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This article is for SIAM News, the magazine for members of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM). The audience for this magazine, in other words, is professional mathematicians and related researchers working in a wide variety of fields. While the article contains equations, I wrote it to be understandable even if you skip over the math.
Understanding Knowledge Networks in the Brain
For SIAM News:
One strength of the human mind is its ability to find patterns and draw connections between disparate concepts, a trait that often enables science, poetry, visual art, and a myriad of other human endeavors. In a more concrete sense, the brain assembles acquired knowledge and links pieces of information into a network. Knowledge networks also seem to have a physical aspect in the form of interconnected neuron pathways in the brain.
During her invited address at the 2018 SIAM Annual Meeting, held in Portland Ore., last July, Danielle Bassett of the University of Pennsylvania illustrated how brains construct knowledge networks. Citing early 20th century progressive educational reformer John Dewey, she explained that the goal of a talk—and learning in general—is to map concepts from the speaker/teacher’s mind to those of his or her listeners. When the presenter is successful, the audience gains new conceptual networks.
More generally, Bassett explored how humans acquire knowledge networks, whether that process can be modeled mathematically, and how such models may be tested experimentally. Fundamental research on brain networks can potentially facilitate the understanding and treatment of conditions as diverse as schizophrenia and Parkinson’s disease.
