Chris Eliasmith



Canada Research Chair in Theoretical Neuroscience

Tier 1 - 2017-11-01
Renewed: 2011-10-01, 2023-10-01
University of Waterloo
Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council

519-888-4567 ext. 32638
celiasmith@uwaterloo.ca

Research involves


Developing a mathematical theory of the brain, and building realistic models using the theory.

Research relevance


This research will improve our understanding of how healthy brains work and lead to improved interventions for brain disorders.

Research summary


When it comes to recognizing faces, controlling sophisticated movements, and learning about the environment, our brains can outperform the most powerful computers—but we still do not know why. As Canada Research Chair in Theoretical Neuroscience, Dr. Chris Eliasmith is developing a mathematical theory to help understand how brains process information.

Eliasmith and his research team are building on his past work by constructing large-scale models of biological cognition. They have already made breakthroughs in continuous and discrete time-series modelling and modelling of continuous states. Now, they are using these breakthroughs to resolve the challenge of capturing the continuity of time and the state of the real world. Ultimately, their work will improve the performance of large-scale cognitive brain models—computational representations that simulate the structure and function of the human brain to replicate and predict human thought processes, behaviours and learning mechanisms.