Neuroscience, AI and Society Seminar
Nicole Rust, Professor of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania
Date: October 1, 2024
Time: 7 pm; the lecture will be followed by a reception in the Rotunda.
Location: University of Washington Health Sciences K069
Title: Elusive Cures: Why Neuroscience Hasn’t Solved the Mystery of Brain and Mental Illness
Abstract: Understanding the human brain is one of the great scientific challenges of our time. Progress in brain research has been accelerating rapidly for decades, following breakthroughs in biotechnology and artificial intelligence. But the translation of discoveries about the brain into treatments and cures for brain and mental disorders has not happened as many expected. What’s been missing?
In this event, Nicole Rust will take us on her personal journey to find answers. Drawing on her decades of experience on the front lines of neuroscience research, she will reflect on the history of our quest to understand the brain, how far we have come and what remains to be discovered. She will argue that treating a brain or mental disorder is more like redirecting a hurricane than fixing a domino chain of cause and effect, and that only by facing the brain’s complexity head-on will we have any hope of finding better treatments and cures. She will profile the pioneering ideas about the brain and mind that researchers are using to tackle this complexity, and the reasons we can be optimistic that the next few decades of brain research will be more impactful than the last.