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Dean V. Buonomano is an American neuroscientist, psychologist, and author. Buonomano currently works as a professor at the University of Los Angeles California in the department of Behavioral Neuroscience while conducting his own research mainly focusing on neurocomputation and discovering how the brain tells time.  He is identified as one of the “first neuroscientists to begin to ask how the human brain encodes time” and has been published in various scientific journals. He is the author of two well-known scientific books Brain Bugs: How the brain's flaws shape our lives^[2] and Your brain is a Time Machine: The Neuroscience and Physics of Time.^[3]  Arguably Buonomano’s most notable publications, “Brain Bugs: How the Brain's Flaws Shape Our Lives” examines both the human brain’s functional strengths and weaknesses, ultimately attributing some of the brain’s ‘bugs’ – or flaws – to evolution. Buonomano’s most recent book, Your brain is a Time Machine: The Neuroscience and Physics of Time is set for release by W.W Norton & Company publishing in April 2017.

Early Life

Dean Buonomano was born in Providence, Rhode Island in 1965 and lived in Hamilton, Ontario Canada before moving to Brazil at the age of 7 in 1972.^[5]  Buonomano’s younger sister was born in 1974 and he attributes her to being one of his first “test dummy’s” for his psychological experiments. An interview conducted by Anna Azvolinsky from The Scientist reported Buonomano's recollection of his childhood exploration in science stating, “One of my initial interests in neurobiology was a result of my big-brother experience, of witnessing a young brain develop. I saw my sister go from a baby that’s vulnerable and helpless to a child making sense of the buzzing, sometimes confusing sensory world we live in”. This initial childhood interest sparked his lifelong career and interest in the field of psychology and neurobiology.

Education

After graduating from the State University of São Paulo, Campinas (UNICAMP) in Brazil, Buonomano attended graduate school at the University of Texas Medical School at Houston, where he worked with Jack Byrne on synaptic plasticity and computational models of learning and memory. Buonomano's first published work was done with the help of Jack Byrne in 1990 "demonstrating that the synaptic plasticity of the pleural ganglion can be long-lived, lasting up to 24 hours." Buonomano then went on to join the University of California, San Francisco as a postdoctoral fellow working with Beverly Wright in Michael Merzenich's lab. His mentor, Michael Merzenich, focused research on synaptic plasticity and computational models of timing. This led to Buonomano's second published work in 1995 once again focusing on synaptic plasticity.

Career & Research

Buonomano's research focuses on how the brain tells time and processes temporal information. As the proposed mission statement posted on Buonomano Lab's mainpage states, “The primary goal of my laboratory is to understand how functional computations emerge from networks of neurons”. Buonomano is a proponent of the theory that timing and temporal processing are extremely critical to brain function and he believes that most neural circuits are capable of telling time. He developed the influential theory that the brain tells time and processes temporal information as a result of neural dynamics. This theory contradicts the previous theory held by scientists worldwide stating that the brain has a single internal clock in charge of temporal processing.

Buonomano is identified as one of the developers of general neurocomputational framework that he refers to as state-dependent networks or dynamic attractors, and others refer to as liquid state machines or reservoir computing. Buonomano Lab utilizes research methods such as computational modeling, in vitro electrophysiology, Optogenetics, and human psychophysics to conduct research observing how individual neurons and the brain as a whole perceive and respond to time. Buonomano's research has led to a number of experimental and theoretical contributions to the field of timing in the brain.^[6]

Buonomano joined the UCLA faculty in 1998 and has worked in the department of Behavioral Neuroscience there ever since. Buonomano is also a member of the Brain Research Institute at UCLA, Integrative Center for Learning and Memory at UCLA, Neuroengineering Training Program, and the current leading member of Buonomano Lab. Buonomano attributes the success of his research to keeping his lab team relatively small. Buonomano's field of research is similar to other well known neuroscientists and authors such as David Eagleman, an adjunct associate professor at Stanford University.

Books

Dean Buonomano’s first book, Brain Bugs: how the brain’s flaws shape our lives, was originally published in July of 2011.^[9] The book is written at a lower level and is part of the scientific genre. Buonomano's audience is mainly aimed at the general public for popular reads but also pulls in readers that are experts in the field of neuroscience. Brain Bugs has been widely reviewed in popular press such as Newsweek, Discover Magazine, Scientific American, The New Yorker, The Atlantic and Fresh Air (National Public Radio). Buonomano was interviewed on the NPR talk show Fresh Air^[11] and participated in a dialogue about Brain Bugs at the Rubin Museum of Art with performance artist Laurie Anderson. Brain Bugs was also featured on Wall Street Journal  as a bestseller. Since it's release, Brain Bugs has been collected in libraries across the country and translated into 3 different languages.

Brain Bugs: how the brain’s flaws shape our lives discusses Buonomano's main field of research, temporal processing, attributing much of our temporal processing to our method of memory storage. New York Times Sunday Book Reviewer Christopher F. Chabris claimed although the idea of the brain having some major flaws was not necessarily a new finding, "Buonomano’s focus on the mechanisms of memory, especially its 'associative architecture' as the main causes of the brain’s bugs" is a new concept. Dean Buonomano illuminates the causes and consequences of these "bugs" in terms of the brain's innermost workings and their evolutionary purposes and ultimately both praises and criticizes the functions of the human brain arguing, "The human brain is the most complex device in the known universe, yet it is an imperfect one."

Buonomano mostly focus' on the human brain's memory storage methods with many examples of our brain's shortcomings. Buonomano points out glitches of the human brain such as our inability for mental long division or larger multiplication and our unreliable memory, especially in times of crises. By the same reasoning, Buonomano argues many of our external differences we observe between others fuels tendencies of distrust for people due to neural coding. ; supernatural beliefs are hard to shake and we prefer instant gratification to long-term gain. Buonomano also brings to light the fact that advertising companies prey on the human brain's shortcomings and manipulate judgment. As a conclusion to his work's relevancy, Buonomano states, "ultimately, who we are as individuals and as a society is defined not only by the astonishing capabilities of the brain but also by its flaws and limitations.”

Buonomano's second book Your brain is a time machine: the neuroscience and physics of time (Norton, 2017) is to be released in April of 2017.^{[13] (OLD)} The publishing company, Norton's, synopsis of the book states that Buonomano examines temporal processing of the brain, but with a new added element to his argument. Buonomano argues that our brains are "complex system that not only tells time but creates it".

External Links

Buonomano Lab

PBS Interview with Barry Kibrick

Dialogue at the Rubin Museum with Laurie Anderson

Brain Bugs: Technological Relevance

More Info on David Eagleman

Category:Living people Category:Neuroscience Category:American Neuroscientist Category:UCLA Bruins Category:UCLA Professor Category:American Authors Category:21st Century American Scientist Category:Synaptic Plasticity