Scientific Initiatives
CELEST has four key scientific initiatives. Each initiative is marked by one or two key meta-questions that drive the science at CELEST. The figure below illustrates the integration of our scientific initiatives into the general framework of CELEST.
The top of the pyramid signifies the unique purpose of CELEST, namely to understand how the brain as a system learns in a novel and dynamic environment. This emerging understanding of the brain, in turn, impacts technology development. CELEST’s approach encourages the emergence of technologies inspired by the architecture and function of the brain. The study of single brain systems in isolation and only in a lab setting is unable to fully generalize into useful technologies. Our combination of experimental, modeling, and technology projects starts from the realization that the brain operates as an integrated learning system.
In the above figure, the middle level of the pyramid depicts CELEST’s four cross-function initiatives, which drive our scientific research questions, which in turn shape our research projects at the bottom of the pyramid. These questions, which are focused directly within a cross-function initiative or span across multiple initiatives, aim to better understand how the brain as a whole system learns or how our understanding of learning can impact technological developments.
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Initiative 1. Processing Bottlenecks
Initiative 3. Functional Connections