What Is the Biggest Problem in Neuroscience?

Andrew Huberman says the biggest problem in neuroscience is also the one he finds coolest: how to write to the nervous system without opening the skull, in sleep and while awake. Reading signals has been the work of the field. Writing, with a way to turn specific areas up or down at a precise moment, is the open problem.

His childhood friend Eddie Chang, chair of neurosurgery at UCSF, does work in the same neighborhood as Neuralink, including tumor surgery and mapping speech while a patient is awake. Opening the skull is a big deal. People accept a titanium plate when a tumor or an epileptic focus has to come out, not as a casual upgrade. His bet for a non-invasive path is probably ultrasound, a way to activate or quiet chosen brain areas with high temporal precision. The cases he calls heroic are getting people with locked-in syndrome to speak, which Chang has done, and getting people with a spinal injury to walk, which Neuralink, Chang, and others are trying to build.