Andrew Huberman· PhD
And the rule that every good neuroanatomist knows is that if you want to understand what a part of the brain does, you have to address two questions. First, you have to know what connections does that brain area make? What is it connected to? Where does it get inputs from and where does it send inputs? So for instance, if there's an area of the brain that gets direct input from the neurons in the nose, you can be pretty certain that it has some role in analyzing smell in measuring something about odors or analyzing something about odors. Now if it also gets input from the eye, you can also conclude that it gets input from the visual system that it cares about light and photons. This is sort of obvious. And yet you need to know that connectivity, and you need to know what's called the developmental origin of that structure.