Neuroscience Seminar Series: Virtual Reboot

Topic: Next Steps for American Neuroscience: An Inventor's Perspective

Please join the Interdisciplinary Program in Neuroscience for the inaugural reboot of the Neuroscience Seminar Series with Dr. Jim Olds. 

Abstract: 

The field of neuroscience has had a couple of pretty good decades since the turn of the century, however the field still is mostly characterized by potential. Progress in curing major diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Schizophrenia remains painfully slow, if not static. The mechanisms for many neural phenomena are unknown and the current brain activity maps in humans lack the temporal and spatial resolution required to match the neural code. Existing such maps in model organisms such as fly and fish reveal vast complexities but no mapping function that would allow us to accurately predict complex behaviors. Finally, of immediate concern, the etiology of Brain COVID remains unknown but really scary in terms of the long term consequences of the illness.

What’s a funder to do? 

I outline several promising ‘green shoots’ that, with proper investment, might yield the kind of breakout that the field needs and deserves (like perhaps physics in 1906). I emphasize how our lack of progress may reflect on some deeper categorical errors in neuroscience’s received dogma built upon Hebb, Olds Sr. and, more recently, Eric Kandel. Finally, in the context of disease, I consider that Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative disorders may have an infectious component, perhaps viral, that once revealed, would lead to effective therapies.