Will we ever get our minds around the brain? We know what it’s made of (77% water, for a start) and how much it weighs (about 3 pounds, generally). We also know that it has somewhere in excess of 80 billion neurons, each one connected chemically and electrically with 10,000 others, creating the world’s most complex network, with more interconnections (1,000 trillion synapses, give or take) than there are stars and planets in the Milky Way.
But how, exactly, does it all work? How does the brain cause our hearts to beat, or make us happy, breathe without thinking, fall in love, fear spiders, see, dream, learn, remember, taste, feel or smell?