Why are computational neuroscience and systems biology so separate?

• Main Author: Erik De Schutter
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Public Library of Science (PLoS) 2008-05-01
• Series: PLoS Computational Biology
• Online Access: http://europepmc.org/articles/PMC2367448?pdf=render

Despite similar computational approaches, there is surprisingly little interaction between the computational neuroscience and the systems biology research communities. In this review I reconstruct the history of the two disciplines and show that this may explain why they grew up apart. The separation is a pity, as both fields can learn quite a bit from each other. Several examples are given, covering sociological, software technical, and methodological aspects. Systems biology is a better organized community which is very effective at sharing resources, while computational neuroscience has more experience in multiscale modeling and the analysis of information processing by biological systems. Finally, I speculate about how the relationship between the two fields may evolve in the near future.