It’s one of the oldest questions on the planet: what sets us apart from the rest of the animal kingdom? It’s true that as we’re dragged, kicking and screaming into the future, some of those perceived differences are shrinking. We now know that
dolphins have language, elephants have ritual and mourn their dead, and some other primate species have
entered the stone age. Still, there’s a difference. No other animal on the planet can open up a magic box and write about its own consciousness, for better or worse, and that’s probably not just due to how awesome our thumbs are. The nuts-and-bolts science of figuring out what makes our brains tick is also one of the scientific disciplines where there’s still a lot to learn, not least because of the difficulty in finding human brains to poke around in. Neurologists most often use mice as surrogates, because the structure of mammalian brains are generally the same. Generally the same doesn’t mean they’re exactly the same, however....
