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The Brains Blog is happy to co-host Dr. John Bickle's presentation of “On some limits of computational modeling in mechanistic neurobiology: An illuminating historical case”

Abstract: Increasingly neuroscientists use computer modeling, including in the search for neurobiological mechanisms. It is interesting to look back on the historical case of Alan Hodgkin and Andrew Huxley, whose quantitative model of the action potential is now widely regarded as foundational for the field of computational neuroscience. Both were awarded one-third share of the 1963 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for their discoveries; both thought initially that their quantitative model would prove invaluable in the search for the “molecular mechanisms” of the action potential. But by the time they published their quantitative model in their 1952 paper, “A quantitative description of membrane current and its application to conduction and excitation in nerve,” (Journal of Physiology 17(4): 500-544), both had already realized serious limitations of their model for that specific scientific endeavor. Explicating their account of these limits offers a useful lesson for contemporary computational neuroscientists. Even in our times of quantitative models and computer hardware that would have flabbergasted Hodgkin and Huxley, wetlab interventionist experimentation must remain the principal activity in the search for neurobiological mechanisms, for the same reasons Hodgkin and Huxley realized nearly 70 years ago.

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