| BUSINESSWEEK ONLINE : OCTOBER 25, 1999 ISSUE | ||||||||
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| BOOKS
One Thing the Brain Can't Fathom: The Brain THE UNDISCOVERED MIND How the Human Brain Defies Replication, Medication, and Explanation By John Horgan Free Press 325pp $25 Nearly 20 years ago, I interviewed more than a dozen scientists for a magazine cover story on the brain. It was--or so it seemed--a time of tremendous progress. Scientists were taking snapshots of the mind in action, pinpointing the regions involved in vision or language, and charting the neural pathways of perception and thought. They were identifying the specific chemicals that allow us to remember, finding key brain regions by studying people with damaged minds, and developing theories to explain the mystery of consciousness. Breakthrough treatments for ills such as schizophrenia and Alzheimer's disease seemed right around the corner. Every couple of years since, other magazines and newspapers have chimed in with their own similarly breathless stories about the amazing progress in brain research. But over the two decades, the most remarkable aspect is how little the stories have changed. Each has typically described the pictures of the mind in action, the same basic theories, the same scientists, and the same breakthroughs ''just around the corner.'' It's enough to make one jaded about neuroscience--and journalism. Now comes a refreshing break from this pattern of relentless boosterism. In his new book, The Undiscovered Mind, former Scientific American writer John Horgan argues that the secrets of the brain are still hidden from the human mind--and will remain that way for years to come. It is true, he writes, that researchers are probing our gray matter with ever more potent tools and are constantly finding new types of brain cells, signaling chemicals called neurotransmitters, and biochemical pathways. But ''neuroscience's progress is really a kind of antiprogress,'' Horgan proposes. ''Instead of finding a great unifying insight, [researchers] just keep uncovering more and more complexity.'' Indeed, he adds, as they ''learn more about the brain, it becomes increasingly difficult to imagine how all the disparate data can be organized into a cohesive, coherent whole.'' Consider what we've learned from brain injuries. In one famous case in 1848, an explosion rammed an iron bar through the head--and frontal lobes--of a railroad worker named Phineas Gage. Surprisingly, Gage seemed hardly hurt. But doctors and co-workers eventually noticed that his personality had radically changed, from thoughtful and responsible to profane and mean. So the damaged part of the Gage's frontal lobes must be the seat of moral reasoning, right? Well, for Gage perhaps, but not for everyone. A century and a half later, researchers now know that ''people who suffer identical forms of brain damage may exhibit completely different effects,'' reports Horgan. It may be reassuring to our sense of individuality that our brains can be so different, but it's hell on the forward march of neuroscience. Neither have researchers made much progress treating those with mental illness. Horgan takes us on a tour of the leading theories and therapies, from hoary Freudian psychoanalysis and newly resurgent electroshock to the latest behavioral-genetics findings and drugs. He makes a convincing case that all have serious limitations. Some recent studies have shown, for instance, that depressed and mentally ill patients do nearly as well taking placebos as they do with Prozac or other actual drugs. And when it comes to the big questions about the mind, such as the nature of consciousness, the existence of free will, or even the underlying causes of depression, modern science has been able to do little better than Freud. ''If psychoanalysis is an imperfect and unproven mode of mind-science...so are all its would-be successors,'' argues Horgan. For instance, attempts to find genes that are the root cause of low intelligence or schizophrenia have so far failed. A field called evolutionary psychology--the idea that we can understand the mind by studying evolution--hasn't progressed much further than such ''insights'' as that men are hard-wired to prefer women whose hips are broader than their waists (and who thus might be expected to bear them more children). Indeed, Horgan suggests, the competing theories and approaches to understanding the enigma of the mind are more like mutually exclusive religious sects than sober science. In his first book, The End of Science (1996), Horgan infuriated the mandarins of science by arguing that the major discoveries had already been made and that most everything that remains was either mere detail or unknowable. This time, he's less provocative--and somewhat less interesting. For one thing, the book lacks the sharply drawn profiles of scientists that helped Horgan's previous book stand out. More important, the thesis isn't so startling, since he finds plenty of researchers who share his broader doubts. ''We have no idea how our brains make us who we are,'' agrees New York University neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux at one point in the book. And Horgan is also more willing to say there's hope for progress, but he avoids discussing today's most promising advances--for instance, how the discovery of the genes and biochemical pathways that underlie diseases such as Alzheimer's or Huntington's chorea should ultimately lead to better therapies. Our brains may never fully understand the human mind, as Horgan argues, but eventually we should be able to fix a few of its pathologies. By JOHN CAREY _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ BACK TO TOP |
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