Anne-Laure Le Cunff

Recent years have seen a huge growth in the public awareness of neuroscience. People have become more interested in new findings about the brain, and also find brain-based explanations quite compelling. This public interest has led enterprising individuals to try to apply neuroscientific ideas to more everyday situations.

As its goal is to take neuroscience out of the lab and into the real world, applied neuroscience draws knowledge from many areas of science, from psychology to molecular biology.

Applied neuroscience explores the applications of neuroscience in real-world settings. Where most of the work in other neuroscientific branches is done in an academic setting, applied neuroscience is used by practitioners — professionals who work in clinics, hospitals, labs, schools, and companies — as a way to support their core discipline.

So while neuroscientists struggle to understand how there can be such a thing as a first-person reality, quantum physicists have to grapple with the mystery of how there can be anything but a first-person reality. In short, all roads lead back to the observer.