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From:<br>
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<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://alleninstitute.org/news/why-is-the-human-brain-so-difficult-to-understand-we-asked-4-neuroscientists/">https://alleninstitute.org/news/why-is-the-human-brain-so-difficult-to-understand-we-asked-4-neuroscientists/</a><br>
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<h3 class="module__subheader"><span
class="heading-style heading-5">Can your brain understand
itself? </span></h3>
<p class="bodycopy-big module__paragraph">Nearly 100 years
ago, physicist Emerson Pugh famously said, “If the human
brain were so simple that we could understand it, we would
be so simple that we couldn’t.” It’s a clever quote but, on
the face of it, seems to imply that human neuroscience is a
futile endeavour. That doesn’t mean it, or neuroscience, is
complete hogwash.</p>
<p class="bodycopy-big module__paragraph">“Our brains are
probably more complicated than any one human intellect,” Allen
Institute neuroscientist Stephen Smith, Ph.D. said. “But you
also have to take into account the fact that we’re social
creatures.”</p>
<p class="bodycopy-big module__paragraph">Like most other
scientists, modern neuroscientists don’t work alone. And
they also don’t start their research in a vacuum. All of
today’s experiments and data are built on the shoulders of
the research and methodology that came before them.</p>
<p class="bodycopy-big module__paragraph">“Is a singular human
brain capable of understanding the brain? as opposed to: is
a collection of human brains capable of understanding the
brain? I think those are different questions,” de Vries
said. “We learn a lot not just through the neural processes
of learning, but through our interactions with other people
and through conversations and collaboration. I do believe in
the collective human ability to understand the human brain.”</p>
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<h2 class="podcast__heading heading-4">Why don't we understand
the brain?</h2>
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<p class="bodycopy-big module__paragraph">On a slightly more
pragmatic note, <a
href="https://alleninstitute.org/what-we-do/brain-science/about/team/staff-profiles/christof-koch/"
target="_blank" rel="noopener">Christof Koch</a>, Ph.D.,
Chief Scientist of the Allen Institute’s MindScope Program,
points out that our understanding might come not from (or
not only from) our collective research, but from the
powerful computers we’ve built to help that research.</p>
<p class="bodycopy-big module__paragraph">“It may well be
possible that while in principle we can sort of understand
how the brain works, given its vast complexity, humans may
never fully understand,” Koch said. “Maybe what it means to
understand shifts from the kind of classical model of
scientific understanding, like Newton’s apple or the double
helix of DNA. The details of the brain may be way beyond
human capacity and capability to understand, so we may more
and more need to rely on computer models to give us correct
answers without us knowing why those particular answers are
correct.”<em> </em></p>
<p class="bodycopy-big module__paragraph"><em>==============================================</em></p>
<p class="bodycopy-big module__paragraph">I expect the same
applies to the rest of our biology, and to biology in
general. It's vastly more complex even than our brains, but
that's not a reason we can't make sense of it, and learn
what we need to, to be able to do useful things with it,
even to the extent of modifying and improving it.</p>
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<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Ben</pre>
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