A Note on Some Past and Present Advances in Neuroscience: A Personal Perspective Dedicated to the Memory of Luigi Ricciardi

摘要

I met Luigi Ricciardi in 1972 when I spent part of my sabbatical at the Instituto di Cibernetica in Arco Felice, directed by Eduardo Caianiello, the most prominent Italian cyberneticist of his generation. Luigi was a member of the Institute and we had many talks about stochastic processes underlying neuron firing. Later we exchanged visits in Italy and in Buffalo, where Luigi gave us a seminar at the Center for Theoretical Biology "On the First Passage Time Problem in a Model Neuron". We came from somewhat different backgrounds but we were both interested in quantitative neuroscience. Luigi was more mathematically inclined while my interests turned increasingly towards biology. But Luigi had wide interests as witnessed by his numerous publications and his leadership in organizing conferences and workshops in a variety of fields on quantitative medicine and biology, including the meetings of Eurocast.