What have researchers learned since Brain Rules was published?

The field of brain science continues its explosive, propulsive revolution since Brain Rules was published. There are probably too many results to give a thorough account here, but I can certainly talk about some of the highlights.

One of the first is that a series of well-funded brain initiatives on both sides of the Atlantic. Groups of brain scientists are being recruited to be cartographers--examining the functional circuitry of the entire brain--at one of the smallest scales imaginable. The American version is called the BRAIN initiative, short for Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies. It's slated to cost several billion dollars and last 10 years. The European version is called the Human Brain Project. It's a really big effort to use supercomputers to reconstruct the micro-circuitry of the entire human brain

The hope is that such functional mapping expeditions will allow scientists to study at an incredible detail--and get new insights to cure diseases ranging from epilepsy and Parkinson's Disease to brain injuries such as Post Traumatic Stress and stroke.

Another series of leaps involve making brain-machine interfaces. These include harnessing the brain's electrical energy to drive physical devices. This is useful if you are interested in making brain-responsive prosthetics. Given the number of combat injuries the U.S. military has sustained since Brain Rules was written, this is a really exciting field. Progress in deep-brain stimulation technologies--this is where you insert electrical devices into the brain to solve problems ranging from depression to obsessive compulsive disorder, have made great strides.