Innovation New Jersey
  • Home
  • Our Coalition
    • Contact Us
  • News
  • Resources
    • State Supports
    • Federal Supports
    • Higher Ed Supports
  • Join Us

Innovation News

Everything Innovation. Everything New Jersey.
Follow us and stay connected.

Q&A with Princeton Researcher on Dissecting the Brain Using Math and Neuroscience

9/7/2015

0 Comments

 
Princeton, NJ - The brain is the ultimate big-data problem. Its billions of neurons give rise to numerous abilities, such as making decisions, interpreting color and even recognizing your best friend. Jonathan Pillow, a Princeton University assistant professor of psychology and the Princeton Neuroscience Institute, aims to understand the brain by using math and statistics to make sense of the reams of information collected by brain-imaging studies. Recently arrived from the University of Texas-Austin, Pillow, who also is affiliated with the University's Center for Statistics and Machine Learning, sat down to talk about how he got into neuroscience, his approach to teaching, and his latest research published earlier this month in the journal Science.
How did you become interested in neuroscience?

I was a philosophy major as an undergraduate and I was interested in questions such as where does the mind come from. I also studied mathematics and came to realize that neuroscience offered the kinds of tools that I thought would be most useful for understanding how the brain works.

What are the big questions that you are trying to tackle?

My research group is trying to understand how groups of neurons work together to process information. We aim to find out what is happening in the brain that allows you to recognize a face, identify what colors things are, or move your hand to catch a ball that is flying through the air.

How do you go about this research?

We analyze neural activity recorded using functional MRI and other brain-imaging technology, as well as recordings of single neurons, made while a human or animal is engaged in a task.
Given these recordings, our group works on figuring out what patterns of neural activity correlate with the incoming stimulus and the outgoing behavior.


How daunting is this challenge?

Understanding the human brain is one of the greatest challenges of science. The field of neuroscience is really in its infancy when it comes to understanding how behavior arises from neural activity. We understand a lot about how single neurons work, and in some cases how small groups of neurons work together to generate certain behaviors, but we still have a ways to go.

Where does mathematics fit in?

We have a "big data" problem because we can record what a lot of neurons are doing but the challenge is how those activities lead to behavior. It is an exciting time to be doing this because there are rapid expansions of computing power and a lot of exciting work in statistics and the theory of how to work with big data. My research group is developing algorithms that can extract the kind of patterns that we are interested in finding.

How can your research benefit society?

What motivates our research is the desire to understand how the healthy brain works so that we can figure out what goes wrong in brain disorders such as Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, dementia and schizophrenia. I am working in particular on decision-making, which seems to be compromised in a lot of brain disorders.

A potential application for this kind of fundamental research is sensory or motor prosthetics. If we can learn how your brain is able to recognize a face, or how it can plan a path through a cluttered environment, then we may able to design robots or other artificial systems that can solve those same tasks using the computational strategies that the brain uses.

You moved to Princeton recently from the University of Texas-Austin. What made you decide to come to Princeton?

It is an exciting time in the field of statistical neuroscience for developing tools to analyze data sets. At Princeton, I have the opportunity to collaborate with both theorists and experimentalists. It is an extraordinary group of collaborators and students.

For the full story: http://www.princeton.edu/research/news/faculty-profiles/a/?id=15343

0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Do not miss a single innovative moment and sign up for our newsletter!
    Weekly updates


    Categories

    All
    3D Printing
    Academia
    Acquisitions
    Aerospace
    Agriculture
    AIDS
    Algae
    Alumni
    Animals
    Architecture
    Astrophysics
    Autism
    Awards
    Big Data
    Bioethics
    Biofuel
    Biomedical
    BioNJ
    Bioterrorism
    Bit Coins
    Brain Health
    Business
    Camden
    Cancer
    CCollege
    Cellular
    Centenary
    Chemistry
    ChooseNJ
    Climate Change
    Clinical Trials
    Cloud Tech
    Collaboration
    Computing
    Congress
    Coriell
    Council On Innovation
    Crowdfunding
    Cybersecurity
    DARPA
    Defense
    Degree
    Dementia
    Dental Health
    DOC
    DOD
    DOE
    Drew
    Drones
    Drug Creation
    Einstein's Alley
    Electricity
    Energy
    Engineering
    Entrepreneurship
    Environmental
    FAA
    Fairleigh Dickinson
    FDA
    Federal Budget
    Federal Government
    Federal Labs
    Federal Program
    Finance
    Food Science
    Fort Monmouth
    Fuel Cells
    Funding
    Genome
    Geography
    Geology
    Global Competition
    Google
    Governor Christie
    Grant
    Hackensack
    HackensackUMC
    Healthcare
    Health Care
    HHS
    HINJ
    Hospitals
    Immigration
    Incubator
    Infrastructure
    International
    Internet
    Investor
    IoT
    IP
    IT
    Jobs
    Johnson & Johnson
    K-12
    Kean
    Kessler
    Legislation
    Logistics
    Manufacturing
    Medical Devices
    Med School
    Mental Health
    Mentor
    Microorganisms
    Molecular Biology
    Montclair
    NAS
    Neuroscience
    Newark
    New Jersey
    NIFA
    NIH
    NIST
    NJBDA
    NJBIA
    NJ Chemistry Council
    NJCU
    NJDOLWD
    NJEDA
    NJEDge
    NJHF
    NJII
    NJIT
    NJMEP
    NJPAC
    NJPRO
    NJTC
    Nonprofit
    NSF
    OpEd
    Open Data
    OSHE
    OSTP
    Parasite
    Patents
    Paterson
    Patients
    Perth Amboy
    Pharma
    POTUS
    PPPL
    Princeton
    Prosthetics
    Ranking
    Rare Disease
    R&D Council
    Report
    Resiliency
    Rider
    Robotics
    Rowan
    Rutgers
    SBA
    Seton Hall
    Siemens
    Smart Car
    Smart Cities
    Software
    Solar
    Space
    SSTI
    Startup
    State Government
    STEM
    Stevens
    Stockton
    Subatomic
    Supports
    Sustainability
    Taxes
    TCNJ
    Teachers
    Telecom
    Therapy
    Thermodynamics
    Transportation
    Undergraduate
    USEDA
    Verizon
    Video Game
    Virtual Reality
    Water
    WHO
    William Paterson
    Women In STEM
    Workforce Development

Home   Coalition   News   Resources   Events   Join Us
Picture
Innovation New Jersey Coalition
10 West Lafayette Street
Trenton, NJ 08608-2002
609-858-9507