The Brain: Brilliant, Baffling, and Hard to Fix

Depression and anxiety are among the most common mental health conditions worldwide, yet we still know surprisingly little about how the brain produces the feelings that define them. In this talk, I will explore how specific brain circuits shape emotional experiences - such as blunting positive feelings or heightening our response to a stressful or threatening situation. Using insights from research in primates with brain networks similar to our own, we have begun to identify the neural pathways that give rise to aspects of these different symptoms. Understanding these circuits may help explain why treatments do not work for everyone and how we could guide the development of more targeted therapies.

What happens in your brain when you make eye contact, read a room, or lose yourself in deep focus? Beneath every social instinct and attentional shift lies an intricate web of neural circuits — ancient, precise, and surprisingly flexible. In this talk, we'll explore how specific brain regions orchestrate who we pay attention to, how we respond to others, and why these systems sometimes go awry. Drawing on cutting-edge neuroscience, I plan to ask how understanding these circuits is opening new doors for treating conditions like ADHD, autism, and social anxiety.

Developing medicines for brain disorders is especially challenging. In this talk, I’ll explain how scientists discover and develop new drugs, from early ideas in the lab to testing in people. I’ll also explore why the brain is a particularly difficult organ to treat as it is complex, tightly protected by the body, and still not fully understood. By the end, you’ll have a clearer picture of why progress in treating conditions like Alzheimer’s can take many years, and why new approaches are so important.