So far, we’ve had two talks, one from David Essen, one from Mary Kennedy. A nice bit of organisation because they have jumped scales — the first was mostly about brain gross anatomy and the second about molecular modelling.

A bit like it’s forerunner — databasing the brain — there is not that much informatics here. The keynotes have been very much about the neuroscience; this makes it both novel and interesting for me, although fairly heavy going at times.

It confirms my feeling that neurosinformatics is much less mature than bioinformatics; it’s not really a separate discipline yet. Not that this is a bad thing; I’ve been at bioinformatics conferences where the "bio" seems barely relevant. If I am honest about it, I think more about computers these days and sometimes forget the point — understanding life — although I guess this is inevitable working in a computer science department. Less mature is another phrase for new, young and fresh. It feels good to be in this environment.

Originally published on my old blog site.