[Bmi] How about taking some courses elsewhere other than BMI?

[Juyang Weng]

Dear (name omitted),

Taking some courses elsewhere?   How many years do you plan to spend on
learning neuroscience before you can understand how the brain-mind
works?  How many years do you have before you are too old to do
research?  Do you know how many years the well respected senior author
of the attached paper (and other well known researchers for that matter)
has learned neuroscience-and-psychology and communicate extensively with
neuroscientists and psychologists?   Longer than I did, as far as I can
see.  The attached paper is for you to exam.  It is a piece of work
after so many years of learning neuroscience and psychology and modeling
with well respected skills and intuition in mathematics.

Unfortunately, the brain is a much larger, deeper, and darker trap, much
more than artificial intelligence as a trap.   If you do not want to get
stuck into "local extrema" for many years and then regret, I suggest
that you immediately take advantage of what has happened here in MSU,
both research wise and education wise.

Sorry, you would not be able to understand what I meant here until you
have taken the highly integrated, known-brain-solution directed, 6
disciplinary program at BMI. I cannot guarantee you can largely
understand how the brain-mind works only by taking multidisciplinary
courses elsewhere, since the senior author appears to have had.  I
estimate that a researcher needs a minimum of four BMI courses to go
through the BMI 6-Discipline Program if he takes two subject tests for
the remaining 2 disciplines (e.g., math and EE).  By that time, he
should largely understand how the brain-mind works (not all the details
which will greatly inspire him to work on).

Best regards,

-John

--
Juyang (John) Weng, Professor
Department of Computer Science and Engineering
MSU Cognitive Science Program and MSU Neuroscience Program
3115 Engineering Building
Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI 48824 USA
Tel: 517-353-4388
Fax: 517-432-1061
Email: weng at cse.msu.edu
URL: http://www.cse.msu.edu/~weng/
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