Thread by @eglerean

Brainhack Global 18 in Finland has just started with prof. Em Riitta Hari @aivoAALTO talking about the unsolved questions in neuroscience #bhg18 #bhg18fi

"how good are your data?" often theory comes before data (e.g. physics) and many labs do same experiment and results are combined #bhg18 #bhg18fi

"animal models, are we using the best species out of 8M species in the planet?" #bhg18 #bhg18fi

"Standard lab animal models were chosen because they were easy to breed" Yartsev science 2007

Paper here (2017) science.sciencemag.org/content/358/63…

(live streaming of #bhg18 #bhg18fi here

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RH "think about functional principles about brain function: evolution" #bhg18 #bhg18fi

"the brain has evolved in the real world" #bhg18 #bhg18fi

RH "During evolution we got multiple simplifying priors: circadian rhythms, gravity, etc" #bhg18 #bhg18fi

Because of our priors we are subject to (visual) illusions, mechanics are imprinted in our brains. #bhg18 #bhg18fi

"The brain is never isolated brain <-> environment <-> other's brains" #bhg18 #bhg18fi

"Connections in the brain are reciprocal between areas and levels and almost always bidirectional" #bhg18 #bhg18fi

RH "inhibition is essential" "amongst the greatest inventions in evolution" #bhg18 #bhg18fi

RH "we are good at aiming at something (motor action); selecting the proper motor action requires control" (as in feedback/feedforward I add)

(side note, check the stream @aivoAALTO 's toe writing skill is actually quite good!)

"Body and behaviour: only in fairytails the mind is independent from the body" (The Smiths: "does the body rule the mind or does the mind rule the body? I don't know") [that was my personal addition]

"mice posture was able to reconstruct movement" cell.com/neuron/abstrac… #bhg18 #bhg18fi

RH: "Complexity vs simplexity" people always say "the brain is the most complex devise in the world" "there are extremely complicated things, not just the brain" #bhg18 #bhg18fi

"To cope with environmental complexity, human and animal brains rely on simplifying principles that allow adaptive behaviour" Alain Berthoz Simplexity #bhg18 #bhg18fi

RH @aivoAALTO recommends the whole book #bhg18 #bhg18fi amazon.com/Simplexity-Sim…

And finally "Time! Timing is necessary" #bhg18 #bhg18fi "snapshots are not enough"

"Even in fMRI they are emphasizing the importance of time with Dynome cell.com/neuron/fulltex… and Chronnectome sciencedirect.com/science/articl…) #bhg18 #bhg18fi

RH take home messages:
1) functional principles
2) reciprocal connections
3) inhibition
4) body and behav
5) complexity and simplexity
6) timing

#bhg18 #bhg18fi

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