To Infinity, and Beyond!

Ok, so I'm not really going as far as infinity, just New York. Still, that's a pretty big adventure for someone who went to college a scant 30 miles from home. I've never really lived in a big city and just moving to Austin was a drastic lifestyle change for me. But I'm so incredibly excited to have the chance to pursue my neuroscience research at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx.

That's right, this summer I finally nabbed a summer research position! Instead of spending my summer working at a cashier at a grocery store, I'll be out doing science! I really am beyond thrilled. In any case, I thought this research opportunity would be the perfect chance to return to my blogging. I went on an extended hiatus this year thanks to an over-loaded schedule (18 hours plus lab!) and a dearth of creativity. But now I'm back and pumped to share my exploits in the wonderful world of neuroscience.

Just so this entry isn't purely an update on my life, I do have something to share as well. It's a little program called the game of life. It was created by John Conway and relies on 4 simple rules.

1. Any live cell with fewer than two live neighbors dies, due to "loneliness."
2. Any live cell with two or three live neighbors lives onto the next generation.
3. Any live cell with exactly three live neighbors dies, due to "overcrowding."
4. Any dead cell with exactly three live neighbors becomes a live cell through "reproduction."

Although the rules seem incredibly simplistic, they create the building blocks to impressively complex systems. Here's a little taste:

Clearly, certain starting configurations give rise to highly complicated systems. I argue that this is similar to the direction we should be looking to in neural modeling. We know a single neuron receives input from its neighbors and depending on that input, sends a signal of its own. This is very much like the cells in the game of life which change or 'fire' depending on how their neighbors are acting.

While you can't draw an exact 1:1 correlation between the two systems, it still shares a property of emergence whereby cells flickering on and off create complex, interacting grids with an unique output. I don't know if anyone has pursued this kind of modeling in the years since the Game of Life was first developed, but I'd be curious to hear what my readers have to say about this.

And for those who can't get enough of the crazy constructs created in the Game of Life, for you: