Medical Field?

Is it possible for a medical student to learn computational neuroscience all by himself, and ultimately do research in this field?

• I'm a second-year medical student. Watching some introductory lectures about computational neuroscience (by Terry Sejnowski , Christof Koch etc.) and reading "From Computer to Brain" book, made me fall in love with computational neuroscience. I've planned to apply for some computational neuroscience program at the end of my 7-year-long medical program. To be able to apply, I think it is necessary to gain some experience in this field during medical program (Is it really?!). But unfortunately there's no computational neuroscientist who can mentor me where I live (Iran, Mashhad). So, I have to learn it on my own and I need a self-study curriculum. I'm currently attending a computational neuroscience course by University of Washington on coursera, but i guess it's not enough for me. What materials do I need to study? What topics to learn? Where to learn required mathematics? (good news, I'm good at math, but I haven't studied it much due to my major which has no mathematics course) After I learned enough, I hope to be able to do some research in this field. But as I said, I found no computational neuroscientist here. Is it possible for me to do research all on my own?! or is it possible to have a long-distance mentor? (i.e. is physical interaction necessary for collaborating in computational neuroscience research?) It is potentially possible for me to study electrical engineering simultaneously, but as it seems to be, it is really difficult to do so, studying medical sciences AND electrical engineering. Should I do so? I asked this question because many comp. neuroscientists I know (like D.Wolpert) come from engineering field, and I'm a bit worried about the fact that I'm from medical field!

• Answer:

  A medical student (or anyone) can certainly learn computational neuroscience on their own. In this day and age, there is so much publicly available information that everything you would learn in graduate school can be found online as well -- perhaps with the exception of some of the neuroscience textbooks. However a school does provide a more structured environment and people to talk with, both of which make a big difference. As far as applying to computational neuroscience programs, it is rare to have prior knowledge of the field, so that would not generally be expected. However prior knowledge (and even better, coursework or lab experience) in some related field(s) would help. Related fields include neuroscience, statistical machine learning, vision science, linear algebra. It's interesting that a medical student would be interested in computational models. Typically there is a division in people's natural interests from those who want to work with live brains (who come from biology or medical school backgrounds) and those who want to do computational models (who come from computer science, math, or physics backgrounds). But if you're interested in physiology and computational models, that's great! The future is in combining the two, so having experience with both would set you apart.