Two large groups of scientists are still trying to unravel the mystery of the brain in both sides of the Atlantic

“The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.” — Albert Einstein

Medical scientists seem to have forgotten that science cannot be static; it has to change according to our understanding of man and the world. Time was when we used to teach and accept that the brain is a vital organ that runs the human body and a lot of work has gone into trying to understand the brain. There are two large groups of scientists who are still trying to unravel the mystery of the brain on both sides of the Atlantic. Hundreds of neuroscientists from all over the world have written open letters to the ‘Human Brain Project’ of the European Commission, which has a budget of $1.6 billion, pointing out that the project is overly narrow, ill-conceived and radically premature! Similar criticism has also been aimed at the Obama administration’s ‘Brain Initiative’. The American initiative is hi-tech as usual, using the latest opto-genetics, which allows analysis of individual neurons! Hi-tech has sadly come to be equated with better results.

The real problem is that we still do not know what a good theory of the brain would actually look like. Gary Marcus, professor of psychiatry at the New York University, who is engaged in writing a new book on the future of the brain, also feels that the kind of brain research that we are doing is like the search for the grand unified theory in physics. The old method of building scientific models, which has served to make life much easier with gadgets, communication and transport facilities, seems to have outlived its usefulness. Current brain research falls into that old paradigm.

There is, however, a new model known as biocentrism that takes human consciousness into account. In physics, new understanding of the implications of Werner Heisenberg’s famous uncertainty principle shook up the foundations of the classical model propounded by Newtonians. Similarly, once we are able to correctly account for human consciousness, we may no longer go after brain cells, or for that matter any other body cells, in isolation. The human body works as a whole. Fritz-Albert Popp elegantly showed, using his bio photon camera, how the brain cells respond even to an ointment applied on the dorsum of the hand, with complete synchronicity. According to him, one is healthy only when all the body cells dance in sync; when they are out of sync, one is ill!

Future research should concentrate on consciousness to understand the working of the brain and the human body, not spend billions of dollars to misunderstand the human as machine. Technology has been very profitable in healthcare and the interested parties would not want to abandon it easily. In fact, it is such reductionist (vivisectionist) researchers who get the Nobel Prize and all the grants.

There are some oases in this scientific desert where thinking people are questioning our dogmas. People like Karl Popper, Paul Feyerabend, Harry Miller and Trevor Pinch, among others, have questioned the existing scientific model; but the money involved in this model does influence many men in the world of science. Paper writing, awards, grant collection, fattening the CV and social status are more attractive than thinking. Now, studies on rats have been found to be seriously flawed, as the researcher’s consciousness and even his gender could change the results by as much as 40%. While one research cannot discount all others, it does raise questions about how modern science conducts its research. Let there be an international conference of thinkers in science to set the ball rolling for research in holistic science.

No one knows how our mind works, but it surely does not fit the present paradigm of the mind as a product of mere neurons and axons.

 “The brain is a wonderful organ; it starts working the moment you get up in the morning and does not stop until you get into the office.” — Robert Frost

Professor Dr BM Hegde, a Padma Bhushan awardee in 2010, is an MD, PhD, FRCP (London, Edinburgh, Glasgow & Dublin), FACC and FAMS.