Ed Boyden: Let’s Bring Engineers into Studying the Brain

The first time I met Prof. Ed Boyden was at last year’s Global Future 2045 conference in New York. There I was highly impressed with Boyden’s impressive work in neuroscience in general and optogenetics in particular, as well as the profound implications it would have on our ability to understand and manipulate the brain. And so I knew instantly I must bring him for an interview on Singularity 1 on 1. During our 1 hour conversation with Ed we cover a variety of topics such as: his interesting career path from chemistry to physics to electrical engineering and into neuroscience; the loop of understanding and why the brain is where we need to go; the importance of philosophy; optogenetics and whether the brain is a classical computer or not; the Penrose-Hameroff theory of consciousness; the Human Brain Project; Randal Koene‘s Whole Brain Emulation project; the definition and importance of consciousness; neuro-plasticity and Norman Doidge’s The Brain That Changes Itself; free will and mind-uploading…