Edward Boyden
Edward Boyden
Edward "Ed" S. Boyden is an American neuroscientist at MIT. He is a faculty member in the MIT Media Lab and an associate member of the McGovern Institute for Brain Research. He is recognized for his work on optogenetics. In this technology, a light-sensitive ion channel such as channelrhodopsin-2 is genetically expressed in neurons, allowing neuronal activity to be controlled by light. There were early efforts to achieve targeted optical control dating back to 2002 that did not involve a...
ProfessionScientist
different world computer
I spend a lot of time going over old conversation summaries. A lot of the old ones are about ideas that ended in failure, the project didn't work. But hey, you know what? That was five years ago, and now computers are faster, or some new information has come along, the world is different. So we're able to reboot the project.
understanding brain kind
If our brain is understanding some parts of the universe and not understanding other parts, and those understandings are about the laws of physics that our brains are built on top of, then it's kind of a loop, right?
brain physical-science universe
One of the things that got me transitioning from physical science to brain science was asking, Why do we understand so much about the universe?
brain human-brain
The brain is really hard to see. The whole thing is very large - the human brain is several pounds in weight - but the connections between brain cells, known as synapses, are really tiny. They're nanoscale in dimension. So if you want to see how the cells of the brain are connected in networks, you have to see those connections, those synapses.
tired giving candy
If you give somebody a lot of questions to answer and then they walk by a bowl of candy, they are more likely to grab the candy because they're tired out from answering questions and can't resist.
successful trying
Many of the projects that we do that appear quite successful, it's actually often the second or third time we've given it a try.
kind computer enough
It's actually kind of weird that we can comprehend the law of gravity, or that we can understand quantum mechanics, enough at least to make computers.
universe
Maybe we'll understand more about how the universe came to be, and what forces drove it in the early days and which forces drive it now.
technology people drug
For the last century of neuroscience, lots of people have tried to control neurons using all sorts of different technologies - pharmacology (drugs), electrical pulses, and so on. But none of these technologies are precise. With optogenetics, we can aim light at a single cell, or a set of cells, and turn just that set of cells on or off.
succeed
If we succeed, it makes no sense to keep it only for ourselves.
decision brain overcoming
I would argue that if you understand how the cells of the brain are organized into circuits, almost computational circuits if you will, and we see how information flows through those circuits and how it's transformed, we might have a much firmer grasp on why our brains make decisions the way that they do. If we get a handle on that, maybe we can overcome some of our limitations and at the very least we'll understand why we do what we do.
decision unconscious
Behavioral economics can explain some things, but it's hard to explain a lot of the underlying processes that generate these decisions, much less some of these unconscious things that we don't have a handle on at all.
motivational adventure life-is
Life is an adventure - Savor every instant!
motivational destiny play
The world is your playground - play with a sense of destiny.