What Are We Thinking? The Brain-Mapping Project
It's pretty awesome when the President calls your ideas one of "the best ideas" and wants to invest in them.
Okay, it was super roundabout and thoroughly indirect, but when President Obama announced the administration's plan to invest in a long-term project to map the human brain I felt as validated as I probably could as a journalist who frequently writes about the subject of brain chemistry. The brain trying to understand itself is one of the most sublime endeavors I can imagine - the attempt to figure this out will be our 42, our ultimate answer to at least some of the ultimate questions, questions like "What was I thinking?"
I was smitten by science's attempt to better understand behavior through brain activity back in 2004 when I read Helen Fisher's Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love. Who could ever have imagined that obsession, heartbreak and adoration were largely explicable through brain chemistry? I got a bit of a crush on studying love and sex in the brain and eventually wrote my own book Crazy Little Thing: Why Love & Sex Drive Us Mad which looks at neuroscience and psychology but is, first and foremost, narratives - the stories of people madly in love, their terrible tragedies and glittering triumphs. Since then I've done lots of stories on love, sex, neuroscience and chemistry including list pieces for Alternet like What Turns You On? Ten Fascinating Facts About Sexual Attraction and 10 Fascinating Facts about Men, Sex and Testosterone & written about it in my former column in SeXis magazine SexCult: Self-Medication I hope to do a lot more.
And to learn a lot more - Obama's brain-mapping project will help us more effectively understand and treat mental illness and diseases like Alzheimer's. But it will certainly help us to better understand our own behavior and that of other people and where there's understanding it's a lot harder to have anger, judgement and the attendant miseries those things bring.
It's thrilling to be even a little bit within the mix at this exciting time in the world of science. I was born in the 60's when scientists were actually taking us to the moon. The moon! And I'm thrilled that we're now prepared to take just as big a stride. This time, though, the big trip we're going on is within.
Okay, it was super roundabout and thoroughly indirect, but when President Obama announced the administration's plan to invest in a long-term project to map the human brain I felt as validated as I probably could as a journalist who frequently writes about the subject of brain chemistry. The brain trying to understand itself is one of the most sublime endeavors I can imagine - the attempt to figure this out will be our 42, our ultimate answer to at least some of the ultimate questions, questions like "What was I thinking?"I was smitten by science's attempt to better understand behavior through brain activity back in 2004 when I read Helen Fisher's Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love. Who could ever have imagined that obsession, heartbreak and adoration were largely explicable through brain chemistry? I got a bit of a crush on studying love and sex in the brain and eventually wrote my own book Crazy Little Thing: Why Love & Sex Drive Us Mad which looks at neuroscience and psychology but is, first and foremost, narratives - the stories of people madly in love, their terrible tragedies and glittering triumphs. Since then I've done lots of stories on love, sex, neuroscience and chemistry including list pieces for Alternet like What Turns You On? Ten Fascinating Facts About Sexual Attraction and 10 Fascinating Facts about Men, Sex and Testosterone & written about it in my former column in SeXis magazine SexCult: Self-Medication I hope to do a lot more.
And to learn a lot more - Obama's brain-mapping project will help us more effectively understand and treat mental illness and diseases like Alzheimer's. But it will certainly help us to better understand our own behavior and that of other people and where there's understanding it's a lot harder to have anger, judgement and the attendant miseries those things bring.
It's thrilling to be even a little bit within the mix at this exciting time in the world of science. I was born in the 60's when scientists were actually taking us to the moon. The moon! And I'm thrilled that we're now prepared to take just as big a stride. This time, though, the big trip we're going on is within.
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