I hear so much in psychology about the nature/nurture 'debate', and to anyone with half a brain it's obviously both of them.

But, I was wondering (naively thinking of a 24/7 MRI scanner fitted around one's head), if we could ever record someone's brain activity for their whole life or at least most of their development, and then find out what caused what and which experiences stunt this and which experiences cause that etc. etc.

The brain is so complicated to study, I figure it would only be possible to pinpoint its development through this type of development. You can't just cut up a brain and get all the answers, because you have no idea how it developed. If you could constantly monitor a brain's development, say in an animal to avoid ethical concerns, and correlate each growth with events in the animal's life, then you could figure out so much more about how the brain works.

It sounds very sci-fi; you'd have to have little invisible drones or something buzzing around its head, but mankind has approved that stranger things are possible.