When I transitioned from cognitive to computational neuroscience, I found myself in a bit of a bind. I had learned calculus, but I had progressed little beyond pattern recognition: I knew which rules to apply to find solutions to which equations, but the equations themselves lacked any sort of real meaning for me.
So I struggled with understanding how formulas could be implemented in code and why the code I was reading could be described by those formulas. Resources explaining math “for neuroscientists” were unfortunately quite useless for me, because they usually presented the necessary equations for describing various neural systems, assuming the presence of that basic understanding/intuition I lacked.
Of course, I figured things out eventually (otherwise I wouldn’t be writing about it), but I’m 85% sure I’m not the only one who’s ever struggled with this, and so I wrote the tutorial I wish I could’ve had. If you’re in a similar position, I hope you’ll find it useful. And if not, maybe it helps you get a glimpse i
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When I transitioned from cognitive to computational neuroscience, I found myself in a bit of a bind. I had learned calculus, but I had progressed little beyond pattern recognition: I knew which rules to apply to find solutions to which equations, but the equations themselves lacked any sort of real meaning for me.
So I struggled with understanding how formulas could be implemented in code and why the code I was reading could be described by those formulas. Resources explaining math “for neuroscientists” were unfortunately quite useless for me, because they usually presented the necessary equations for describing various neural systems, assuming the presence of that basic understanding/intuition I lacked.
Of course, I figured things out eventually (otherwise I wouldn’t be writing about it), but I’m 85% sure I’m not the only one who’s ever struggled with this, and so I wrote the tutorial I wish I could’ve had. If you’re in a similar position, I hope you’ll find it useful. And if not, maybe it helps you get a glimpse into the struggles of the non-math people in your life. Either way, it has cats.
