Why Should We Study the human brain

To know thyself:

• Your mind/brain is who you are; understand yourself!
• Many other fine organs, but the brain is special.
  • You would die without a heart, but your brain is your identity. That's why heart transplants, not brain transplants.
  • That's why the decade of the brain, not the pancreas or kidney or liver.

To understand the origins and limitations of human knowledge (empirical epistemology).

• (how) does the structure of our brain shape the structure of our thought?

To advance AI.

• For example, visual object recognition.
• Machines lagged far behind humans until the AlexNet paper was published in 2012.
• Still, AI has much to learn from the brain.

Because it is the greatest intellectual quest of all time.