How do we move beyond "this brain region lights up" to genuinely understanding how neural circuits compute? Allard Roebroek argues that the future lies in merging bottom-up computational models with top-down neuroimaging analysis , and that neither community can succeed alone. Subscribe for more from the Convergent Science Network podcast series. Allard Roebroek tackles a fundamental tension in neuroimaging: the field generates gigabytes of whole-brain data per minute, yet most analyses reduce this richness to statements about which regions activate during which tasks. He distinguishes two modeling traditions that have developed largely in isolation. Bottom-up modelers build biophysically inspired simulations of neural circuits, from spiking networks to hemodynamic coupling, but face a crippling indeterminacy problem: infinitely many models can r ...