INSIDE THE BRAIN
In August 2013, my first cover as editor of Cosmos magazine – an edition we themed “Decode your brain” – suggested we were on the verge of a new era of understanding how the brain works. As we approach the finish line on this “decade of the brain” – one in which multibillion-dollar campaigns have sought to reveal the workings of the most complex thing in the universe – it seems a good time to ask: are we there yet?
It wasn't the first decade of the brain. Previous iterations had promised a similar neural booty, such as new treatments for schizophrenia or spurring the development of AI. But this campaign was on steroids. For one thing, it was a twin effort.
In early 2013, Europe launched its flagship “Human brain project”, the goal of which was to simulate a human brain inside a computer within a decade. (Spoiler alert: it didn't happen. For more on how that project panned out, visit www.human-brainproject.eu/en/)
The US countered with President Obama's Brain Research Through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative, tasked with more pragmatic aims, such as developing circuit diagrams of the brain.
Overall, neuroscientists were armed with techniques that even two decades earlier had been the stuff of sci-fi.
Think microscopes that peer into the brain of a living animal to record signals from individual brain cells or neurons. Add the ability to switch particular brain circuits on or off with pinpoint precision using a pulse of light, a technique called optogenetics. Mix in brain atlases with the dynamic resolution of Google maps, from fullrelief technicolour maps of the wrinkled brain surface down to microscopic scale charts of the brain's cellular structure. (To take a fantastic voyage through the human brain, take a look here: https://julich-brain-atlas.de/)
Add circuit diagrams dubbed “connectomes” to satisfy the most exacting electrical engineer. Just as geneticists needed the genome – the complete genetic code – to understand the logic of life, so too the connectome would underpin the logic of brain function.
This amazing bag of tricks has enabled researchers to begin the task of linking the electrical signals in brain circuits to such elusive things as behaviour.
