I've been thinking about the brain since I was a teenager and learned that the two hemispheres of the brain carry out different functions. The left side, it seemed, was analytic and focused on details. The right hemisphere was apparently 'holistic', it saw the big picture. The right hemisphere perceived the overall shape of the forest, and the left hemisphere noticed the details, the trees, their leaves, and so on. I still think that description is largely true. However, there has been a lot of research on the matter since I first learned about it- and apparently the picture is more complex that it seemed. That's usually the way it goes in science.

In the meantime, I've turned my attention to other topics in neuroscience - the way we choose goals, and the neural circuitry that allows us to act in ways to bring our goals about. I'll talk about some of those things in this website. But when you spend part of your day thinking about the brain, and other parts of the day doing the everyday things people do, your thinking about the brain and mind gets mixed together with those other things. My thinking about the brain becomes background for my everyday life, and vice versa. That space between brain, mind and other things in my life is what I hope to push into the foreground in this website.

Please check back soon.

Jon Horvitz, 7/20/22