"Friendship - Justice - Learning"
“Perhaps the most difficult, and at the same time the most interesting problem in neuroscience, is the nature of consciousness and its relationship to physical events in the brain…It seems to me that this is the biggest problem facing the neurosciences at the present time. Whoever solves it will have earned a place in the history of science comparable to that of Newton and Darwin.” – Andrew Huxley, Cambridge University
As an aspiring neuroscientist, I am interested in understanding the ways in which culture and biology interact within the human brain to support our elaborated capacities to think, love and create. While also promoting an intriquingly diverse range of cultural traditions and a colorful array of temperaments, talents and convictions across our planet and throughout its' history.
To examine this interaction, I approach the investigation of nature and nurture through the perspective of social neuroscience, a sub-discipline of the neurosciences, which suggests unitying the tools and theories from the biological and social sciences to develop a more comprehensive theory of human nature.
As Andrew Huxley suggests, the most difficult and exciting problem of the neurosciences is the nature of consciousness in terms of the physiology of the brain. If we are to truly understand consciousness, I fundamentally believe that we must not be solely investigating the cellular and molecular physiology of the brain but ought to also look outside of the brain, to the social and cultural forces which shape and maintain it across the human lifespan.
A side from such breakthroughs, what I am most excited about is the potential this knowledge will have in the public sphere. Our world is truly a global community. One comprised of sovereign nations, cultures and social individuals, each with a vast history, local dialect and social customs that develop conscious thought and guide a human way of life. However, it is not merely humanity, but all life on Earth, which depends on a future of dynamic, peaceful and productive intercourse and exchange between human diversity.
Taken together, these research themes reflect my ultimate desire to investigate the ways in which each project can be synthesized and shared in order to answer some of the most important questions regarding brain evolution, consciousness and human nature.
Jonathan Cachat, 6/2009
- Neuro Links
- Neuro Links 2
- Other Links
- The Third Culture: Beyond the Scientific Revolution
- FlightPatterns
- Information Aesthetics: Information Visualization & Visual Communication
- VisualComplexity
- The Inner Life of the Cell
- NASA Planetary Photojournal
- TED: Ideas Worth Spreading
- Terralingua: Unity in Biocultural Diversity
- The Edge Foundation
- Human History
Other Social Networks:
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Jonathan Cachat - 
- info@jcachat.com