Ask A Scienceblogger: In Which Jake Says Something Very Trite

If you could have practiced science in any time and any place throughout history, which would it be, and why?...

OK, so this is going to sound incredibly trite, but my answer is right now...

...but I have a reason, and it doesn't involve kittens.

I am happy to be a scientist right now because we are going through an incredible Renaissance in neuroscience. We are beginning to understand the brain in ways that no one ever thought possible, and this understanding is translating -- slowly -- into a real ability to cure patients that were previously incurable. I remember at least some people telling me that wanting to be a neurologist was self-defeating; you can't help any of your patients. That may be true when I start, but I doubt it will be when I finish.

I would analogize this to the revolution in physics that happened at the turn of the last century. Quantum physics, relativity -- these things happened so fast that we are still feeling their consequences. They revolutionized physics to such a degree that you could argue that everything that happened after was just trying to piece them together.

I feel like in my lifetime we will not only be able to cure many brain maladies, but we will develop a great synthesis in which we can fit all our data about brain function. New technologies for imaging, cheaper and cheaper ways to probe genes and molecules, and now neural implants -- this is going to be big, and it is going to happen in the next 20 or 30 years.