to the ideas that are appealing to them. Academic fields recognise this; you're not going to be ready to contribute to the cutting edge unless you put your ideas in the field up for reshaping by people who know more than you do, and that's a good thing.

Re:Study and practice this in private.

[Smallpond]

Ignore the naysayers. Do what you love. As for programming, professionals have created more security nightmares than amateurs.

Model of Consciousness seems a bit ambitious. Something easy to measure and readily available is how to hit a baseball. A fastball is moving faster than your eyes can track it, so you have to create an internal model of where it's going and swing a mechanical system (your arm and the bat) at the right time and place to knock it into the stands. It would be interesting to determine what inputs the brain uses and model the control system.

Re:Study and practice this in private.

[Anonymous Coward]

That would be nice if all applied to "professional" meaning someone paid and "amateurs" as people not paid for their work. But it only really applies if you redefine it or pull some no true Scotsman stuff, and define professional as being those that create high quality stuff and amateurs as those that take shortcuts or fall short of high standards for whatever reason. Then you are stuck with something quite trite, "Keep it to yourself if it fails the arbitrary/ill-defined/conflicting standards of other random people on the internet."

Re:Study and practice this in private.

[sumdumass]

I would suggest professionals decide not to use the code from well-meaning but undertrained amateurs then. I mean the only way it would impact them is if the code is taken up and used. Outside of that, they are getting paid to do something specific and doing what you are hired to do was as far as I know, a hallmark of professionalism.