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Eve discusses many of the lessons she has learned studying a small nervous system, the crustacean stomatogastric nervous system (STG). The STG has only about 30 neurons and its connections and neurophysiology are well-understood. Yet Eve's work has shown it functions under a remarkable diversity of conditions, and does so is a remarkable variety of ways. We discuss her work on the STG specifically, and what her work implies about trying to study much larger nervous systems, like our human brains.



The Marder Lab.Twitter: @MarderLab.Related to our conversation:Understanding Brains: Details, Intuition, and Big Data.Emerging principles governing the operation of neural networks (Eve mentions this regarding "building blocks" of neural networks).





0:00 - Intro
3:58 - Background
8:00 - Levels of ambiguity
9:47 - Stomatogastric nervous system
17:13 - Structure vs. function
26:08 - Role of theory
34:56 - Technology vs. understanding
38:25 - Higher cognitive function
44:35 - Adaptability, resilience, evolution
50:23 - Climate change
56:11 - Deep learning
57:12 - Dynamical systems