• Question: why is learning about your brain important?

    Asked by kerr to Andrew, Dilip, Emma, John, Ruth on 8 Nov 2015.
    • Photo: John Gleeson

      John Gleeson answered on 8 Nov 2015:

      Unfortunately there are lots of diseases which affect the brain. And we need to know more about these to design drugs which can help. From a food and nutrition view, for a long time we didn’t realise that Vitamin B9 was so so so SOOOO important! And now you’ll hear of pregnant women taking this. As without it, it causes Neural Tube Defects in developing embryos. So without a knowledge of the brain development we wouldn’t be able to fortify products with B9 to help prevent this occurring!

    • Photo: Andrew Quigley

      Andrew Quigley answered on 9 Nov 2015:

      I agree with John completely! There a huge number of diseases that originate due to problems in the brain.

      Also learning about the brain is really the brain learning about itself, something that I’ve always found pretty cool!

    • Photo: Ruth Hamill

      Ruth Hamill answered on 10 Nov 2015:

      One area that is very interesting and important is the links between creativity and mental illness and that is certainly something that’s very important to learn more about to help people suffering with mental illness and maybe understand more about the nature of creativity.

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