Brain studies tackle big data

摘要

Big question: Jeremy Freeman wants to understand how the brain works. His influential papers have provided clues to how people spot objects in a crowd, methods to build giant maps of the brain's nerve cells and elegant insights into how nerve cells let us see and touch. But he is equal parts neuroscientist, computer coder and data visualization whiz. As a group leader at Janelia Research Campus, Freeman develops computer programs to make sense of mountains of data. He wants to do science and improve the way science is done. "We talk about complexifiers and simplifiers," says Corey Ziemba, a neuroscientist at New York University. "Jeremy is an extreme simplifier."