Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Neuroscience

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Thanks. — Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 09:28, 15 March, 2009 (UTC)

WP:JCW help

There's a new WP:JCW report.

Out of the 500 most highly cited missing journals, here's a few that fall into your scope, or near your scope.

3

See the writing guide if you need help with those. Some of these might be better as redirects (Guide to redirects). Feel free to remove those which you think are too far from neurology from the list. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 15:41, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

Poking, to get some attention. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 05:38, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

It's just occurred to me; would it be viable/desirable to list information about open access or free content policies of journals, such as Wiley Libraries backfiles?Keepstherainoff (talk) 16:45, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

I've added a few, although I seem to have done a fail on the images... Also, I've created a page for Neuromuscular Disorders, but I don't know how to do redirects.Keepstherainoff (talk) 10:50, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Requested move: mesencephalon → midbrain

Hello, I wish to find out what people think of the idea of renaming the article on “mesencephalon” to “midbrain”? Please to go talk:mesencephalon to offer your input. Bwrs (talk) 04:18, 30 June 2010 (UTC)

Brain cell illustration

We are devising an illustration of a brain cell and would appreciate input here. Anthony (talk) 19:46, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

Equivalent word for illegible with respect to images

Please see Wikipedia:Reference desk/Language#Equivalent word for illegible with respect to images (permanent link here, section 7.8).
—Wavelength (talk) 16:07, 23 July 2010 (UTC)

New Neuroscience Article

Hello, I just recently made the Dynamical Neuroscience wiki article. Please consider giving me input on the page and updating relevant neuroscience articles that you may curate to link to this new article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Xurtio (talk • contribs) 04:55, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Cool, it's a nice start. The Hopfield stuff and Attractor Neural Network stuff also count as dynamical neuroscience, don't they? Looie496 (talk) 06:10, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Would be great if you used inline citations, but nice work.--Garrondo (talk) 06:38, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Thank you both for your input:

• inline citations added, will try to make a habit of that
• will do some research on your inquiry Looie

Xurtio (talk) 09:18, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Looie, Attractor Networks seem to be what I'm talking about when I mention dynamic networks but I should probably double check with my advisor. From what work I've done on the Morris Lecar model, it seems to fit the description. It also seems to be a Hopfield network. Either way, I should probably include these terms once I confirm this and sleep on their definitions. -X Xurtio (talk) 11:48, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

I should probably just add a whole dynamical neural network subsection. -X Xurtio (talk) 11:52, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

There is a couple of major issues with this new article. In some sentences, it looks more like a live discussion about your opinions on dynamical systems in the field of neuroscience rather than an actual encyclopedia-style article about what it is really. There are a lot of "wishful thinking" sentences that are typical of new articles bent at promoting a certain view rather than describing encyclopedically the facts. Do you think that most people making computational neuroscience and using non-linear equations define themselves as "dynamical neuroscientists" ? I personaly read Dayan & Abbott and others, and although it is not my primary field of research, I didn't end up with the impression that dynamical neuroscience is a term that is accepted by the whole community, am I wrong ? What I see described in this article is Theoritical neuroscience, Computational neuroscience with what is often referred to as Hodgkin-Huxley-like models and more simplified versions of the model. I am not approaching the problems in this article with a closed mind but I would like you to prove your point and give us references which show that dynamical neuroscience is a term that is generally accepted. From what I could gather, this is a rather new term and simply googling it shows that you are one of the only persons who actually use it. The SfN did use it as a title for poster sessions in their meetings, but from your article it seems a pretty new term and it is not clear how it is really a useful denomination considering that computational neuroscience already encompass these kind of models. Moreover, even if you would in fact bring the references showing that this is a generally accepted term by people using these models, the article needs a major restructuration and I would say, a merge. If people here end up with the decision that dynamical neuroscience does in fact deserve a wikipedia article (I don't see the point since this is just computational neuroscience with non-linearity ... Computational neuroscience have always been non-linear), even if people choose to keep it, I would definetly suggest rewriting the whole article, especially the historical part which looks more like a fantasmed view of how this field developed rather than a true description of what happened. The nomenclature part needs to be completely deleted, it is not pertinent and actually makes it less clear what you really mean, and the relation of dynamical neuroscience with respect to other fields. It is typical for new Wikipedians to want to define everything the way they want, thinking they will clarify the situation, but it makes the article extremely tendentious and makes it look more like a promotion pamphlet rather than an encyclopedic article. The other sections are also of very low quality, everything looking as it was thrown out there. An article about a subfield of theoritical neuroscience is not the place to make small comments about the current view on glia, neuromodulation or cognitive neuroscience. Do the authors cited in this section consider themselves as "dynamical neuroscientist" ? I doubt it. So this article becomes a primary research article where a given author (you) tries to argue about why all these works should be placed in Dynamical neuroscience. Unfortunately, Wikipedia is not the place to argue. Even the hallmark books that you cite in the text do not use the term Dynamical neuroscience, they use theoritical neuroscience and "dynamical systems in neuroscience", so beside the name of 1 conference, I don't see what would justify a separate article for dynamical neuroscience since most of the models used in computational neuroscience are already non-linear by nature. Jean-Francois Gariepy (talk) 02:05, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

I suggested a merge of the article to Computational Neuroscience. Please participate in the discussion here. Jean-Francois Gariepy (talk) 02:29, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

The term dynamical neuroscience has been around for a while, but most of the uses I've seen have been about the application of dynamical systems theory to neuroscience -- the article probably construes the term a bit more broadly than I would. Looie496 (talk) 02:57, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

Looie, that's exactly what it's supposed to be. The emphasis is on the nonlinear part because most linear systems don't need a computer for the analysis part (they just do standard analysis). In nonlinear analysis, computation is used to approximate nonlinear equations. Xurtio (talk) 04:04, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

I just consulted the Encyclopedia of Neuroscience edited by Binder et al., a more than 4000 pages collective work that seeks to index all concepts and words used in the field of neuroscience and give a short explanation about it. It is a very specialized encyclopedia that contains explanation for many subdisciplines of theoritical neurosciences, and was written by hundreds of leading experts in the field. Just a couple of concepts that are indexed, to give you an idea of the level of specialization, it goes from : actinopterygian, mammals, vertebrates to the across-fiber pattern code hypothesis, the actin-associating protein kinase, or balance laws. There is no mention of dynamical neuroscience, not even as an indexed substitute word. It would be weird if a general encyclopedia like Wikipedia seeked to be more specialized than a specialized encyclopedia made for people in the field. They do mention dynamical systems as a concept used in engineering which is relevant to modelisation in computational neuroscience, but clearly they don't mention Dynamical neuroscience, and they tend to be very bold in defining substitue words. Jean-Francois Gariepy (talk) 05:16, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

At this point, it is good that this talk section is notifying interested editors of the discussion elsewhere, but this talk is no longer the right venue to discuss the Dynamical neuroscience page, or the merger proposal at Talk:Computational neuroscience. --Tryptofish (talk) 15:07, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

Neural Oscillations

Well, ironically, the new article I made is very relevant to the neural oscillations article in a strange way. The article used to be called neurodynamics and includes some of the history of neurodynamics, but then specializes in neural oscillations. It even redirects from neurodynamics.

I have my page at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Xurtio/Dynamical_neuroscience

The proper name for the what I've been calling 'dynamical neuroscience' is indeed 'neurodynamics'. 'Dynamical Neuroscience' is used as well by the neurodynamics group, but it's not very common. My allure to it was that 'neuroscience' seems more broad then 'neuron' to me and today it's grown to encompass more than just neurons, but I desist.

But I think we might consider sorting out the two pages so that one is actually neurodynamics in general, and one is the specific concept of 'neural oscillations'.

Anyway, as always, I'd like to hear the communities opinion. Xurtio (talk) 07:30, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

Neurophysics

In addition to this, I think the neurophysics page needs attention. There's several Theoretical Neurophysics departments that do what I'm specializing in (neurodynamics) but there's also quantum consciousness approaches being labeled neurophysics (which I guess makes sense). But then there's also neurophysics as a sort of biotechnology practice. So we need a disambiguation page as well. Xurtio (talk) 08:10, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

The term Dynamical neuroscience is familiar to me (maybe that's just because I've attended the SFN symposiums), but the terms neurodynamics and especially neurophysics seem very little used in the community. Wikipedia ought to follow standards of terminology rather than trying to shape them. Looie496 (talk) 16:34, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

I agree that we need to follow standards of terminology of course, but those standards have proven to be a bit elusive as far as internet research goes. See on my discussion page above about the history of the term "neurodynamics" (it originated in cognitive sciences). "Neurophysics" is a term you're more likely to see in a physics department where the actual nonlinear analysis is likely performed. The cognitive scientists seem to take the results from the physicists and make interpretations based on their cognitive experiments, but I'm still trying to put all this terminology together. We might want to continue this discussion at the relevant page: User talk:Xurtio/Dynamical neuroscience Xurtio (talk) 17:12, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

I think the point about needing a disambiguation page is a good one. I'd like to see that, too. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:05, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

Here's a start to it; I've crammed all three pages (disambiguation, theoretical, and applied). If you have any comments, read the discussion first and post there please:

User:Xurtio/Sandbox Xurtio (talk) 08:42, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

Discussion about pathways templates

Users here may be interested in the discussion at Wikipedia:WikiProject Molecular and Cellular Biology/Proposals#Adding interactive pathway maps, which may affect page content at pages involved in this project. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:21, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

Definition Efference copy and article throughout

I have raised some basic questions at Talk:Efference copy about the article's lede and some other passages. Since you assess the article C/Mid and it is written from a neuroscientific perspective I would like to bring this to the attention of your project, and I would be glad if there is some interest. Best, Morton Shumway—talk 23:30, 11 September 2010 (UTC).

Neuroscience articles have been selected for the Wikipedia 0.8 release

Version 0.8 is a collection of Wikipedia articles selected by the Wikipedia 1.0 team for offline release on USB key, DVD and mobile phone. Articles were selected based on their assessed importance and quality, then article versions (revisionIDs) were chosen for trustworthiness (freedom from vandalism) using an adaptation of the WikiTrust algorithm.

We would like to ask you to review the Neuroscience articles and revisionIDs we have chosen. Selected articles are marked with a diamond symbol (♦) to the right of each article, and this symbol links to the selected version of each article. If you believe we have included or excluded articles inappropriately, please contact us at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.8 with the details. You may wish to look at your WikiProject's articles with cleanup tags and try to improve any that need work; if you do, please give us the new revisionID at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.8. We would like to complete this consultation period by midnight UTC on Monday, October 11th.

We have greatly streamlined the process since the Version 0.7 release, so we aim to have the collection ready for distribution by the end of October, 2010. As a result, we are planning to distribute the collection much more widely, while continuing to work with groups such as One Laptop per Child and Wikipedia for Schools to extend the reach of Wikipedia worldwide. Please help us, with your WikiProject's feedback!

For the Wikipedia 1.0 editorial team, SelectionBot 23:23, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

RfA

Most people who watch this page will be familiar with Looie496's work. If you're interested in expressing an opinion, please see Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Looie496. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:32, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

Need some help

There are three outstanding "expert assistance" requests related to neuroscience:

• Autonomic nervous system
• Central pattern generator
• Holonomic brain theory

{{Expert-subject}} sometimes gets spammed to articles that just need some attention from anybody, but if someone here could please look over these three and figure out what help, if any, was wanted -- and to either fix the articles or to remove the tags, if you can't figure out what's going on -- I'd appreciate it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:58, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

The ANS article is in need of major help. It has large section that are completely unsourced. It needs more than an expert- it needs help. I'll pick a section and see what I can do. Basket of Puppies 18:02, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Personally, I don't think the first two listed are much worse than many other pages that are around, and are better than many. I removed the tags on those two. After doing so, I came here and saw Basket of Puppies' comment. Seems to me that that could be addressed simply by an unreferenced-section tag. As for the Holonomic page, phew! Looks bizzaro to me, and I'm leaving it tagged. Given the extent of my other unfinished Wiki-tasks, and given that all three are a little peripheral (no pun intended!) to my neuroscience interests, I'm not going to give any of them any further time, but maybe others here will. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:09, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Too many misconceptions??

Editors in this project may be interested in a merger proposal at Talk:List of misconceptions about the brain#Merger proposal. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:19, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

Importance of the LGN

I am not sure how "importance" is decided, but making the LGN lowest importance is completely crazy. All the visual input to the cortex (the nest studies part of the brain) comes through the lgn. This would be like ranking the "gravity" article in Physics unimportant!!Paulhummerman (talk) 00:49, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

Those importance ratings are actually not very important themselves -- they aren't really used for anything. But I agree that, on a scale where Top=Brain and High=Cerebral Cortex, the LGN should probably come in at Mid rather than Low. Looie496 (talk) 03:25, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Book:Neurochemitry

Some help would be appreciated to decide the fate of this book. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 16:13, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

Wow, I was completely unaware that Wikipedia even has a "Book" space. I hardly seems worthwhile spending any effort on these things unless they are given a bit more publicity. Looie496 (talk) 18:36, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

Well actually this has been covered by multiple press releases, and several Signpost articles (see full list) , so... The Book: namespace has been around since...last January I think, although books themselves date from March 2009. Like everything on Wikipedia, quality varies (Book:Canada, Book:Messier objects are great, some have weird scopes Book:Animals in warfare but are nonetheless nice, and a couple just suck Book:Demons and Angels), but with feedback from both WikiProject Wikipedia Books and the book's topics' WikiProject, books usually end up closer to the "great" side of things. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 22:58, 23 October 2010 (UTC)

Intelligence Citations Bibliography for Articles Related to Human Intelligence

I wasn't aware of this WikiProject previously. Keep up the good work. Meanwhile, since I've begun editing a half year ago, I've seen several requests for more neuroscience perspective in articles such as Intelligence (which is badly in need of a top-to-bottom rewrite), Intelligence quotient (better, with editors already suggesting some helpful changes on the talk page), Race and intelligence (the subject of a recent Arbitration Committee case, and full of citations to primary research studies, including neuroscience studies, that may not have been replicated), and several of the other articles in the same categories as those. You can help other Wikipedians by suggesting new sources for the Intelligence Citations bibliography through comments on that page. I have been digging into the psychology literature for a while to build up that citation list, and you can tell me all you want to say about the neuroscience literature, the better to share good sources with other wikipedians. It will be extremely helpful for articles on human intelligence to edit them according to the Wikipedia standards for reliable sources for medicine-related articles, as it is important to get these issues as well verified as possible. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk) 23:28, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Retinohypothalamic tract

is at present not a part of any WikiProject. Can neuroscience adopt this orphan? Thanks, Hordaland (talk) 19:21, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

Done. Thanks for pointing it out. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:49, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

Copied from Category talk:Wikipedian members of the Society for Neuroscience Wikipedia Initiative‎

Hi all, I will be presenting a poster in San Diego on Saturday detailing the experience we had in my inro to neuroscience course during the fall 2009 semester with Neuroscience stub expansion and editing. If anyone from this group is attending and is interested, it will be shown during the public outreach session. -Neurojoe

Great! I'll look for it. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:48, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

Parkinson's disease

I have just nominated Parkinson's disease for good article, as a way of improving it before taking it to FAC. While I believe that sources and scope are a strong point of the article, I know that my prose is far from being as professional as it should. Any kind of comments or copy-editing would be most useful. A commited reviewer would also be great, since the article is quite long. Thanks to everybody.

I was also thinking of an image for the symptoms section, and I thought of a writting by a PD patient with micrography. I do not have such kind of image, but maybe somebody from the project is capable of getting one directly from a patient. Best image would be a short text with some rule on it to show scale...--Garrondo (talk) 20:07, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

Brain function

Hi neuroscientists, I'm working on a Czech Wikipedia article on Brain (cs:mozek) and I got stuck with the "Brain function" chapter. I looked at the English article but the corresponding chapter seems to be a rather low-quality one as it rather mentions neurotransmitter system. It needs an "all-vertebrates" view, it should include things like neurohormones, reflexes, memory, motor control, ... Would you be able to rewrite the chapter in such an important article? Or, at least, would you please recommend me some book on the topic? Thank you in advance for answering, kind regards,--Vojtech.dostal (talk) 13:02, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

The difficulty is that "brain function" includes every aspect of human and animal behavior, so it's hard to write an account that touches on everything important without becoming either too long or too disorganized. I did the best I could at the time, but no doubt you're right that there is a lot of important stuff omitted. In any case, pretty much any introductory neuroscience textbook will cover the material in much greater depth. Looie496 (talk) 00:32, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

Really? They all focus on Human brain or on the whole nervous system functions. --Vojtech.dostal (talk) 08:45, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps it may help to look at the other articles in the English Wiki on the other topics that you are looking for: neurohormones, reflexes, memory, motor control, ..., as well as what they, in turn, link to. I hope that helps. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:35, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

Striatum, Corpus striatum

Editors may be interested in a merger proposal here. --Tryptofish (talk) 15:58, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

New page, requesting review

Hi, I am a student from California Polytechnic State University in Pomona. My group is doing a class project for a Kinesiology class called Movement Anatomy and Kinesiology. As part of the project, our group is responsible for researching a topic and either updating a Wikipedia article or creating a new one. We decided to create the Median nerve palsy page. We've submitted for peer review and would like input from the Neuroscience community. Any input would be very helpful. Thanks!— Preceding unsigned comment added by Jjjballr911 (talk • contribs) 18:03, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Hello, and welcome! I've given it a shot. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:32, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Upgraded class of Top importance stubs

Hi, I've just had a browse on the four Top importance stub class articles to see what I could do, and none of them were stubs any more! I've reclassified them, but I may have been too conservative on one or two.Keepstherainoff (talk) 15:48, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

Featured picture candidate at commons

I have performed a restoration of a high quality image of Santiago Ramón y Cajal and nominated it for FP at commons with the intention of also nominating it later in WP. Comments here would be welcomed.--Garrondo (talk) 12:34, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Right now although nobody has opposed the image it still need 3 more positive votes to be featured... If anybody thinks it is worth it votes would be a great Christmas present. :-).--Garrondo (talk) 07:37, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Schizophrenia

I have nominated Schizophrenia for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Delist" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Basket of Puppies 23:40, 25 December 2010 (UTC)

I've personally steered clear of the main Schizophrenia article and the FAR, but I've become aware of what's going on with it by way of Mechanisms of schizophrenia. I'm beginning to notice that some of the more difficult issues under discussion arise from editors with different kinds of academic backgrounds talking past one another. (Example: physician objecting to describing schizophrenia as having neurological components because patients are referred to psychiatrists, not neurologists.) My reason for pointing this out here in this talk is that, perhaps, some editors with backgrounds in basic neuroscience may be interested in providing help with sourcing, and with clarifying where differences in terminology may be making it harder for other editors to sort through those sources. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:45, 30 December 2010 (UTC)