Our brains are very adaptive. Accordingly, they change and match the environment they are surrounded by. If the world became more rapid and hectic, our brains actually learn to cope with it and will find the optimal way to handle multi-tasking. I am not on the camp that says that having multiple things in our life is in any way a problem. It is different. And it requires a new playbook for thinking and operating in the world. But our brain was made exactly for new playbooks. So I trust that we are learning how to handle this world perfectly.
Technology and improved healthcare - the promise is huge, they say. You’ve studied a variety of disabilities – from autism to epilepsy. How soon can technological innovations in the fields you’re studying become widely available?
We are making huge progress in understanding the mechanisms that govern neural disorders. However, we also need to remember that as we get better healthcare altogether and live longer, we are likely to get older and accordingly expose ourselves to more mental disorders than ever before. The US National Institute of Health shows a very alarming graph that suggests that while on the one hand we are making incredible progress in handling most existing diseases that humans suffered from for ages, on the other hand we are getting a population that is older for a longer period and accordingly are suffering from growing neurological disorders. This is something that we need to think about carefully as a society now.
If we could guarantee that you would live longer, say to age 130,
but cannot guarantee that you would have all your mental faculties starting, say, from age 100. Do you want that? Do you prefer a longer life but with a long period where you are not as clear as you used to be? This is a challenge that we are now facing and starting to think about.
When it comes to healthcare altogether - I think the next promise of targeted medicine, and of preemptive medicine that identifying a disease emerging in you, before the symptoms occur and you are already experiencing it - is going to change a lot. Imagine a device that looks at your vitals at any given moment and tells you: “you are getting sicker; so tonight you should eat 3 tomatoes and sleep at least 7 hours to prevent a disease that otherwise will attack you tomorrow.”. But if you do those things - you don’t get sick. That’s a different way of dealing with things than first getting sick and then fixing if fast, or from just living a healthy lifestyle altogether and hoping you won’t get sick at all. That’s an area where we’re making significant moves now and I suspect that
it is the next big healthcare revolution.
This, however, isn’t neuroscience research solely, but rather a combination of various disciplines - mostly biology.
