Dr. William H. Calvin: Monday, July 10

Dr. Mike Hawrylycz: Tuesday, July 11

William h. Calvin, Ph.D. Theoretical Neurobiologist University of Washington in Seattle

William H. Calvin, Ph.D. is a theoretical neurobiologist at the University of Washington in Seattle, the author of 12 books including The Cerebral Code (MIT Press 1996), How Brains Think (Science Masters 1996), and, with the neurosurgeon George A. Ojemann, Conversations with Neil's Brain (Addison-Wesley 1994).  His research interests include the recurrent excitatory circuitry of cerebral cortex used for split-second versions of the Darwinian bootstrapping of quality, the four-fold enlargement of the hominid brain during the ice ages, and the brain reorganization for language and planning.  His language book, a collaboration with the linguist Derek Bickerton, is about  the evolution of syntax, Lingua ex machina: Reconciling Darwin and Chomsky with the Human Brain (MIT Press, 2000).   He has long been following the paleoclimate and oceanographic research on the abrupt climate changes of the ice ages, hoping to find a connection to the big-brain problem, and is the author of The Atlantic Monthly's cover story, "The Great Climate Flip-flop."  His 2002 book, A Brain for All Seasons:  Human Evolution and Abrupt Climate Change, brings his anthropology and climate interests back together again; it won the Phi Beta Kappa Book Award for Science.  A Brief History of the Mind: From Apes to Intellect and Beyond is the latest, from Oxford University Press.

For more information, visit: WilliamCalvin.com

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Mike Hawrylycz, Ph.D. Director, Informatics Allen Institute for Brain Science

Mapping and Mining The Allen Brain Atlas

*Abstract:* The Allen Institute for Brain Science has been conducting a genome wide scan of expression patterns in the 20,000+ genes of th adult mouse. By using the technique of colorimetric riboprobe in situ hybridization, the protocol produces cellular level detail with diverse markers for cell types and anatomic structures. Mapping this data to a common anatomic framework is a major challenge that is central to all brain imaging efforts. At the Allen Institute we have implemented a robust and high throughput computational platform for mapping the 0.95micron/pixel 10x resolution data to a new 3D mouse reference atlas.
The result enables the development of a searchable 3D expression database for high level expression patterns across the mouse genome. I will give an overview of the Allen Brain Atlas, its database and informatics tools and indicate some possibilities for data mining. The opportunities for computational discovery in this image based database are virtually limitless and should be great interest to those interested in applications of evolutionary computation.

*Bio:* Mike Hawrylycz studied applied mathematics at MIT and has worked in variety of applied fields of mathematics and computer science including image processing, computational finance, and bioinformatics.
He is the Director of Informatics at the Allen Institute for Brain
Science.

www.brain-map.org

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