The human brain continuously sends and receives signals, processing these to control every aspect of our behaviour – from tasks such as breathing and walking to our ability to store and recall memories. Recently, using human stem cell-derived brain cells, my work has focussed on understanding how ‘normal’ human brain cells function. The next step in my research is to assess the extent to which the dysfunction that is observed in certain forms of neurological diseases can be rescued by either repairing the faulty gene that underlies the change in function or by drugs.