Online streaming of Movshon-Seung debate

Sebastian Seung has a new book out, and to promote it he’s having a debate with Tony Movshon. The event sold out in less than two hours. So they added a simulcast in a nearby room, and are streaming it on the web at radiolab.org. It’s Monday, April 2, at 7pm New York time.

Seung’s position (as summarized on the event website): “… research would be radically accelerated by finding and deciphering ‘connectomes,’ maps of connections between neurons. […] connectomics will be as fundamental to neuroscience as genomics is to molecular biology.”

Movshon’s position (as summarized on the event website): “…maps of the brain by themselves cannot offer much insight into how this remarkable organ does its job. Just as a genome by itself is only a blueprint with little power to explain how an organism works, a connectome is at best a framework with little power to explain brain function.”

I doubt anyone would argue that mapping connections isn’t useful. But just how useful? It really comes down to funding priorities: should we spend a billion dollars on connectomics right now? Would that data be really transformative? Or would we get more bang-for-our-buck if we spread that money over several neuroscience research efforts, including connectomics, neurophysiology, genetics, molecular biology, and so on?

There’s an inherent appeal to large, simply-stated projects. And there are great success stories. The advocates of spending big money on connectomics love to draw parallels to the human genome project. The space program is another large, expensive, worthwhile project. But not all big projects are worth the price tag. For example, although it’s a clear, attractive goal to have a permanent manned outpost on the Moon, the price probably isn’t worth it right now. In a similar case of wrong price, wrong time, the Superconducting Super Collider project was abandoned in 1993 after $2 billion spent, although the science was certainly worthwhile. Perhaps spreading those research dollars to other efforts was the right decision at that time.