How do we get to be the way we are? Is our behavior largely determined by our environment and how we grew up? Or do we mostly inherit our tendencies from our parents? Philosophers and parents have wrestled with these questions for thousands of years. In the last few decades we’ve actually gotten some scientific evidence on these issues and that has prompted a rethink of what we thought we knew.
Mark Reimers is an associate professor in the neuroscience program at Michigan State University where he integrates statistical analysis with neuroscience theory in order to interpret the very large data sets now being generated in neuroscience, especially from the technologies developed by the BRAIN initiative. He graduated from the University of Toronto and the University of British Columbia and previously held appointments at the National Institutes of Health, Karolinska Institute in Sweden, and Virginia Commonwealth University.