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[title:] Mathematics Awareness Month April 2007: Mathematics and the Brain

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The American Mathematical Society, the American Statistical Association, the Mathematical Association of America, and the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics announce that the theme for Mathematics Awareness Month 2007 is Mathematics and the Brain.

One of the most exciting challenges in modern science is to understand the human brain and its mechanisms. Mathematics plays a vital role in the research to understand the mechanisms and function of the human brain, from its smallest components to the brain itself:

• Modeling and computational simulation have complemented laboratory experiments to understand how the brain functions at many levels;
• Theoretical models and computational methods, along with experiments guided by these models, are used to unravel the circuitry of the cerebral cortex;
• Research in the dynamics of networks is helping to understand, at a cellular and network level, how widespread synchronous patterns arise in large non-homogeneous networks, such as the brain; and
• Imaging, which depends heavily on mathematical and computational tools, provides a non-invasive method for gathering information on brain activity, form and function.

Further research in the underlying mathematics of dynamical systems and networks, statistical methods, and mathematical tools for enhancing imaging will continue to help advance our understanding of the closest of all frontiers.

Resources for this year's Mathematics Awareness Month program can be found at www.mathaware.org.

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