How has our understanding of the brain changed over the years, and our use of technology to explore it?
Just like in industry, I think robotics will revolutionize this field. Robots don’t get tired, they don’t care whether the instrument they’re holding is heavy or light, they don’t care how long an operation takes. Robotics can turn a huge operation into a very safe smaller one. These robotic attributes and advantages are just going to mushroom in the coming years.
How has our understanding of the brain changed over the years, and our use of technology to explore it?
Anybody who thinks we really understand the functioning of the brain is being very simplistic!
It used to be that we thought 80% of our brain was redundant; that you could even take the frontal lobes off and still have a person who sort of functions. But when you look closely, you see that all the regions of the brain have important subtle roles: the appreciation of music, the ability to dream, the cause of depression, and so on. All of these places in the brain become apparent the closer we look – and we’re not anywhere near done looking.
Think about the fact that we can now put electrodes on the brain. If you are paralyzed – for example, you want to be able to move an arm – that signal can be captured through an array of electrodes. Then a computer can stimulate the paralyzed region with an electrical connection that will induce actual motion.
This is being done already. It’s rudimentary right now, but as you get to increase from having 16 electrodes to a billion, you can imagine how exact that sort of movement can be.