Dr. Mark D'Esposito

So some of the research I'm excited most about is sort of taking away the names of areas and just thinking about the brain as a big network, like an airline network or electrical network, and how...

different areas communicate with each other.

And when you think of it that way, so for example, an airline network, you've got all these hubs all over the world, all over the country.

In the United States, for example, you've got Chicago as a hub and there's other hubs, Milwaukee or Cincinnati, but they have very different functions in the network as a whole, right?

If you're trying to get from

From New York to San Francisco, which happened to me many times, even though you're not going through Chicago, if Chicago's shut down, you're probably going to get delayed because it just has this huge impact on the whole system.

And, you know, if Milwaukee goes down, you don't even know it.

You just fly right over there.

I'm sorry if anyone's listening from Milwaukee.

There are probably a few.

You got to go through.

So thinking about the brain, the brain is the same way.

The brain has these hubs as well.

And the prefrontal cortex is a hub like Chicago.

It's just an important hub that keeps the whole system going.

And that's why it has much more of an impact when you

when you damage it or you stress it as opposed to some other part of the brain.

And so what's exciting to me is not only is that making us think about disease differently, because now we're starting to think about how is diseases affecting these hubs, that the pathology seems to be like when you look at Alzheimer's disease and you look at schizophrenia and you look at a lot of diseases,

It's not just that there's some microscopic change in some neuron.

It seems to be affecting hubs in the brain that are affecting the whole network.