INTRODUCTION TO THE SYMPOSIUM - WHAT IS COMPUTATIONAL NEUROBIOLOGY

Current advances in computational biology are derived from two sets of ideas established in the work of Santiago Ramon y Cajal. One is the neuron doctrine, which holds that neurons are the functional units of the nervous system, and has led to detailed models of neuronal properties based on increasing information on the physical and chemical properties of neurons. The second is the idea of networks of neurons with specific patterns of interconnections that has led to a variety of mathematical methods of analyzing such networks. Future work in computational neurobiology promises to be a blend of these two modeling approaches.