Time magazine has published a new map of the brain. As 21st century science and technology open the brain to us as never before, accepted truths are becoming less true.
Trying to map the brain has always been cartography for fools. Most of the other parts of the body reveal their workings with little more than a glance. The heart is self-evidently a pump; the lungs are clearly bellows. But the brain, which does more than any organ, reveals least of all.
The 3-lb. lump of wrinkled tissue–with no moving parts, no joints or valves–not only serves as the motherboard for all the body’s other systems but also is the seat of your mind, your thoughts, your sense that you exist at all. You have a liver; you have your limbs. You are your brain.
