These disorders - schizophrenia, Alzheimer's, depression, addiction - they not only steal our time to live, they change who we are.

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.

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

It's actually kind of weird that we can comprehend the law of gravity, or that we can understand quantum mechanics, enough at least to make computers.

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.

It's surprising that the world is understandable to the extent that it is.

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.