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List of unsolved problems in neuroscience

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This is a dynamic list and may never be able to satisfy particular standards for completeness. You can help by adding missing items with reliable sources.

There are yet unsolved problems in neuroscience, although some of these problems have evidence supporting a hypothesized solution, and the field is rapidly evolving. These problems include:

Consciousness

Sensation, perception and movement

  • Perception: How does the brain transfer sensory information into coherent, private percepts? What are the rules by which perception is organized? What are the features/objects that constitute our perceptual experience of internal and external events? How are the senses integrated? What is the relationship between subjective experience and the physical world?
  • Movement: How can we move so controllably, even though the motor nerve impulses seem haphazard and unpredictable?[3]

Learning and memory

  • Learning and memory: Where do our memories get stored and how are they retrieved again? How can learning be improved? What is the difference between explicit and implicit memories? What molecule is responsible for synaptic tagging?
  • Neuroplasticity: How plastic is the mature brain?
  • Cognition and decisions: How and where does the brain evaluate reward value and effort (cost) to modulate behavior? How does previous experience alter perception and behavior? What are the genetic and environmental contributions to brain function?

Language

Mind-body connection

Computational neuroscience

  • Computational theory of mind: What are the limits of understanding thinking as a form of computing?
  • Computational neuroscience: How important is the precise timing of action potentials for information processing in the neocortex? Is there a canonical computation performed by cortical columns? How is information in the brain processed by the collective dynamics of large neuronal circuits? What level of simplification is suitable for a description of information processing in the brain? What is the neural code?
  • How do general anesthetics work?
  • Neural computation: What are all the different types of neuron and what do they do in the human brain?[4]
  • Noogenesis - the emergence and evolution of intelligence: What are the laws and mechanisms - of new idea emergence (insight, creativity synthesis, intuition, decision-making, eureka); development (evolution) of an individual mind in the ontogenesis, etc.?

References

  1. ^ Sejnowski, Terrence J.; Hemmen, J. L. van (2006). 23 problems in systems neuroscience (PDF). Oxford [Oxfordshire]: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-514822-0.
  2. ^ Tononi, Giulio; Koch, Christof (2015). "Consciousness: Here, there and everywhere?". Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. 370 (1668): 20140167. doi:10.1098/rstb.2014.0167. PMC 4387509. PMID 25823865.
  3. ^ University of Copenhagen (24 January 2007). "Thinking With The Spinal Cord?". ScienceDaily. Retrieved 25 May 2016.
  4. ^ "A Database Of All Things Brainy".
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