Advances in neuroscience

Kevin S. LaBarThe burgeoning field of neuroscience is at an important nexus of discovery. The pace of innovation is accelerating along with increased curiosity about how the most mysterious organ of the body works. Emerging technologies, such as optogenetics, permit an inquiry into brain function at unprecedented levels of detail and sophistication. Large-scale collaborations and Open Science frameworks make neural data available to more researchers, thereby expanding and democratizing the scientific process. These efforts generate big data sets, spanning multiple methodologies that benefit from machine learning and other analytic tools to elucidate brain-behavior relationships. As exemplified by the U.S. BRAIN Initiative, funding agencies are recognizing how investments in cutting-edge neuroscience transform knowledge in ways that can directly benefit society—from …