<p>I’ve always wanted to study something that has to do with how information is processed & stored in the brain. I don’t know if this sounds silly but almost like “reading” the brain. Perhaps like data/mathematical modelling? I don’t really know what educational path I must choose. I am thinking that the choices consist of neuroscience, applied math, bioinformatics, computational biology, biomedical engineering. I will be applying to universities in Quebec & Ontario. There are just so many programs that I don’t which will be the best interdisciplinary approach. Also note that I love math, probably more than any other course that I can think of. I understand that I’ll most likely have to do graduate studies too. </p>
<p>P.S. Dos UofT have a neuroscience program at the St. George Campus?</p>
<p>perhaps if my original post is not clear, let me repeat it briefly, I want to get in to the research field concerning the human brain using a mathematical and physical sciences based approach. My primary interest is studying how information is processed in the brain. Thanks :)</p>
<p>There’s currently no good (or even mediocre) mathematical or computational model of how the brain works. We can simulate small scale neural networks (on the order of a few dozen nodes) pretty well, but those can’t do very much. And then there are large-scale neural networks, but the topology of those networks is nowhere related to the connections of neurons in the human brain. The problem is that we don’t understand the human brain well enough to simulate it globally.</p>
<p>There’s lots of potential for research there, but it may not be the most exciting major if you just want to learn something cool and then move on to other things.</p>
<p>The focus of most neuroscience programs, even the more computational ones, is physiological in nature. You’d spend a LOT of time learning chemistry and molecular biology. I wanted to emphasize this because I saw another thread of yours where you were raving about applied math and I didn’t get the impression that biology and chemistry were your cup of tea.</p>
<p>thank you guys. I’m glad you mentioned that b@r!um because although I can do pretty well in those courses and I like bio, chemistry is not something I really look forward to. However if I decide to suck it up and still go ahead would neuroscience, as jpatel said, be your recommended choice for my undergrad?</p>
<p>Computational neuroscience is too narrow a specialty at the undergraduate level. The real question is what else you’d like to study in addition, or in other words, what context you’d like to learn computational neuroscience in. </p>
<p>If you want to study the brain from various perspectives (biology, chemistry, psychology, philosophy, artificial intelligence), neuroscience is a good choice.</p>
<p>If you are interested in using computational methods to study a wider range of biological problems (e.g. in epidemiology, ecology, cell processes, genomics), you might like computational biology.</p>
<p>If instead of solving biological problems, you’d rather use computers to store and analyze biological data, you might like bioinformatics.</p>
<p>If you don’t actually care all that much about biology but you get super excited about artificial intelligence, consider plain computer science (with some extra math courses).</p>