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Methodological Issues in Modelling at Multiple Levels of Description

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Computational Systems Neurobiology

Abstract

Computational neuroscience and Systems Biology are comparatively young, interdisciplinary areas in the life sciences, dealing with, arguably, the most complex systems we know of. All these factors conspire to make the status, and process, of building models in these areas problematic. Oftentimes modellers make tacit assumptions about their general approach, but we would argue that such assumptions should be explicit, and that establishing sound methodological principles is an important foundation stone for making progress.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    In Marr’s original formulation of the computational framework, which appeared in an MIT technical report (Marr and Poggio 1976), a fourth level was described. However, this was dropped in the more popular account in Marr (1982). Independently, Gurney proposed a four level account in Gurney (1997) which was subsequently developed in Gurney et al. (2004b).

  2. 2.

    It is often argued that a ‘divine gift’ of a complete model of the brain would be useless. In the light of the above discussion, however, it would appear this is not true. It may be arduous to unravel the function of all aspects of the model/brain, but this task would certainly be easier than using biological experiments alone.

  3. 3.

    We use the term ‘system level’ to denote a large scale (‘low magnification’) view of the brain, that incorporates at least one anatomically defined, functional set of nuclei. This is in contrast with the use of the term in ‘systems biology’ where it usually denotes the cellular level.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by UK EPSRC grant EP/C516303/1, and French grants: Marie Curie BIND, and an ANR Chaire d’Excellence.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, University of Sheffield, South Yorkshire, S10 2TP, UK

    Kevin Gurney

  2. Faculty of Life Sciences, University of Manchester, Manchester, M60 1QD, UK

    Mark Humphries

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Correspondence to Kevin Gurney .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. European Bioinformatics Institute, EMBL-Outstation-Hinxton, Wellcome Trust Genome Campus, Welcome-Trust Genome Campus, Hinxton, Cambridge, CB10 1SD, United Kingdom

    N. Le Novère

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Gurney, K., Humphries, M. (2012). Methodological Issues in Modelling at Multiple Levels of Description. In: Le Novère, N. (eds) Computational Systems Neurobiology. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-3858-4_9

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