Interview with Partha Mitra
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This post-lecture interview was conducted during the BCBT Summerschool held at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, september 2010.
The current study of the brain faces a paradox: neuroscience produces an enormous amount of data, but there is surprisingly little integrated framework to fit the dispersed, and heterogeneous data collections together. Inspired by the human genome project, a group of scientists, amongst whom Partha Mitra (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, USA), have started working on a framework to resolve some of this paradox, and integrate the large amounts of sometimes over-specialized data at a lower but shared resolution, over a more global scale at the level of mesocircuitry. Originally a theoretical physicist, Mitra finds himself turning to modesty in the face of neuro-anatomatical practice, and discusses with Paul Verschure and Tony Prescott the challenges such an ambitious project faces. One of the recommendations he makes, is to take the knowledge coming from (re)building neurocircuitry as emerging from engineering practices much more seriously, with respect to what it can reveal about the functional and evolutionary history of brain areas. Another recommendation is to accept a plurality of theories to apply to explain particular single phenomena, which is a view that deviates from ones characterizing his background in physics.
About the lecturerPartha Mitra is currently the principal investigator at the Mitra Lab at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, NY. The interests of the lab fall into three main areas: Neuroinformatics, Theoretical Engineering and Quantitative Behavior & Electrophysiology.
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