Computational neuroscientists rely on simplification when they make their models. But what is the right level of simplification?

When should we, for example, use a biophysically detailed model and when a simplified abstract model when modelling neural dynamics? What are the problems of simplifying too much, or too little?

This was the topic of the panel discussion between a science philosopher (MC), author of the recent book “The Brain Abstracted”, and an experienced modeler (TS) at the FENS Regional Meeting in Oslo in June 2025.

A future computational neuroscience project could be to model not only the signal processing properties of neurons, but also all processes that keep a neuron alive for, say, a 100-year life span.

In 2012 the group of the guest published the first such whole-cell model for a very simple bacterium (M. genitalia). In 2020 a model of the larger E. coli bacterium comprising 10.000 equations and 19.000 model parameters was presented.

How are such models built, and what can they do?

Numerous neuron models have been made, but most of them are "single-purpose" in that they are made to address a single scientific question. In contrast, multipurpose neuron models are made to be used to address many scientific questions.

In 2011, the guest published a multipurpose rodent pyramidal-cell model which has been actively used by the community ever since.

We talk about how such models are made, and how his group later built human neuron models to explore network dynamics in brains of depressed patients.