David Willshaw

David Willshaw (* 1945 ) is a British computer scientist, neuroscientist and cognitive scientist who studies neural networks and computer models in the neurosciences.

biography

Willshaw received his PhD in 1971 from Christopher Longuet-Higgins at the University of Edinburgh (Models of Distributed Associative Memory ) and was a Research Fellow in the theoretical psychology group at the School of Artificial Intelligence. From 1973 he was at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen and from 1977 at the National Institute for Medical Research in London (Mill Hill), where he became a permanent member in 1980 and carried out research for the Medical Research Council (MRC). From 1984 he was an MRC scientist in the Zoology Department at Edinburgh University and from 1988 in its Center for Cognitive Science. In 1996 he became professor at the MRC combined with an honorary professorship at the University of Edinburgh. From 1988 to 2004 he headed the Institute for Adaptive and Neural Computation at the University of Edinburgh and in 2006 he received a personal chair in Computational Neurobiology at the School of Computer Science.

The special neuroscientific problems he dealt with include the question of how the many nerve connections to the muscles are broken down in the course of development, how the stripe patterns in the visual cortex develop in interaction with visual information, the function of the basal ganglia and related brain structures and its role in Parkinson's disease, the role of the hippocampus , cerebellum, and neocortex in associative storage and retrieval of information. Among other things, he developed a simulation model of the Purkinje cells to test David Marr's theory of the cerebellum .

He also works on algorithms for combinatorial optimization problems such as the traveling salesman problem .

He is a Fellow of the Institute of Physics (2002) and the Royal Society of Edinburgh (2000). In 1992 he received the IEEE Neural Networks Council Pioneer Medal. From 2003 to 2007 he was head of the UK research network for neuroinformatics and he is the UK representative on the advisory board of the Bernstein network . From 2003 to 2008 he was on the international advisory board of the RIKEN Brain Research Institute .

From 1998 to 2005 he was editor of Computation in Neural Systems .

Fonts (selection)

• with OP Buneman, HC Longuet-Higgins: Non-holographic associative memory, Nature, Volume 222, 1969, pp. 960-962.
• with Buneman, Longuet-Higgins: Models for the brain. Nature, Vol. 225, 1970, pp. 177-178.
• with MC Prestige: On a role for competition in the formation of patterned neural connexions, Proc Roy Soc B, Volume 190, 1975, pp. 77-98.
• with Christoph von der Malsburg : How patterned neural connexions can be set up by self-organization, Proc Roy Soc B, Volume 194, 1976, pp. 431–445.
• with C. von der Malsburg: A marker induction mechanism for the establishment of ordered neural mappings: its application to the retinotectal problem, Phil Trans Roy Soc B, Volume 287, 1979, pp. 203-243.
• The establishment and the subsequent elimination of poly-neuronal innervation of developing muscle: theoretical considerations, Proc Roy Soc B, Volume 212, 1981, pp 233-252.
• with JW Fawcett: Compound eyes project stripes onto the optic tectum, Nature, Volume 296, 1982, pp. 350-352.
• with RM Gaze: The discontinuous visual projections on the Xenopus optic tectum following regeneration after unilateral nerve section, J Embryol Exp Morph, Volume 94, 1986, pp 121-136.
• with R. Durbin: An analogue approach to the traveling salesman problem using an elastic net method, Nature, Volume 126, 1987, pp. 689-691.
• with JT Buckingham: An assessment of Marr's theory of the hippocampus as a temporary memory store, Phil Trans Roy Soc B, Volume 329, 1990, pp. 205-215.
• with GJ Goodhill: Application of the elastic net algorithm to the formation of ocular dominance stripes, Network: Computation in Neural Systems, Volume 1, 1990, pp. 41-59.
• with PS Dayan: Optimal plasticity from Mamrix memories: what goes up must come down, Neural Computation, Volume 1, 1990, pp. 85-93.
• with JT Buckingham: Performance characteristics of the associative net, Network, Volume 3, 1992, pp. 407-414.
• with LRT Tyrell: Cerebellar cortex: Its simulation and the relevance of Marr's theory, Phil. Trans. Roy. Soc. B., Volume 336 1992, pp. 239-257.
• with JT Buckingham: On setting unit thresholds in an incompletely connected associative net, Network, Volume 4, 1993, pp. 441-459.
• with CE Rasmussen: Presynaptic and postsynaptic competition in models for the development of neuromuscular connections, Biol. Cybern., Volume 68, 1993, pp. 409-419.
• Models for the formation of ordered retino-tectal connections. In: Sharma, Fawcett (Ed.), Formation and Regeneration of nerve connections, Birkhäuser 1993
• with A. van Ooyen: Poly-and mononeuronal innervation in a model for the development of neuromuscular connections, J. Theor. Biol., Vol. 196, 1999, pp. 495-511.
• with AJ Gillies:. A massively connected subthalamic nucleus leads to the generation of widespread pulses, Proc Roy Soc B, Volume 265, 1999, pp. 2101-2109.
• with DJ Price:. Mechanisms of Cortical Development, Oxford UP 2000
• with V. Steuber: A biophysical model of synaptic delay learning and temporal pattern recognition in a cerebellar purkinje cell, Journal of Computational Neuroscience, Volume 17, 2004, pp. 149-164.
• Self-organization in the nervous system, in: RGM Morris, L. Tarassenko, M. Kenward (Eds.), Cognitive Systems: Information Processing Meets Brain Science, Elsevier, 2005, pp. 5-33.
• David Sterratt, Bruce Graham, Andrew Gillies, David Willshaw: Principles of Computational Modeling in Neuroscience. Cambridge University Press, 2011

Web links

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