How far neuroscience is from understanding brains (2023)
Neuroscience struggles to form a cohesive theory of brain function due to conceptual obstacles, reliance on borrowed ideas, and inadequate data analysis methods, hindering progress in understanding neuronal interactions.
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Neuroscience has made significant strides in understanding the cellular biology of the brain, yet it remains far from a comprehensive theory that explains how brains function. Current explanations of neuronal interactions are tentative and lack a cohesive framework. Major obstacles to progress are conceptual, stemming from a lack of models that are grounded in experimental results. Neuroscience often relies on borrowed concepts from other disciplines, which do not adequately explain the complexities of brain mechanisms. This reliance leads to ambiguities in distinguishing between task-related and spontaneous brain activities, as well as misunderstandings about the autonomy of brain functions. The article argues that the absence of a guiding theory hinders the formation of hypotheses and the interpretation of experimental data. It emphasizes the need for new concepts that are directly linked to measurable brain variables, rather than analogies that may obscure understanding. Additionally, the paper highlights the challenges of analyzing data, as pooling and averaging can obscure important dynamics. To advance neuroscience, it is crucial to develop concepts that accurately reflect the interactions of neurons across all scales and to adopt experimental practices that account for the complexities of brain activity. By addressing these conceptual and methodological obstacles, neuroscience can move closer to a unified theory of brain function.
- Neuroscience lacks a cohesive theory explaining brain function despite understanding cellular biology.
- Major obstacles to progress are conceptual, with reliance on borrowed concepts from other disciplines.
- Distinguishing between task-related and spontaneous brain activities remains ambiguous.
- Current data analysis methods may obscure important dynamics in brain function.
- Developing new concepts rooted in experimental results is essential for advancing neuroscience.
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12 commentsIt’s the only theory of how the brain works that I’ve come across that seems like it could be valid. Unfortunately, like other posters have already mentioned, neuroscience is incredibly complex and we just don’t have the tools to test it.
Even if it ends up being completely wrong, it’s a beautiful theory and well worth checking out!
Psychology is worse, much worse, and yet is used around the world to make many, many life-changing or life-ending decisions.
What I mean by this is that we thought we understood the body when we understood thermodynamics. The blood pumps through the heart, goes to the brain, nutrients feed the muscles, etc etc. Then we discovered how electricity works and we thought "oh! of course, it's all electric!" The heart pumps because of electricity, and the nerves are all electric synapses, etc etc.
I fully expect in the future we will look at quantum mechanics and apply that to our understanding of biology (if we aren't doing that yet), and down the rabbit hole we will continue.
That doesn't mean we can't do some incredible things with our current understanding of the brain, I work in neurotech at https://affectablesleep.com, where we are increasing the effectiveness of deep sleep. We know the mechanism we can use to trick the brain to increasing the synchronous firing of neurons which define deep sleep, but we don't know WHY it works.
I've read this few years ago, how far we've come?
There are very few non-destructive ways we can get a look into a brain while it is living. And even research into ways we can look into a living brain is hindered by the fact we don't want to harm the person being observed.
I could see that making progress a lot slower
Neurological connective tissues and their corresponding signals may be more of a symptom of electrical wave action rather than a signaling nexus.
Everything is a wave. Everything is a probabilistic wave form with probabilistic outcomes.
Once science understands these waves and their myriad forms, we may have a greater understanding of our own wires and grey matter signaling.
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