Is your brain like a computer? An old-timey telephone switchboard? A dense urban landscape? <\/p>\n
These are all common analogies for the brain, but most who use them know they are wholly imperfect comparisons. We humans thrive on metaphor and succinct stories, but our brains themselves can\u2019t be summed up so easily. <\/p>\n
Many fields of science are complicated, and of course anything under active scientific investigation is not fully understood. But the brain seems different. Extra complex. Extra mysterious. (Although it could be partly our brains\u2019 own biases that tell us how special they are.) <\/p>\n
\u201cAn electron is complicated. But when it comes to the brain, that simple statement acquires a whole new resonance,\u201d said Allen Institute neuroscientist Stephen Smith, Ph.D. \u201cIt\u2019s complicated enough to somehow explain all the richness of the human experience as we know it: All of our feelings, all of our subjective experience, all of human history, human art, human science. Wars, love, greed. The brain is at the root of all those things. Is it appealing to think that a simple machine, easy to understand, could explain all those things? I don\u2019t think so.\u201d <\/p>\n
Scientists have known for centuries that the brain is the seat of human thought, but we\u2019re still in the dark about how it works. There are\u2026 a lot of reasons for that. I asked four neuroscientists to expound on why we don\u2019t yet understand the human brain, and what it might take to get there.<\/p>\n