Why are computational neuroscience and systems biology so separate?
review · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 18516226.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1000078 and PMC identifier 2367448.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Despite similar computational approaches, there is surprisingly little interaction between the computational neuroscience and the systems biology research communities. In this review I reconstruct the history of the two disciplines and show that this may explain why they grew up apart. The separation is a pity, as both fields can learn quite a bit from each other. Several examples are given, covering sociological, software technical, and methodological aspects. Systems biology is a better organized community which is very effective at sharing resources, while computational neuroscience has more experience in multiscale modeling and the analysis of information processing by biological systems. Finally, I speculate about how the relationship between the two fields may evolve in the near future.
Medical subject headings
- Models, Neurological
- Neurosciences
- Systems Biology