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Edward Boyden Biography

Edward S. Boyden is an American neuroscientist at MIT. He is the Y. Eva Tan Professor in Neurotechnology, a faculty member in the MIT Media Lab and an associate member of the McGovern Institute for Brain Research. He is recognized for his work on optogenetics. In this technology, a light-sensitive ion channel such as channelrhodopsin-2 is genetically expressed in neurons, allowing neuronal activity to be controlled by light. There were early efforts to achieve targeted optical control dating back to 2002 that did not involve a directly light-activated ion channel, but it was the method based on directly light-activated channels from microbes, such as channelrhodopsin, emerging in 2005 that turned out to be broadly useful. Optogenetics in this way has been widely adopted by neuroscientists as a research tool, and it is also thought to have potential therapeutic applications. Boyden joined the MIT faculty in 2007, and continues to develop new optogenetic tools as well as other technologies for the manipulation of brain activity. Previously, Boyden received degrees in electrical engineering, computer science, and physics from MIT. During high school, Boyden attended the Texas Academy of Mathematics and Science.

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Edward Boyden Quotes

Synthesize new ideas constantly. Never read passively. Annotate, model, think, and synthesize while you read, even when you're reading what you conceive to be introductory stuff. That way, you will always aim towards understanding things at a resolution fine enough for you to be creative.

Fine, Ideas, Reading, Stuff, Thinking, Understanding

Life is an adventure - Savor every instant!

Adventure, Instant, Life, Life Is, Motivational, Savor

The skill-providers want to have more impact and solve problems; the problem people want new tools to get their problems solved.

Impact, People, Problems, Skills, Tools

Unlike optogenetics, where there are existing nonprofits that give away the DNA for free or at cost, expansion microscopy requires chemicals to be used, so having a company that makes the chemistry kit that anybody can use can save time.

Dna, Expansion, Giving, Having, Nonprofits

I think the definition will change as we learn more, but my working definition of solving the brain is: one, we can model, maybe in a computer, the processes that generate things like thoughts and feelings, and two, we can understand how to cure brain disorders, like Alzheimer's and epilepsy. Those are my two driving goals. One is more human-condition oriented, and one more clinical.

Alzheimer'S, Goals, Maybe, Model, Thinking, Two

For the last century of neuroscience, lots of people have tried to control neurons using all sorts of different technologies - pharmacology (drugs), electrical pulses, and so on. But none of these technologies are precise. With optogenetics, we can aim light at a single cell, or a set of cells, and turn just that set of cells on or off.

Cells, Drugs, Light, People, Technology, Turn

The brain is really hard to see. The whole thing is very large - the human brain is several pounds in weight - but the connections between brain cells, known as synapses, are really tiny. They're nanoscale in dimension. So if you want to see how the cells of the brain are connected in networks, you have to see those connections, those synapses.

Brain, Cells, Connected, Dimensions, Large, Thing

Remember, when we're conscious of something, that state is quite often generated by unconscious processes that happen right before it.

Conscious, Happen, Quite, Remember, Right, States

The world is your playground - play with a sense of destiny.

Destiny, Motivational, Play, Sense, World

You can imagine over very long timescales, perhaps far beyond the multi-decade time scale, we might be able to ask very deep questions about why we feel the way we feel about things, or why we think of ourselves in certain ways - questions that have been in the realm of psychology and philosophy but have been very difficult to get a firm mechanistic laws-of-physics grasp on.

Deep, Law, Philosophy, Psychology, Thinking

If you could map out a human brain, an open question is, if you simulated it, would it be you? Now, as we discussed earlier, we don't have a great definition or even a good technological handle to know whether something is conscious or not just by looking at it, so there's that aspect that we're not ready to answer, I would argue. But it raises very interesting questions about the nature of identity.

Answer, Brain, Identity, Interesting, Looking, Questions

If you think backwards from a big problem, and you talk to all these other people who have skills and who think forward from their skills, it's very easy to form collaborations because everyone is incentivized to work together.

Forward, People, Problem, Skills, Thinking, Work

Behavioral economics can explain some things, but it's hard to explain a lot of the underlying processes that generate these decisions, much less some of these unconscious things that we don't have a handle on at all.

Behavioral, Decision, Economics, Process, Things

When I'm talking to somebody, I'll put a piece of paper on the table and I'll write what I call a conversation summary - notes about the conversation on the piece of paper. At the end of the conversation, I'll take a picture on my phone and give the other person the original piece of paper.

Original, Paper, Phones, Summary, Talking, Writing

Maybe we'll understand more about how the universe came to be, and what forces drove it in the early days and which forces drive it now.

Came, Drive, Drove, Force, Understand, Universe

Suppose there are some things that we don't understand about the universe, but if you understand human intelligence and you understand the gaps in our abilities to think about things, maybe we can engineer in a computer more advanced intelligences that can help augment our ability to think.

Ability, Gaps, Helping, Suppose, Thinking, Understand

If you give somebody a lot of questions to answer and then they walk by a bowl of candy, they are more likely to grab the candy because they're tired out from answering questions and can't resist.

Answer, Answers, Candy, Giving, Somebody, Tired

Many of the projects that we do that appear quite successful, it's actually often the second or third time we've given it a try.

Actually, Projects, Quite, Successful, Time, Trying

I spend a lot of time going over old conversation summaries. A lot of the old ones are about ideas that ended in failure, the project didn't work. But hey, you know what? That was five years ago, and now computers are faster, or some new information has come along, the world is different. So we're able to reboot the project.

Able, Ideas, Reboot, World, Years

I worry that we don't have a very good definition of consciousness yet which makes it hard to tackle.

Consciousness, Definitions, Hard, Worry

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