Editor's Note
Chipping Away at Mystery
The ancients used to drill holes to examine it. Phrenologists studied its bumps to figure it out. Psychiatrists before and after Freud have probed it with questioning and analysis. For centuries, man has struggled to find out what on earth is going on inside his own head.
As neuroanatomists traced pathways and mapped brain areas, it seemed as if it was all going to be a matter of electricity, and figuring it out was just a matter of drawing the right schematic. Indeed, some ailments and their neurological correlates seemed to follow electrical principles—cut a nerve and the muscle doesn’t work or the skin doesn’t feel, damage the anterior horn cells in polio and the innervated muscles don’t move. Yet no matter how precise the explanations of neuroscience, there was the “soft” stuff of consciousness, love, hate, and joy that defied a mechanistic explanation and left a lot of room for mystery and speculation. Now, gradually, neuroscience is chipping away at that mystery.
The main tools doing that chipping are imaging techniques that show not only the anatomical details of the brain but that also track its function. Structural and functional magnetic resonance imaging, diffusion tensor imaging, magnetic resonance spectroscopy, and magnetoencephalography have moved us beyond diagnosing strokes and tumors to identifying physiological characteristics of illnesses such as schizophrenia, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder, which previously were thought to be the business of psychiatrists. Using these techniques, we’re seeing areas of the brain light up when thoughts stray, anger flares, or music plays. They’re also enabling us to start to define the physiological underpinnings of Alzheimer’s disease and perhaps in the future will allow us to make the diagnosis before the symptoms are obvious.
At the root of it all, still, is electricity. The movement of sodium and potassium ions in neurons is well-studied, but the complexity of billions of neuronal connections in the brain and spinal cord beggar the intricacies of even the most sophisticated power grid or computer. Untangling that complexity will challenge neuroscience for decades to come.
The interface between the mysteries of human thought, emotion, and science has fueled a recent work of fiction. In his latest novel The Lost Symbol, uber- bestselling author Dan Brown portrays a beautiful (of course), brilliant (naturally) heroine, Katherine Solomon, who is pursuing startling discoveries in noetic science, a discipline that attempts to apply scientific inquiry to such concepts as consciousness. Bankrolled by her billionaire brother, Peter, Katherine conducts her experiments in a super-secret cubicle hidden in an obscure region of the Smithsonian Institute. Katherine and Peter’s nemesis is Mal’akh, a deranged Goliath of a man whose monomaniacal obsession is to acquire the secret pyramid of Masonic legend held by Peter, which is said to unlock ancient mysteries that will give its bearer untold powers. In addition, Mal’akh wants to destroy Katherine’s research, viewing the potential scientific revelations about human consciousness and emotion to be a threat to the ancient truths held by the Masonic pyramid.
The Lost Symbol is classic Dan Brown, pseudoscience mixed with frantic action. Yet the kernels of truth in it speak to the conflict between mystery and science. Recent strides in neuroscience suggest that the future holds less mystery and more science, and that insights into the eternal mysteries of love, hate, and joy may be only a scan away.
Charles R. Meyer, M.D., editor in chief, can be reached at cmeyer1@fairview.org