by Matthew Kirkcaldie and Saxby Pridmore

About the authors: Matthew Kirkcaldie was a graduate student at the University of Tasmania at the time this viewpoint was written. Saxby Pridmore is the director of Psychological Medicine at Royal Hobart Hospital in Tasmania.

The brain is elusive: its most interesting qualities appear when it is tucked inside its shell of bone, reading the world through senses and driving the body through the wide range of human behaviour. Anatomists can describe its structure in incredible detail, physiologists can tease out the complex chemistry of its cells, and neuropsychologists have pieced together a broad but incomplete picture of how its functions work together. Despite this enormous body of knowledge, the day-to-day running of the brain’s activities—and how to help when they go wrong&mdash...