> Continue your passion! Neuro is so cool and we need comp-sci people, at the least to process the data and help out with connecting VGA cables (I shudder at bio people's hard-coding).
What do you mean by the connectome is stereotypical? I was reading up on connectomes and was pleasantly surprised to find out that model organisms like C Elegans have been fully mapped but I haven't heard of any large insights being derived from this.
In general what are the computational stumbling blocks in Neurosci at the moment? (I have a genomics background)
I'd like to do a Phd in Cog Sci or Neurosci (computational) but I've been so stress free ever since moving to industry (from academia) 10 months ago I can't really see myself going back for the long haul.
Stereotypical in the sense that most connectomes are the same amoungst the same sub-species. You mention C. elegans as an animal and it's connections are mostly the same no matter the animal. That is a huge finding btw, going in, there is nothing to suggest that they should be all pretty much the same.
The neuro stumbling blocks are computational power and knowledge of the modulation of the circuit. We just can't model the circuits in sufficient detail right now and we don't know how to 'cheat' it such that we can still see most of the behavior but can do so in some fraction of the computation time. We need better and more efficient models. Your genomics work would be very useful in the numerical analysis of neural nets. The mammalian brain is also very mysterious still, C elegans is transparent, mice are not. We are having a heck of a time mapping it. The work is slow going, but still moving. Better modeling should accelerate the process and help us narrow where to look and the best bang for our buck in terms of experiments.
I would not go back to grad school if I were you then. Grad school is a ton of stress for little reward (in terms of $$$). In terms of desire, it is very individual and mostly depends on the advisor. If you want to go back and have a super-duper advisor already waiting for you, by all means. But the stress load is extreme. 90+ hr weeks for 5-7 years and ~30k/year.
I did some work with a cognitive science / computer science researcher while in undergrad and know plenty of PhDs in various fields. Academia is seeping with stress. Grad students have a very high rate of mental illness. I greatly admire the people who do that work, especially if they are working towards tenure. The work is incredibly fun, but you have to be a certain kind of person to handle the tenure route.
So did you stop at the Bsc level or did you go ahead and do a Masters? Tenure is basically not worth it to me. If I went back to grad school I'd go with the intention of moving right back to industry afterwards. While I don't miss the constant stress I do miss the challenge, progression, joy of discovery and relative independence of Grad School.
What do you mean by the connectome is stereotypical? I was reading up on connectomes and was pleasantly surprised to find out that model organisms like C Elegans have been fully mapped but I haven't heard of any large insights being derived from this.
In general what are the computational stumbling blocks in Neurosci at the moment? (I have a genomics background)
I'd like to do a Phd in Cog Sci or Neurosci (computational) but I've been so stress free ever since moving to industry (from academia) 10 months ago I can't really see myself going back for the long haul.