So, this hit the wires recently:
BrainSignals Revisited: Simplifying a Computational Model of Cerebral Physiology.
Unlike that other paper I was ranting about a couple of months back, this one is properly my work, and it’s not bad. It may not be of much interest to anyone — actually I guarantee it isn’t — but it’s not reprehensible.
The paper itself is, inevitably, a bit hard going. One of my PhD examiners memorably described one chapter* of my thesis as “a long walk for a short drink”, an epithet that certainly applies here. So instead why not have a skim through this presentation I gave last week, which inter alia discusses the simplification work more briefly and accessibly, glossing over a lot of tedious detail.
(Click the image to download the slides in PDF form, with explanatory notes.)
As it happens, that other paper is also much less egregious than it was at the time, since I waded into it with a large axe. It’s currently back in review after another, thankfully much shorter, round of revisions. Time will tell whether enough has been done to satisfy the reviewers. I don’t feel very strongly about it either way, but at least I’ll no longer be mortified if it does make it to publication.
* Chapter 5, that was. The thesis is now available online, so you can check it out for yourself, if you happen to be insane. He wasn’t wrong.
