The immense interconnectivity of the brain: Best ideas of the century

You have probably heard the parable of the blind men and the elephant. One feels the trunk and says it's a snake, another feels a leg and claims it's a tree. It warns of how focusing on single parts can obscure the whole. Neuroscience made the same mistake for decades, viewing the brain as a collection of specialised regions, each working on a distinct function. Our understanding of what each region did often stemmed from incredible accidents, like the case of Phineas Gage, a 19th-century railway worker who survived having an iron rod blown through his brain.