When we look back at the important advances in neuroscience in the 20th and 21st centuries, what will we remember? What will we still find useful and worth pursuing further? The field is still in its nascent stages, even a century after Ramon y Cajal showed evidence for the neuron doctrine, establishing the neuron as a fundamental unit of the nervous system; and Brodmann published his cytoarchitecture studies that convinced the world that the brain is divided into distinct areas and likely uses those to divvy up processing. Yet we still have virtually no clue how the brain works: there is no central theory, no cures for brain diseases; only a whole lot of curious, enthusiastic and optimistic minds and some funding to help them get stuff done.

And it is rightly so that some neuroscientists have serious physics Continue reading →