"Physical, Engineering and Biological Limits to Brain Measurements" hosted by the University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, May 30-31, 2014

芝加哥大学将于2014年5月29日至31日举办为期三天的研讨会，名为“大脑测量的物理、工程和生物极限”，届时将汇集来自物理学、计算科学、生物学和网络理论的研究人员，讨论脑科学的基础和该领域的最新方法论发展。这次会议的灵感部分来自围绕大脑倡议正在进行的讨论，这些讨论将帮助我们了解大脑是如何工作的，并在工程和医学方面取得变革性的进展。讨论的一个重要部分将是如何在与脑相关的实验中大幅提高空间和时间分辨率、小型化、探头或执行器的数量等。将讨论的问题之一是物理学(例如，电、光和无线方法不能违反麦克斯韦方程)、工程和材料科学以及生物学(例如，一个人不能因为消耗太多能量而使大脑过热)设置的基本限制。会议将召集执业专家就这些限制进行系统的讨论，形成一份可广泛传播的书面文件，以帮助不同缔约方了解问题，划定可能/不可能的界限，并指出需要进一步研究的领域。这是一次小型、有重点的会议，约有30人参加，在会议期间，整个集团只参加一次会议。会议将对麦克斯韦方程的不同频率范围(低频下的脑电/脑磁图、核磁共振、有线/无线、光学和X射线)进行顺序讨论，并就电子显微镜、跨频率范围的一般框架以及统计/反问题进行额外的讨论。青年科学家将有机会与该领域的资深调查人员互动。

The three-day workshop "Physical, Engineering and Biological Limits to Brain Measurements" hosted by the University of Chicago on May 29-31, 2014 will bring together researchers from physics, computational science, biology, and network theory to discuss the foundations of brain science and recent methodological developments in the field. The meeting is inspired in part by ongoing discussions surrounding the BRAIN initiative about the development of new technologies and tools that will help us understand how the brain works and make transformative progress in engineering and medicine. An important part of the discussion will be how to substantially improve the spatial and temporal resolution, miniaturization, numbers of probes or actuators, etc. in brain related experiments. One of the questions that will be discussed is the fundamental limits set by physics (e.g. electrical, optical and wireless methods cannot violate Maxwell's equations), engineering and material science, and from biology (e.g. one cannot over-heat the brain by dissipating too much power). The meeting will bring together practicing experts to have a systematic discussion about these limits, resulting in a written document that can be broadly disseminated to help different parties in understanding the issues, to delineate possible/impossible boundaries and to point to areas requiring further research. This is a small, focused meeting with approximately 30 participants, with a single session attended by the whole group over the meeting period. The meeting will constitute sequential discussions of the different frequency ranges of the Maxwell's equation (EEG/MEG at low frequencies, MRI, wired/wireless, optical, and x-ray), with additional segments on electron microscopy, on a general framework spanning the frequency ranges, and statistics/inverse problems. Young scientists will have the opportunity to interact with the senior investigators in the field.