What are the Big Ideas in Cognitive Neuroscience?

This year, the Cognitive Neuroscience Institute (CNI) and the Max-Planck-Society organized a symposium on Big Ideas in Cognitive Neuroscience. I enjoyed this fun forum organized by David Poeppel and Mike Gazzaniga. The format included three pairs of speakers on the topics of memory, language, and action/motor who “consider[ed] some major challenges and cutting-edge advances, from molecular mechanisms to decoding approaches to network computations.”Co-host Marcus Raichle recalled his inspiration for the symposium: a similar Big Ideas session at the Society for Neuroscience meeting. But human neuroscience was absent from all SFN Big Ideas, so Dr. Raichle contacted Dr. Gazzaniga, who “made it happen” (along with Dr. Poeppel). The popular event was standing room only, and many couldn ' t even get into the Bayview Room (which was too small a venue). More context:“Recent discussions in the neurosciences have been relentlessly reductionist. The guiding principle of this symposium is that there is no privileged level of analysis that can yield special explanatory insight into the mind/brain on its own, so ideas and techniques across levels will be necessary. ”The two hour symposium was a welcome addition to hundreds of posters and talks on highly specific empirical findings. Sometimes we must take a step back and look at the big picture. But since I ' m The Neurocritic, I ' ll start out with some modest suggestions for next time.There was no time for questions or discussi...
Source: The Neurocritic - Category: Neuroscience Authors: Source Type: blogs