New Horizons in Brain Science

As a complex system, the brain is considered to ultimately defy understanding through a reductionist approach. However, at present, scientists are busy addressing technical problems before considering such a theoretical dichotomy. Advances in neuroimaging methods have allowed observation of living brains at work, but many issues remain to be overcome; some fundamental, and some arising through poor utilization. For example, functional MRI suffers signal contamination by chaotic behavior of physiological confound. Nevertheless, functional neuroimaging is finally about to secure its position as a noninvasive method of physiological measurement that can be used to investigate in great detail, thus meeting the huge expectations from society.