Question: Why do you believe that understanding the human brain is so important.

Ian Simpson answered on 22 Jun 2014:

Firstly there’s the practical aspect that relates to human disease. In the West at least we are all living longer and increasingly the major cause impacting quality of life (and lifespan) is mental health. Accompanying the increasing proportion of ageing people in the West is a large increase in neurological disease.

It’s estimated that something like 450 million people around the world suffer from mental health problems, 1 million suicides a year and 1:4 people who have a family member affected. The burden is huge and we know relatively little about a lot of these diseases. Research into these diseases and how the brain works is essential to try to improve (and save) the lives of millions of people around the world.

From a technological aspect the brain presents some intriguing questions about how you can organise and run such an incredibly efficient structure for computation. The brain is capable of carrying out complex tasks incredibly quickly and with very little power consumption. Companies like Microsoft are doing a lot of work in trying to develop biologically inspired computers. Basically trying to use some of the tricks biology uses to improve and innovate computer design.

I’m also very interested in trying to understand how “high level” functions like memory, personality, emotion, information processing etc. are made possible down at the cellular and molecular level.