Ideas worth spreading

A new way to study the brain's invisible secrets

1,594,918 views | Ed Boyden • TEDSummit

Neuroengineer Ed Boyden wants to know how the tiny biomolecules in our brains generate emotions, thoughts and feelings -- and he wants to find the molecular changes that lead to disorders like epilepsy and Alzheimer's. Rather than magnify these invisible structures with a microscope, he wondered: What if we physically enlarge them and make them easier to see? Learn how the same polymers used to make baby diapers swell could be a key to better understanding our brains.

Neuroengineer Ed Boyden wants to know how the tiny biomolecules in our brains generate emotions, thoughts and feelings -- and he wants to find the molecular changes that lead to disorders like epilepsy and Alzheimer's. Rather than magnify these invisible structures with a microscope, he wondered: What if we physically enlarge them and make them easier to see? Learn how the same polymers used to make baby diapers swell could be a key to better understanding our brains.

This talk was presented at an official TED conference. TED's editors chose to feature it for you.

About the speaker

See speaker profile

Ed Boyden is a professor of biological engineering and brain and cognitive sciences at the MIT Media Lab and the MIT McGovern Institute.

Edge.org, 2016 | Article

How the Brain Is Computing the Mind

An interview for Edge.org on why we don't understand the brain and why neural tools that aim for getting 'ground truth' data — going for the most fundamental level of detail possible — will help.

World Economic Forum, 2016 | Watch

Engineering Revolutions

A lecture on why 21st century problems are harder than 20th century problems — and how we can solve them through developing new kinds of science that reduce risk by being systematic and avoiding assumptions:

Andrew W. Lo, Carole Ho, Jayna Cummings and Kenneth S. Kosik | Science Translational Medicine, 2014 | Article

Parallel Discovery of Alzheimer’s Therapeutics

MIT business school professor Andrew Lo explains how we understand so little about Alzheimer's disease that it's actually too high a risk for most companies to tackle. Perhaps the solution is to lower the risk by getting fundamental understandings of Alzheimer's.

Antonio Regalado | MIT Technology Review, 2015 | Article

Peter Thiel Explains Biotech Investing Rationale: Get Rid of Randomness

One of the challenges with biotechnology generally is that biology feels too complicated and too random. It feels like there are too many things that can go wrong. By accelerating fundamental understanding, we can reduce this risk.

Greg Miller | Science, 2010 | Article

Is Pharma Running Out of Brainy Ideas?

An article about how brain disorders are so complex, industry is kind of giving up on them.

This talk was presented at an official TED conference. TED's editors chose to feature it for you.