What is the one thing about human brain which still keeps you awake at night?

Question

Elizabeth Phelps · Answer

What is one thing about the human brain which still keeps you awake at night? Well, let me start by saying that I try not to let the human brain keep me awake at night. One thing we've learned over the years is how important sleep is to our mental health, our physical health, our stress reactivity, our learning, our memory, and our brain health-- that I really take it seriously. I try very much to get good sleep. So yeah, my daughter might wake me up, my dog might wake me up, but I try not to let thinking about the human brain keep me awake at night. Having said that, there are some things I wonder about the human brain. So one of them is, what makes a human brain human? So if we look at brains and what they look like and how they function across species, there aren't that many differences. If we look at our closest primate relatives and their brains, we have the same basic parts, the same basic functions, and the same basic parts. And the neurons work roughly the same. And in fact, as scientists, we take advantage of that. We study other animals to get insight into human brain function. But we know that, of course, humans are very different than other animals in many important ways. We have generative language. We have this ability to have complex thoughts and communicate them with each other-- sort of infinite number of potential thoughts. We have complex societies and structures that govern how we operate in the world that other animals don't have. So there must be something that happened in brain development, some switch that occurred that made humans and their brains different, that enabled all these things that make us uniquely humans. But I have no idea what that switch is because when I look at the brains, they don't look so drastically different. So what is it about human brains that make us human? I have no idea. That's something I wonder about.

Swimming

Strength

Triathlon

Photography

Track & Field

Nutrition

Physical Therapy

Running

Pets

Cycling

Podcasting

HealthCare

Musculoskeletal

Hockey

First Responders

Integrative Medicine

Chiropractic

Cross Country Skiing

Adaptive Sports

Mental Health

Surfing

Climbing

Tennis

Military

Mind Body

Scholars

Criminal Justice

Liquor

Golf

CrossFit

Soccer

Pickleball

Hunting

Public Speaking

Venture Capital

"What is the one thing about human brain which still keeps you awake at night?"