Talk: Bert Sakmann, Nobel Laureate in Medicine

DW-TV: Do you think we humans have big enough brains to one day really understand how the brain works?

Bert Sakmann: Well, maybe I could modify this by saying the brain has many functions and I'm confident that part of the functions, simpler functions, we'll be able to understand mechanistically. The really higher brain function is out of my immediate horizon. I think once we have a complete structure of the human brain, also this might be tackled.

So it's really a challenge to understand how something like self-consciousness is constructed in our brain?

This is a function of the brain that I would say in the immediate future we will not be be able to understand mechanistically but again the brain has many functions, motor functions, sensory functions, and some of them we will understand.

Even though a lot of riddles remain, obviously the temptation is big to improve the brain, and to install things like pacemakers or neuro-enhancement. What do you think? Where are we heading?

The problem with the brain function is that the brain is so highly specialized and with the current methods we can't stimulate or observe a particular part of the brain in primates or humans.

But we already have things like a pacemaker for people suffering from Parkinson's, something that really relieves their illness. Don't you think that one day we might get something like a device that really improves our memory, for example?

Not in the immediate future. We even don't know where the different kinds of memories are located. We first have to locate what is a memory, in the first place. This is not known. I mean, particular memories are attributed to a part of the hippocampus or cortex, but this is all very, very vague.

Now these days you are helping to set up a Max Planck Institute in the US. Do the Americans actually need our help in finding out how research has to take place?

Definitely not. I mean, this would be a complete misunderstanding. We were offered a large sum to build a bio-science hub in Florida together with the Scripps Institute. And the Max Planck Society uses this to establish a sort of showcase of how science is done within the Max Planck Society, to make it more attractive for American scientists to come to Germany. I also would like to add there is no German tax money involved in this whole enterprise.

Thanks a lot for the talk, Bert Sakmann.

(Interview: Ingolf Baur)