Why don't we understand the brain?

03/14/22 • 20 min

Scientists have known for centuries that the brain is the seat of human thought, but we’re still in the dark about how it works. For Brain Awareness Week 2022, Lab Notes asked four neuroscientists to get into the weeds with us about why the brain is so complicated and hard to understand. Do we have any hope of understanding our own brains?

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Lab Notes - Why don't we understand the brain?

Transcript

Rachel Tompa
So, Saskia -- I want to start with a softball question for you. What's taking you guys so long to figure out the brain?

Saskia De Vries
Uh Yeah, so that's really the big question. I think there's a lot of factors to it. You know, a lot of it is that we're poking around in the pile of tissue that, you know, it's you have to kind of figure your way around the tissue and figure out how to access things. It's kind of well-hidden by this re