Neuro

One of the magazines that I like to read is Technology Review, which is produced by MIT. The quality varies, as it seems that some months they want to be the venture capitalists friend, and others they're pitching to deep techies, but enough of it resonates with me that I always look through it immediately upon arrival. I also subscribe to their RSS feed, which is where I recently found this description of his work by Ed Boyden --"Explorations of brain technologies and insights that are going to change not only the way we live, but how we think about reality". Now, you know, just reading that, the odds are that I'm going to be lost pretty quickly when he goes into some detail -- but as it turns out, his current article, Training a Generation of Neuroengineers, is actually pretty easy to understand. It's likely the Dr. Seuss version!

In a nutshell, he says that he and his students are attempting to build the neuroengineering discipline, figuring out as they go along what exactly that means. This isn't neuro as in medicine -- though a familiarity with the structure of the brain is unquestionably part of the underpinnings of their area -- its treating the brain, its sensory and cognitive functions, like a machine -- taking it apart, understanding how it works, and trying to see how improvements can be made to the way it works and to its interfaces. Yeah, I admit it; this came to mind -- but its a fascinating topic, and I'm in awe of the people who will be working in this area. They're brilliant.