Crossing Boundaries: Report to Community 2015

Annual Repor

INCF Workshops on Needs for Training in Neuroinformatics: Extended and Short Course Provision

The second and third _INCF Workshops on Training in Neuroinformatics_ were organized by the INCF National Node of the UK. In these workshops, the issues arising in providing extended courses, such as a full time Masters, or short courses, of a few days or a few weeks, were discussed. There was a focus on how the INCF could facilitate training in these types of courses. In this report, the recommendations from all three Training workshops are brought together

Of the Helmholtz Club, South-Californian seedbed for visual and cognitive neuroscience, and its patron Francis Crick

Taking up the view that semi-institutional gatherings such as clubs, societies, research schools, have been instrumental in creating sheltered spaces from which many a 20th-century project-driven interdisciplinary research programme could develop and become established within the institutions of science, the paper explores the history of one such gathering from its inception in the early 1980s into the 2000s, the Helmholtz Club, which brought together scientists from such various research fields as neuroanatomy, neurophysiology, psychophysics, computer science and engineering, who all had an interest in the study of the visual system and of higher cognitive functions relying on visual perception such as visual consciousness. It argues that British molecular biologist turned South Californian neuroscientist Francis Crick had an early and lasting influence over the Helmholtz Club of which he was a founding pillar, and that from its inception, the club served as a constitutive element in his long-term plans for a neuroscience of vision and of cognition. Further, it argues that in this role, the Helmholtz Club served many purposes, the primary of which was to be a social forum for interdisciplinary discussion, where ‘discussion’ was not mere talk but was imbued with an epistemic value and as such, carefully cultivated. Finally, it questions what counts as ‘doing science’ and in turn, definitions of success and failure—and provides some material evidence towards re-appraising the successfulness of Crick’s contribution to the neurosciences