Does brain science need a new grand plan?

Is the brain less like an assembly line and more like a weather system?

And if so, what does this mean for how we might go about understanding how to think about it?

And how might AI help us in the near future.

And what does this have to do with how the drug Ritalin got its name?

Today we'll speak with scientist Nicole Rust, who's been thinking about these issues.

So get ready for a great brain stretch.

Welcome to Inner Cosmos with me, David Eagleman.

I'm a neuroscientist and an author at Stanford.

And in these episodes, we sailed deeply into our three-pound universe to understand how we see the world.

And for that matter, how we should view the brain.

Okay. matter how we should view the brain. This is an I-Heart podcast.

Guaranteed human.

For a very long time now, neuroscience has been driven by the hope that if we could just

zoom in far enough, the brain would finally give up its secrets. If we could just do one more

electron microscope upgrade or nail one more molecular pathway or get one more brain network labeled and circled in a textbook.

Now, the approach so far of gathering tons of data has delivered real triumphs.

We've learned an enormous amount about how neurons fire, how circuits form, how chemicals are

released and sensed. And when you flip open any modern

neuroscience textbook, it really is a marvel. It's densely packed with discoveries that

would have been unimaginable a generation ago. But there's an uncomfortable question hovering in the background. If we understand

so much more than we used to, why do so many neuroscience problems remain so stubbornly unsolved?

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