Well, I wouldn’t go that far. The brain is incredibly complicated, and frankly we are still very far from understanding much about how it works.
But this doesn’t mean we aren’t making incredible advancements. Discoveries are constantly being made in the background and are continuing to build up over time.
For example, a non-addictive pain medication was just approved by the FDA [0]. This will undoubtedly improve millions of lives and prevent uncountable numbers of people from misusing opiates in the future.
But it's listed for acute pain, don't opiates already work well for that use-case? My understanding is that the time-limited nature of them and lack of continued access makes dependence unlikely and that the holy grail is a solution for chronic pain.
But this doesn’t mean we aren’t making incredible advancements. Discoveries are constantly being made in the background and are continuing to build up over time.
For example, a non-addictive pain medication was just approved by the FDA [0]. This will undoubtedly improve millions of lives and prevent uncountable numbers of people from misusing opiates in the future.
[0] https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-appr...