Quantification of Behavior

Organized by Donald Pfaff and Alan Leshner, this meeting was held June 11-13, 2010 at AAAS, Washington, D.C.

Meeting Overview
This interdisciplinary colloquium brought together a diverse group of researchers with the following objectives:   First, to illustrate the current state of behavioral neuroscience, a state in which precision of data is high and methods of quantitative analyses, sophisticated.   Second, to give examples of the most interesting mathematical analyses currently in use.   And thirdly, to reveal the startling successes of quantitative approaches in analyzing human economic behavior. 

Talks reveal the breathtaking scope of advances in the behavioral sciences during recent years. The program includes the most detailed calculations applied to the simplest behaviors; moving on to more complex behaviors and those of greatest medical importance; finishing up with the highest level of human cognitive behavior amenable to quantitative, mathematical approaches.  This meeting aims to verify and extend what physicist  Eugene Wigner called “the unnatural success of mathematics in describing the natural world”.

Nora Volkow, Addiction: Conflicts Between Brain Circuits

Donald Pfaff and Alan Leshner, Introductions and Logic of the colloquium.

Session I: Analyses of the simplest behaviors measured under laboratory conditions

Eve Marder, Brandeis University, How good is good enough?  Tuning synaptic and intrinsic parameters in neuronal circuits.

Peter Killeen, Arizona State University, Macro information from micro analyses.

Vivek Kumar, University of Texas Southwestern, Circadian biology.

Greg Stephens, Princeton University, Balancing simplicity and complexity analyses of neural and behavioral data.

Session II: More complex behaviors, studied under natural conditions

Ofer Tchernichovski, City College of New York, Quantification of developmental song learning: From the sub-syllabic scale to cultural evolution. 

Ilan Golani, Tel Aviv University, Quantification of movement.

Dale Purves, Duke University, Visual perception.

Peter Cavanagh, University of Washington, Kinesiology, the analysis of motion.

Session III: Medical phenomena susceptible to quantitative approaches

Lorne Mendell, SUNY StonyBrook, Computational properties of circuits signaling injury: relationship to pain behavior.

Charles Czeisler, Harvard University, Regulation of sleep in humans.

Eve van Cauter, University of Chicago, Impact of sleep on the cross-talk between the brain and the periphery.

Session IV: Mathematical approaches and engineering principles

Donald Pfaff, The Rockefeller University, Mathematics in the description of an elementary function of the vertebrate brain:  Generalized arousal. 

John Doyle, California Institute of Technology, Control engineering for robust responses in uncertain environments. 

Jonathan Victor, Cornell University, Population models of thalamocortical dynamics.

Kenneth Bollen, University of North Carolina, Structural equation modeling.

Session V: Complex economic decisions by humans

Paul Glimcher, New York University, The math of behavioral economics.

Dan Ariely, Duke University, The psychology of behavioral economics.