Mining the Brain in an Age of Big Data

John Pearson, PhD
Duke University

Talk Abstract: Like genetics twenty years ago, neuroscience is currently anticipating the approach of a tidal wave of data. From hundreds of simultaneously recorded neurons to rich and complex social behavior, a new generation of experiments has already begun to challenge our conventional methods for visualizing, analyzing, and interpreting information. Machine learning methods have tremendous potential to address these issues, but their greatest successes have come in engineering rather than scientific applications. I will discuss several key considerations involved in applying these methods to neuroscience and illustrate with case studies including data from both humans and animal models.