I'm not sure why we tend to pay more attention to 100 of something than to 99 or 101, but we do. This is my 100th Brain Connection column, going back to the first issue, posted right after The Millennium in February 2000. My assignment was to develop non-technical explanations of educationally significant new developments in the cognitive neurosciences. It's been a stimulating challenge for me, and I hope that my columns stimulated readers' thoughts about the incredible period of scientific discovery that we're experiencing.

Much of this discovery occurred because advances in neuroimaging technology now provide access to living brain systems and functions that had previously been hidden from scientists. My February 2004 column, Brain Imaging Technology: Observing Our Brain at Work, provided a non-technical introduction to this amazing technology.

The first decade of the 21st century has certainly been significant in terms of advances in our understanding of our brain and its processes, and in proposals for appropriate educational applications. I reread all the columns prior to writing this, and believe that they provide an intriguing record of what occurred during the eight years. Two related columns seem especially prescient now. I wrote one immediately after the 9-11 terrorist attack How Our Brain Processes Terrorist Carnage, and the other on the day of the Iraq invasion, Emotion and Feelings in a Time of War.

All 99 columns are archived in case you want to glance through the sequence of titles: http://brainconnection.positscience.com/library/?main=talkhome/columnists