by Parmjit Singh
This book is about our brain, its potential and the future possibilities as seen from the vantage point of information age, cutting edge science and their implications.
However, before we get into what lies ahead in brain sciences and its possible trajectory of advancement in the light of sophisticated instruments coming into being, courtesy information age, we need to ask some important questions about how the brain has been responding to this progress. What is the real cost of being in a technically advanced society or how the brain is coping up with high-speed information era? Is TV causing or at least contributing to ADHD? Is the latest gung-ho about the fMRIs and other sophisticated equipments affording peeps into fluid functioning of brain a real deal or is it just a rehash of old phrenology?
Dr. Richard Restak, a neurologist by profession, has put together this highly readable book. He abstains from unneeded jargon and falls back upon latest research to vouch for his understanding of ‘rewired brain’ as a psychiatrist. In the age of high-definition television and iPods, our brain is relentlessly under information overload. And this is driving us nuts, literally and metaphorically. We are expected to multi-task and perform all the tasks with robotic precision. Though we all are equipped to excel in anything we chose to do as “there are no special inherited qualities that distinguishes persons with expert abilities” (p17), yet our “overall performance on each of the tasks is going to be less efficient than if we performed one thing at a time” (p 59).
In spite of our natural limits, we are still expected to excel in the norms set forth by the society or our peers. Failure to reach those fantasticated goals leaves our brain to wrestle with unsavory consequences. Recall that our brain is highly plastic and any experience that courses through its synapses leaves its own imprint in the form of some short or long-term changes. Perhaps that is why despite all the richness in our society, there is a growing meaninglessness in people’s life.
Now let us put this into the context of being exposed to the barrage of high speed images —watching TV. Would that not change our brain? How would it affect an impressionable brain, especially of a tiny-tot glued to cartoons and camouflaged violence? If the brain plasticity is true, we can think of ADHD/ADD as a neural chaos caused by information overload because the “…personal dis-integration (of attention, added)” (p 41) is hastened by constantly shifting images where brain has to capture and process high-speed information in a limited time. This breakdown of attention is what constitutes the ADHD/ADD. Perhaps that is why being mindful can help us cope with attention deficit symptoms, chronic pain and even coming out of our depressive situations.
Pharmacology, nay, Cosmetic Pharmacology for treatment of mood disorders also figures prominently in this book. Though advances in medicine serves important purpose in treating disorders, yet Dr. Restak cautions that it is pertinent to keep in mind when we trespass from being humans to machines as “such advances brings about fundamental changes in our self-conception” (p147). If we allow the current direction of pharmacology proceed unbridled, we will be looking for medication for almost every mood swing and rob the humans from experiencing and handling natural ups and downs of life.
In simple language The New Brain is an excellent expose on what is happening to our brain under the modern pressures, how the latest advances in technology is raising the hopes of fashioning person-specific medication, thereby minimizing the side-effects of generic treatments and how it can heal or regenerate itself if given a chance. If you are looking for a stimulating treatment of these current issues with solid science and therapeutic experience, this book will keep you engaged. It makes an excellent read by providing scintillating synthesis of research in brain sciences and enumerating their possible implications in the coming decades for diagnosis and treatment of various brain disorders.
On a side note, the undertone of the book at some places seems to be tilting toward the opinion that advances in technology will afford us the holy-grail to treat various brain disorders. Though the author blunts this undertone in the end of this book by saying, “the changes in our brains brought about by technology will continue to provide us with the challenge of retaining our freedom and sense of identity while simultaneously utilizing soon-to-be-available techniques to vastly expand our mental horizons” (p 212), yet this divination may or may not come true as scientists are beginning to question the validity of such tests as fMRIs as they may be raising the shadow of old phrenology in the from of new neuroreductionism (Dobbs, D. (2005). Fact or phrenology? Scientific American Mind, 16 (1), 24-31); Uttal, W. R. (2001). The new phrenology. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press). And let us not forget that we know very little, say 3-4% about how the brain functions—and any thing is possible when we will charter those uncharted neural terrains.
The New Brain
Richard Restak, M.D
Paperback |240 pages
ISBN: 1-57954-501-7
Rodale Books
About the author: Richard Restak, M.D., clinical professor of neurology at George Washington University Medical Center is the author of Mozart's Brain and the Fighter Pilot and several companion books to PBS specials on the brain. An authority on brain research, he has appeared on Today, Good Morning America, All Things Considered, and the Discovery Channel.
