The crucial role of chaos in our brain's most extraordinary functions

Think back through your day and consider all the amazing tasks your brain has helped you perform. From brushing your teeth to eating your lunch and reading the words on this page, your thoughts, feelings and actions may appear to be the product of a finely tuned machine. Simply telling someone your name is a small miracle for electrical signals zapping across a 1.3-kilogram lump of jelly. "You're pulling off one of the most complicated and exquisite acts of computation in the universe," says Keith Hengen, a biologist at Washington University in St Louis. Exactly how we achieve this complexity has puzzled philosophers and neuroscientists for centuries, and now it seems precision isn't the answer. Instead it could all come down to the brain's inherent messiness.