Quantification of Behavior
Organized by Donald Pfaff and Alan Leshner
June 11-13, 2010
Washington, DC
Meeting Overview:
This interdisciplinary colloquium brought together a diverse group of researchers with the following objectives: to illustrate the current state of behavioral neuroscience, a state in which precision of data is high and methods of quantitative analyses, sophisticated; to give examples of the most interesting mathematical analyses currently in use; and to reveal the startling successes of quantitative approaches in analyzing human economic behavior. The talks reveal the breathtaking scope of advances in the behavioral sciences during recent years. The program included the most detailed calculations applied to the simplest behaviors, moving on to more complex behaviors and those of greatest medical importance, and concluding with the highest level of human cognitive behavior amenable to quantitative, mathematical approaches. This meeting strived to verify and extend what physicist Eugene Wigner called “the unnatural success of mathematics in describing the natural world."
Video Available
Addiction: Conflicts Between Brain Circuits
Nora Volkow
Donald Pfaff and Alan Leshner Introductions and Logic of the colloquium
Session I: Analyses of the simplest behaviors measured under laboratory conditions
How good is good enough? Tuning synaptic and intrinsic parameters in neuronal circuits
Eve Marder, Brandeis University
Macro information from micro analyses
Peter Killeen, Arizona State University
Circadian biology
Vivek Kumar, University of Texas Southwestern
Balancing simplicity and complexity analyses of neural and behavioral data
Greg Stephens, Princeton University
Session II: More complex behaviors, studied under natural conditions
Quantification of developmental song learning: From the sub-syllabic scale to cultural evolution
Ofer Tchernichovski, City College of New York
Quantification of movement
Ilan Golani, Tel Aviv University
Visual perception
Dale Purves, Duke University
Kinesiology, the analysis of motion
Peter Cavanagh, University of Washington
Session III: Medical phenomena susceptible to quantitative approaches
Computational properties of circuits signaling injury: relationship to pain behavior
Lorne Mendell, SUNY Stony Brook
Regulation of sleep in humans
Charles Czeisler, Harvard University
Impact of sleep on the cross-talk between the brain and the periphery
Eve van Cauter, University of Chicago
Session IV: Mathematical approaches and engineering principles
Mathematics in the description of an elementary function of the vertebrate brain: Generalized arousal
Donald Pfaff, The Rockefeller University
Control engineering for robust responses in uncertain environments
John Doyle, California Institute of Technology
Population models of thalamocortical dynamics
Jonathan Victor, Cornell University
Structural equation modeling
Kenneth Bollen, University of North Carolina
Session V: Complex economic decisions by humans
The math of behavioral economics
Paul Glimcher, New York University
The psychology of behavioral economics
Dan Ariely, Duke University
