So it may not be the Nobel winning breakthrough that changes the future of humanity but given the amount of noise surrounding it, there should be front pages shouting about it all over the world. But there aren’t. As I have said many times before, the most important stories are found on page 5. That’s where you find the signs that show you the way. And so, scientists have worked out how to ‘reprogramme’ skin cells into brain cells. Here’s the crunch. Previously this was thought only to be possible with stem cells harvested from embryos. Do you remember the political machinations about that? The protests of the pro-lifers? Suddenly a whole movement is quietened. Suddenly the morale dilemma is taken away. We can manufacture cerebral cortex cells from skin cells. This is a big deal. As Rick Livesey at Cambridge University’s Gurdon Institute says, “You don’t need to rebuild damage to recover function…however it may be possible to give it [the cerebral cortex] some extra real estate that it can use to do this.” Think about it, and then think about how you’re thinking about it. That’s like giving your computer a RAM upgrade.