Authors: Rudolph E. Tanzi
The good news is that in most cases of Alzheimer’s, one’s lifestyle can potentially trump one’s genetic predisposition for the disease. A similar genetic picture presents itself in most of the common age-related disorders, like heart disease, stroke, and diabetes. Can certain behaviors indicate a pattern in brain activity that could be treated early on? Some autism researchers are asking this question about infants who do not yet show signs of the disorder but who may be holding their heads up in a certain way that is a precursor to autism. One of the biggest advances in brain research has gone unnoticed by the general public. It is the turn from the synapse to the network. For decades neuroscience focused its main effort on how the single synapse, the communication junction between two neurons, actually works. The research work was grueling and meticulous. Imagine trying to stop lightning as its flashes through the sky, only on a scale millions of times smaller. The important breakthroughs, which came slowly, involved freezing brain tissue to extract the messenger molecules that became known as neurotransmitters. Studies of two of them, serotonin and dopamine, provided huge progress in treating disorders ranging from depression to Parkinson’s disease.
But studying the synapse didn’t carry us far enough. There are many different kinds of depression, for example, each with its own
chemical signature. But broad-spectrum antidepressants were not effective in pinpointing each type, because in patient A the range of symptoms are likely not the same as in patient B, even though both fall into the constellation of sadness, helplessness, fatigue, sleep irregularity, lost appetite, and so on. Depression forms its own unique neural network from person to person.
That is why a systems approach arose, looking at bigger patterns of networks that extend far beyond the synapse. In your house, examining one fuse in the breaker box isn’t all that different from looking at the entire wiring scheme. That’s not so in your brain. Neural networks are alive, dynamic, and interrelated in such a way that a change in one piece of the wiring will reverberate throughout the whole nervous system.
As abstract as that sounds, the network approach opens a phenomenal number of doorways. We confront the brain as a fluid process, not a thing. Since thinking and feeling are also fluid processes, it’s like watching two mirror universes. (The unconscious mind can even be seen as parallel to the “dark” matter and energy that mysteriously control events in the visible cosmos.) In this wide picture, your neurons behave in sync with everything that is happening to you, and even your genes participate. Far from sitting in frozen silence at the heart of each cell, your genes are switched on and off, changing their chemical output, according to all kinds of events in your life. Behavior shapes biology. Using that watchword, research has shown that positive lifestyle changes in diet, exercise, stress management, and meditation affect four hundred to five hundred genes—and probably many more.
What can you do to prevent or stave off the onset of Alzheimer’s? Follow the lifestyle trend that is working elsewhere for so many disorders. For starters, exercise. A close colleague, Sam Sisodia, showed that in animal models (mice given the human Alzheimer’s gene mutations), providing running wheels for exercise at night dramatically reduced brain pathology. Exercise actually promoted gene
activity that lowered beta-amyloid levels in the brain. Epidemiology studies also have confirmed that moderate exercise (three times per week for one hour) can lower risk for Alzheimer’s. One clinical trial indicated that sixty minutes of robust exercise twice a week was able to slow progression of the disease once it began.
The second key is diet. The rule of thumb is that if what you eat is good for your heart, it’s good for your brain. A Mediterranean diet rich in virgin olive oil, as well as moderate amounts of red wine and even dark chocolate, has been associated with lower risk for Alzheimer’s. An even simpler preventive is to eat less. In animal models, caloric restriction increases longevity and reduces brain pathology. (More recently, virgin coconut oil has been proposed to treat and prevent the disease. However, more data is needed to assess this claim.)
You are achieving the third means of prevention as you read this book. It is intellectual stimulation, which stimulates new synapses in the brain. Every new synapse you make strengthens those you already have. Like money in the bank, making more synapses means you won’t be so easily depleted before getting Alzheimer’s. While Alzheimer’s affects people with the full spectrum of education from high school dropout to Ph.D., some studies suggest that higher levels of education can be protective. Perhaps more important than intellectual stimulation is social engagement. Being more socially interactive has been associated with lower risk, while loneliness has been documented as a risk factor for getting the disease.
It would be tremendous if Alzheimer’s could make the same turnaround that has occurred in cancer. A decade ago cancer treatment was almost entirely focused on early detection followed by drugs, radiation, and surgery. The Centers for Disease Control estimated in 2012 that two-thirds of cancers are preventable through a proactive lifestyle, avoiding obesity, and not smoking. Other cancer centers raise that estimate to between 90 percent and 95 percent.
The signs of progress on all fronts—chemical, genetic, behavioral,
and lifestyle—are encouraging. But they alone wouldn’t have led me to write about super brain. In my field you can thrive by being a superb technician, carving out your scientific niche in the detailed analysis of very narrow aspects of a disease. You can make it pretty far in science by ceasing to speculate and obeying the dictum to “shut up and calculate.” Hard science is proud of its status in society, but I have also witnessed firsthand that this pride can extend to arrogance when it comes to considering the contributions of metaphysics and philosophy to developing scientific theories. This broad dismissal of anything that cannot be measured and reduced to data strikes me as incredibly narrow-minded. How can it make sense to dismiss the mind, however invisible and elusive it may be, when science is entirely a mental project? The greatest scientific discoveries of the future often begin as pipe dreams of the past.
Super brain represents the efforts of two serious investigators, both coming from medicine, to see as far into the mind-brain connection as possible. It’s a bold step for a “hard” brain researcher to take the position that “consciousness comes first,” but the evolution of my thinking has gradually led me there—as it has led eminent figures like Wilder Penfield and Sir John Eccles before me. In my view, neuroscientists cannot afford to ignore the interface with consciousness, because by arguing that “the brain must come first,” they could be guilty of protecting their turf rather than acting like real scientists in pursuit of the truth, wherever the trail may lead.
The truth about consciousness has to involve more than electrons bouncing off electrons inside the brain. I went into Alzheimer’s research to solve a difficult physiological puzzle, but just as important was the stirring of compassion I felt, especially after I watched my own grandmother succumb to this terrible disease. When Alzheimer’s strikes, the sufferers and their loved ones feel completely betrayed. Even the early stages are frightening. The earliest signs are “mild cognitive impairment,” which sounds fairly harmless. Once it arrives, however, the human effect is hardly mild as a patient begins
to have trouble keeping track of everyday activities and is no longer able to multitask. As words become harder to find, the patient will also have increasing difficulty speaking and writing.
Worse than this, however, is the sense of doom that sets in. There is no turning back once the process begins. Old memories vanish, and new ones cannot be formed. Eventually the sufferer becomes unaware that he has the disease, but by then the job of full-time caretaker has been passed on, mostly to the immediate family. It’s estimated that 15 million unpaid caregivers are involved right now. This terrible thief of minds creates suffering all around it.
Compassion affects anyone who witnesses this epidemic firsthand, but we can strive to convert pity and doom into a different perspective. Why not take the reality of Alzheimer’s as a spur to use our brains the best way possible in the decades before we grow old? Alzheimer’s kills the dream that old age will be a fulfilling time of life. Before winning the victory of curing the disease, each of us can win another victory, by using our brains for fulfillment, even from childhood. That’s the vision of super brain, the part of this book that means the most to me.
As a species, we should take time every day to be thankful for this amazing organ buzzing away in our heads. Your brain not only transmits the world to you but essentially creates that world. If you can master your brain, you can master your reality. Once the mind unleashes its profound power, the result will be greater awareness, a healthier body, a happier disposition, and unlimited personal growth. New discoveries will continue to astonish us regarding the brain’s ability to regenerate and rewire its circuitry. That rewiring is physical, but it happens in response to mental intentions. We must never forget that the true seat of human existence is in the mind, to which the brain bows like the most devoted and intimate of servants.
DEEPAK’S EPILOGUE
BEYOND BOUNDARIES
T
he full impact of super brain probably won’t be realized for decades. We started out asking you to create a new relationship to the brain, mastering its wondrous intricacy. The best user of the brain is also an inspiring leader. We hope you have come closer to fulfilling that role. If so, you are the wave of the future. You will be making the next leap in the human brain’s evolution.
Neuroscience is still reveling in its golden age, infatuated with matching areas of brain activity to specific behaviors. That’s been a productive project, but it is running into contradictions, as it must when you try to reduce the mind to a physical mechanism. Human beings are not puppets being operated by the brain. Neuroscientists can’t make up their mind about that, however. The latest research on drug addiction, for example, has become very specific about the damage done to opiate receptor sites by cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamines. This damage is considered permanent, and it leads to greater cravings for bigger doses. At a certain point, every drug addict stops getting high and maintains his self-destructive habit simply to feel normal.
This picture offers strong evidence that addiction is a cruel example of the drug using the addict, instead of the other way around. Some experts, citing the research, claim that addiction is all but impossible to break; the toxic chemicals exert an iron grip. And yet people do get over addictions. They confront their ravaged brains and manage to impose their own will. “I can kick this thing” is a cry that often fails but sometimes succeeds. It’s a cry from the mind, not
from the brain. It expresses choice and free will. Because choice and free will are unpopular among neuroscientists, we’ve worked hard in this book to restore them.
Our second goal has been to make higher consciousness believable. I welcomed the chance to work with a brilliant researcher because it’s clear that modern people are not going to accept enlightenment without facts to back it up. The facts are there, in abundance. The brain will follow wherever the mind leads, even to the domain of God. Of all the messages sent by the brain, the subtlest ones, which are all but silent, hint at the divine. Millions of people don’t heed these messages because silence gets overlooked in the rush and noise of daily life. But the whole ethos of science also makes it difficult to believe that God—an invisible being who leaves no traces in the physical world—might be real.
We take for granted lots of things that would not seem real if you measured them by visible physical evidence, starting with music and mathematics and ending with love and compassion. After writing this book, I realized that God isn’t a luxury or an add-on to everyday existence. Beyond organized religion, which many are abandoning, people need consciousness to have a source.
If it didn’t, we’d be in the position of Lois Lane, in a funny moment from the first
Superman
movie from 1978. Lois has been thrown off the top of a skyscraper and is plummeting to earth. Clark Kent, seeing her fall, jumps into a phone booth to change into his Superman costume for the first time. He soars up and catches Lois, saying, “Don’t worry, miss, I’ve got you.” Lois’s eyes widen with fright. “But who’s got
you
?” she cries.
The same question pertains to consciousness. It needs something or someone to uphold it, and that someone is the infinite consciousness we traditionally call God. If there were no God, he’d have to be invented. Why? Consider the argument that we’ve described as “the brain comes first.” If consciousness arose from chemical interactions in the brain, as this argument contends, there is no need for God.
Atoms and molecules can take care of the business of mind on their own.
But we have argued that it is impossible for the brain to create consciousness. No one has come close to showing the magical transformation that allows salt, glucose, potassium, and water to learn to think. Modern society finds it primitive that our remote ancestors worshipped the spirits that inhabited trees, mountains, idols, and totems—a practice known as animism. Our ancestors were ascribing mind to physical objects. But isn’t neuroscience guilty of animism when it claims that the chemicals in the brain are thinking? The reverse is far more plausible. Consciousness—the invisible agency of the mind—created the brain and has been using it ever since the first living organisms began to sense the world. As consciousness evolved, it modified the brain to its purposes, because the brain is only the physical representation of mind.
Turning the tables on neuroscience in this way seems shocking at first. But it gives God a new lease on life (not that he was ever dead). For a moment, rid yourself of any mental picture you have of God. Instead, imagine a mind with the same qualities as yours. It can think and create. It enjoys new possibilities; it can love, and the main thing it loves is being alive. This is the mind of God. What makes such a mind controversial is that it isn’t localized. It expands beyond all boundaries. It operates in all dimensions without regard for past, present, or future. Every spiritual tradition has conceived of just such a God. However, this conception has deteriorated over time. Now we call God a matter of faith rather than a fact of Nature.