It was distressing to read last week about a careful scientific meta-analysis of more than 1800 studies of the nature of, and the origins of “Gulf War Syndrome”. That study showed, with statistical surety, that the cause of this affliction that has substantially, permanently degraded the lives of about 175,000 former men and women who served with honor in our military services in the first Iraq war was…………..US.

Yes, WE did it. With the best of intentions, of course. First, we injected our troops to ‘protect’ them against gas attacks that never really materialized. Then we sprayed the ground they rode and walked across and bivouacked on so that no Iraqi bug could harm them. Sure enough, no one died from poison gas exposure in that first Iraq invasion—for two reasons (no gas; but if there was any…). And like about 500,000 young Iraqi men, those Mesopotamian insects were also brought down to earth, and could did very little damage to our troops.

Unfortunately, the ‘cures’ were, almost without question, harder on our service men & women than the potential hazards they were designed to block; the nearly 200 thousand affected soldiers who we did our best to protect from harm now have losses in health and mental capacities acquired at a young age that they shall carry with them to the end of their lives. Aches, pains, reduced mental abilities, now and forever, Amen.

Which raises a question in this observer’s mind: Who’s to blame? What medical authority made these errors of calculation on benefits vs risks? What ignorant medical research command authorities fostered the use of these ‘remedies’ without assuring that their safety was established? And if those authorities WEREN’T certain about their safety, how could the military and VA health apparatus be so insensitive about the recognition of this self-inflicted wounding? Why on earth would it invest so much actual and psychic energy in denying its very existence?

Almost two decades later, this citizen is still waiting for an ax to fall. And he is still waiting to hear how the very heavily financed military medical apparatus is working to reform itself, so that this kind of large-scale self-mutilation can, once and for all, come to an end.

In the July-August issue of the Atlantic Monthly, Nicolas Carr asks us the interesting question: “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” The article appeared at an interesting time for me, because I had been invited to deliver a lecture at Google about 2 weeks before its publication, and I had already asked Google employees the same question. My way of phrasing it: “There is absolutely no question that modern search engines and cross-referenced websites have powerfully enabled research and communication efficiencies. There is also absolutely no question that our brains are engaged less directly and more shallowly in the synthesis of information, when we use research strategies that are all about “efficiency”, “secondary (and out-of-context) referencing”, and “once over, lightly”.”

We know that brains grow and elaborate and strengthen when they are CHALLENGED, and that they change little when solutions are easy to come by. We know that brains differentially strengthen specific heavily-exercised processes. The hippocampus of a trained London taxi driver, we know as an example, is highly developed, relatively to a typical London citizen. What do you suppose happens to that hippocampus when we mount a GPS unit in the taxi, or in the typical London citizen’s vehicle? ‘Tis not a pretty picture, brain-wise!

When culture drives changes in the ways that we engage our brains, it creates DIFFERENT brains. Mr. Carr records a beautiful statement from the psychologist Maryanne Wolf (a reading expert from Tufts University) that sums it all up: “We are not only what we read. We are how we read.” For “we”, you can substitute “our brains”, because they’re (You and Your-Brain are) synonymous.

“Hey, wait a minute”, you holler. “Aren’t Google and the Internet a tremendous POSITIVE advance, for incredibly richly supporting our personal education and research?”

Yes, pal, they are. Personally, it is difficult imaging living without them, or without modern technology in general. But at the same time, THEIR HEAVY USE HAS NEUROLOGICAL CONSEQUENCES. No one yet knows exactly what those consequences are.

I spent the last 3 days in Oslo, attending the 80th birthday party (a scientific “festschrift”) of an esteemed scientist and friend, Kirsten Osen. It’s a long trip from San Francisco to Oslo, and back—about 15 hours in transit each way. The scientific agenda for this meeting, focusing on the primary research interests of Professor Osen (the anatomical and functional organization of the auditory brainstem) was not terribly interesting to me. Why, then, make the effort?

Kirsten Osen is one of the most capable scientists and one of the finest individuals that I have met in life. Because she established much of how we think about the basic anatomy of this complicated brain system, her research has been widely cited and has had a major influence on progress in this field. Kirsten is also distinguished in her own country for another important achievement: She was the first female professor in the history of Norwegian medical schools. Can you believe that no female had been appointed to the rank of professor in the history of the country of Norway until early in the second half of the 20th Century!? Can you guess how much smarter she must have been than the average male Norwegian professor?!

You’re right.

Unlike many individuals who succeed in these kind of hostile circumstances, Dr. Osen remained kindly by nature, approachable, naturally collaborative and instinctly sympathetic—while at the same time spirited, and formidable in argument—in fact, richly endowed with the essential qualities of a great scientist, scholar and teacher.

I had the privilege of spending 5 weeks in Oslo as a young scientist working with Dr. Osen. I went there for an overt and covert reason. The overt reason was to spend a few weeks examining a one-of-a-kind collection of whale brains that had been acquired by a great Oslo University anatomist (Kirsten Osen’s mentor), Jan Jansen. After his retirement, Kirsten assumed responsibility for this important collection. The covert reason was to provide an excuse for taking our family and my beloved, widowed mother-in-law back to the country of her (and my wife and childrens’) ancestors.

There was a great surprise for me in Oslo, and I didn’t find it in the whale-brain collection. That collection was unique and interesting, but the SURPRISE was Professor Kirsten Osen. Full of life and understanding and intelligent insight, strong in opinion but a good listener, with sharply held and defended convictions, but fiercely logical in argument… I LEARNED from her. She was SPECIAL. How COULD I miss her 80th birthday party.

Impossible.

A final story:

Professor Jansen had collected whale brain specimens by accompanying the Norwegian whaling fleet to the Antarctic, and from a whaling station in the Sogne Fjord on the West Coast of Norway. His tour-de-force was the removal of a half dozen 7 kilogram brains from 6 adult (50-70 ton) fin whales at that whaling station. Unless you have seen the massive head and skull of these great animals, it is difficult to understand what a truly remarkable physical achievement this was.

Jansen was with the whaling fleet on the last year that the Norwegians hunted cetaceans in the great Southern Ocean, in 1935. On this final expedition, he collected many valuable specimens, including a newborn sperm whale that was about 20’ in length. Jansen worked hard to preserve (pickle) these specimens on board the whaler, so that he could bring them back intact and in good condition to Oslo. Upon his return, he constructed a large metal tank about 25 x 15 x 5 feet in the basement of the Anatomy Department at the Medical School, put his “treasures” with preservatives into this tank, and sealed the large metal lid on this large vat with a heavy layer of beeswax.

One of my reasons for coming to Oslo was to help Kirsten retrieve that baby sperm whale from this great vat so that its hearing apparatus and brain could be examined in detail. You may not know that the sperm whale is probably the most remarkable hearing animal on our planet, and that almost nothing is known about either the great sound antennae in its massive head, or about what must be a truly remarkable hearing brain. Kirsten seemed to be even more excited about the other exotic specimens that she knew Jansen has stored in this large container.

Since these specimens had been sealed up in this tank, World War II had come and gone (Professor Jansen was a leader of the Norwegian resistance to the Nazis), and eventful decades had contributed to Norway’s evolution toward becoming (as it is today) one of the most advanced and prosperous countries in the world. With the wax seal laboriously removed, we knew that 47 years earlier wonderful things had been stored in this great vault. Opening it was a little like opening a newly-discovered Egyptian tomb, wondering what gold and other treasures might be found therein. Opening and raising the heavy metal tank lid was no small feat. After a long struggle, one corner was lifted up just a little…………………………………..

Imagine that you just walked through a door into a tightly sealed room in which a herd of animals had died two or three years earlier. Imagine a smell that you could believe might strip paint off the walls. Imagine an odor that instantly rolls your stomach and chills your bones. This piercing, still-remembered odor was the first indication that perhaps this treasure hunt would NOT result in finding treasures or gold. In fact, we soon discovered that the vat was filled with a thick liquid rather like a heavy fish soup. No part of any animal or brain larger than a marble was to be found. It was terribly disappointing, for sure. But with the companionship of my wonderful fellow explorer, it was a grand adventure, all the same.

I don’t know just how they removed this devil’s brew (“The Revenge of the Whales”?) from the basement of the Anatomy building. The metal vat would have had to be dis-assembled in place. I dearly hope that whoever was assigned this ghastly job received bonus pay, to compensate for the long time that it would take for them to forget that dreadful smell.

Just a week or so before pigs flew, we released our Mac version of the Brain Fitness Program. We apologize for taking so very long with this. You might be happy to know that our second program, InSight, is now being produced for the Mac, and by the time you complete the Brain Fitness Program it should be almost ready for you to begin improving that other (visual) half of your brain.

The loyalty of Mac users is fantastic. You cannot imagine how many of you had a Mac Attack over our writing the Brain Fitness Program for exclusive use on a PC! We are happy to say that as a company, we’re finally moving toward platform-equality.

Thank you for your patience!

We have earlier discussed factors that our research has indicated may have contributed to the increased incidence of Autistic Spectrum Disorders. Whatever factors are contributing to the growing incidence must have three qualities:

1) They must be increasing in human environments.
2) They must be widely distributed on the planet.
3) They must be (collectively) powerful in their impacts.

One striking aspects of the described increase in autism incidence is the continued strong co-inheritance of autism by identical twins. Environmental factors that increase the level of pathology to convert children who would not earlier be identified as autistic to kids who now meet the autism diagnostic criteria must be very reliably shared (at least almost always, by both twins) in their local environment.

I have earlier argued that the probable basis of autism is the inheritance of genetic faults potentially exacerbated by environmental factors that add to processing “noise” in the developing brain. Several hundred genetic faults affecting the maturation of inhibitory or excitatory processes in the brain, or affecting processes crucial to the brain’s experience-driven maturation could be expected to contribute additively to “brain noise” genesis.

As noted earlier, we have studied three environmental factors that meet the above three criteria:

1) acoustic, visual and other environmental “noise”

2) chemical toxins, with a non-coplanar PCB studied as a ‘placeholder’ for PCB and related PBDEs, which are still collectively increasing in quantity, in the environment (the literature also documents a variety of other chemical toxin candidates)

3) repeated ultrasound procedures

I would like to add (discuss) two more possible factors to this list.

4) SSRIs (selective serotonin receptor uptake inhibitors) = anti-depressants, commonly prescribed to pregnant mothers and/or nursing (as well as other commonly-prescribed psychoactive drugs); and

5) perinatal anoxia

The discussion of SSRIs is complicated, and because we (led by a collaborating scientist from the University of Mississippi, Dr. Rick Lin) are preparing a research report on this subject, I am going to hold it back when I can discuss it in more detail in a later blog. One important consideration: These drugs are used to help mothers in very important ways that contribute POSITIVELY to stable pregnancies and to successful infant nursing and rearing. Any potentially negative impacts that they may have on their infants must be weighed against these important counter-balancing positive factors.

Which brings us to perinatal anoxia. We have published compelling evidence that peri-natal anoxia meets all of the other criteria for adding to “noisy” brain processing. It can have strong, selective impacts on cortical inhibitory processes, and degrades the ability of the cortex to develop normally-selective characteristics of response (see Strata, Merzenich et al, PNAS, 2005). At the same time, we had dismissed perinatal anoxia as a likely factor contributing to autism’s apparent rise because we could not see how ITS incidence could be growing over the past several decades.

However, it has recently been argued that the especially high susceptibility of the highly metabolically active auditory brainstem to brief periods of anoxia that we and others have documented comes into play in the few to many tens of seconds of oxygen starvation that can stem from very rapid umbilical cord clamping— practices for which have changed (more rapid clamping has been adopted) over the past several decades.

It is difficult for an outsider to evaluate this controversial literature, but in exploring it, I was struck by how primitive and incomplete this scientific subdiscipline is. One might imagine that we have a thorough understanding of the risks and advantages of simple variations in birthing. That is not the case. One might even imagine that natural birthing might provide a pretty good model of the “ideal”, but as in many aspects of medicine, science teaches us (evidently) that “we can do better”.

All WE know is that a few (and especially, many) tens of seconds of oxygen deprivation can almost certainly be expected to specifically compromise the anoxia-hypersensitive auditory neuroaxis, and that this will increase brain “noise” in a system that we know expresses signature deficits for autism (language development). Which clearly makes this a subject worthy of more serious, more sophisticated and more complete study.
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I usually don’t read Time , but my wife has a subscription and I happened to notice and read a cover story in a recent issue discussing the profligate prescription of drugs (especially, anti-depressants) to active-duty soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. I was not surprised by the story, for two reasons.

First, as you probably know from reading earlier blog entries, a large number of soldiers who are serving in Iraq suffer from neurological and psychiatric disorders, with their numbers increased by repeated tours of duty in the war zone. Their doctors have argued that many of them should not be re-deployed, but manpower is short and decisions about service have been taken out of the hands of doctors and given to commanders. Moreover, many of these wounded individuals feel obligated to return to the war in support of their comrades and their mission, and would argue that their return to Iraq or Afghanistan should be THEIR decision (not their doctors’), in any event. So they go back, in large numbers, even when, from the perspective of their brain health, they often should not.

Second, I have attended several meetings sponsored by agencies in the Department of Defense discussing scientific issues related to the welfare of American troops, or the training of American military personnel. My participation stems in part from a membership in the National Academy of Sciences, and in part from my record as a scientist concerned about brain fitness and performance training. One of our duties as members of the National Academy is to advise the Congress and governmental agencies (including the Department of Defense) on issues of science related to the public weal.

Contractors supported by the Department of Defense participate in these meetings, and on several occasions have formally described (and privately talked about) the pharmacological strategies that are being developed and applied to increase the alertness and overall effectiveness of our active duty personnel. Their arguments can become surreal, as they consider a soldier or marine or sailor or airman in terms of their military effectiveness as an instrument of war –- and not as the very human, precious, fragile, complex, citizen-soldiers (with a lifetime ahead of them) that, at the same time, they certainly are. There is no denying that being bright-eyed, on-the-ball, and continuously “amped” can justify (in the soldier’s and their commanders’ eyes) anti-depressant meds and more than a little amphetamine and other stimulants in the fact of constant threats to life and limb for the individual soldier, and for their unit.

I would bet a lot of money that the average soldier in the war zone abhors athletes who take “performance-enhancing drugs”, even while many of them eat them like candy, as a routine aspect of their military service. Is it “good” for them? Are they being well served, by their employers (you and me), in their generous service to our country? Are we increasing the probability that they’ll have difficulties in returning back to American society?

The very least we can do it to provide them with all necessary medical help and assistance, when their military service is ended. Alas, we’re not yet doing a great job at that, either. Wake up, America. These are your sons and daughters. They’ve earned our respect…..and, damnit, they deserve our full attention and assistance when they are finally able to come back home, to come down from their “high” to live with us again.

Joseph Biederman is probably THE leading advocate for more aggressive diagnoses and more aggressive medical treatments of children with severe neuro-behavioral problems. If you track the research history of this prominent Harvard scientist and his Massachusetts General Hospital colleagues, it documents the development of a new diagnosis of the misbehaving, out-of-control child as “bipolar”, and ultimately identifies a number of anti-psychotic and anti-depressant drugs that, initially used off-label, can effectively ameliorate its expressions.

As we have noted in an earlier blog, the medical diagnosis of bipolar disorder, rare 15 years ago, is now commonplace. There are now more children under 6 being given brain-busting drugs to treat this disorder then there were children of all ages being given them 15 years ago. For children of all ages, the incidence of this “illness” has increased more than 40-fold. Drug companies like Johnson and Johnson, Eli Lilly and Pfizer had almost no business targeting this malady 15 years ago; in 2006, these children represented a $5 or 6 or 7 BILLION market for them; almost every prescription made for these children was for a drug that was actually only approved for adult use, i.e., this great new-found profit was achieved by the off-label (non-FDA-approved) distribution of these drugs to minor children.

“Off-label” use applies for drugs approved for other purposes that have not been carried through an FDA trial to demonstrate efficacy in an identified patient population. How did child psychiatrists determine what drugs might help these children, if their usefulness was not determined by gold-standard, FDA-standard trials? This is an arena in which medical school-based researchers like Dr. Biederman and his colleagues can really play a key role. For kids with severe emotional problems,this team does not appear to have tested a drug that they did not really like. Risperidone, olanzapine, aripiprazole, atomoxetine, bupropion, divalproex, ziprasidone, et alia. They ALL worked. In real life, add an anti-psychotic drug to an anti-depressant and an anti-ADD drug with an anti-convulsant and anti-anxiety meds and maybe a drug or two to slow down the weight gain from the anti-psychotic and to offset the side-effects that emerge from the anti-convulsant…

Think I’m exaggerating? This is EXACTLY the kind of drug stew that I recently discovered was being given to a young 14-year-old girl that my family has known for years. 5 powerful drugs (anti-psychotic, anti-depressant, anti-anxiety, anti-ADD, anti-convulsant, plus 2 to treat side effects). Her malady: Difficulty over a several month long period in completing her homework; ultimately, great difficulty and reluctance about going to school.

Such a treatment, in such a child, is just plain nuts. The brains of hundreds of thousands of children out there are now being given powerful drug cocktails like these. It’s a beautiful thing, for almost everyone concerned: child psychiatrists have busy clinics; drug companies have healthier bottom lines; hyperactive out-of-control children are brought under control, iand hypoactive children wake up, in large numbers, and their parents are certainly happier for that; and this industry has prospects for still greater (perhaps even accelerated!) growth. As for the child and her/his (their) brain(s), and its(their) future(s)……..

It is interesting to discover, as was reported in the New York Times earlier this month, that Dr. Biederman and his Harvard colleagues have been given more than $4 million in consulting fees from the drug companies that support their research, over the period of time in which they published many reports elaborating how to find one of these children under almost every rock, and once identified, essentially promoting the off-label use of these drugs to help them. They did not tell their University about most of these fees. I can assure the reader of this blog that his Department members have also not been paying very much toward the costs of their retreats, departmental parties or dinners, for fees to host and entertain their guests and friends, or for really nice “working” holidays that seem to become available to them every so often. You might also be assured that my experience as a University professor tells me that bringing in many millions of dollars in grant research to their University has not exactly hurt Dr. Biederman’s university-delivered prestige, compensation or benefits.

Is this eminent scientist unduly influenced by taking these fees? Are American children paying an undue price for his promotion of this diagnosis and these treatment strategies? Should his University take a hard look at whether or not attaching their good name to this class of academic activity is really something they should be doing? Should they call him on the carpet? Should lawyers include him, his colleagues, and his University in the inevitable class-action lawsuit that shall arise from the untoward downstream consequences of feeding all these children all these off-label drugs in all of these complicated combinations?

Let me close this blog for telling a short story. When I co-founded Scientific Learning Corporation, I served as the President & CEO (with my university’s knowledge and permission) for a period of about 18 months. About a year into this process, we initiated an executive search for a Vice President for Marketing. One of our co-founders suggested that we contact someone that she knew who was a Vice President for Marketing for a drug company (one of those companies that supported Dr. Biederman), who she knew was not terribly happy with her job (because of its enormous pressures). I was surprised when this young executive expressed a genuine interest in our little company and in moving to San Francisco, and said that she could visit us to discuss it over a following week, because she had business appointments at my university (the University of California at San Francisco). The plan was to meet at my home for dinner, just after her meetings with UCSF scientists.

She arrived in a state of high excitement and enthusiasm. She explained that her group normally wrote the scientific papers for scientists who conducted studies of her company’s drugs (just as they prepared all of the materials for their contractors describing the outcomes of those studies for scientific meetings and presentations), but that this UCSF group had altered the Discussion section of a manuscript that her team had written by adding an offensive paragraph. It said that a) Her company’s drug was effective; but b) that it was no more effective than a generic drug that costs a few $$ (her company’s drug would be sold for more than $1500). She had come to San Francisco to get the UCSF scientists to delete this paragraph.

Her ebullience stemmed from the fact that she had achieved her goal. I do not know what incentives (if any) she may have offered to achieve this end. She implied that it was in this UCSF team’s best interests to agree with her.

I don’t know if this very clever young woman ever understood why her story abruptly ended all consideration and discussion with her about joining our little San Francisco company.

I was surprised to read about neuroscience and the brain considered from a particularly intelligent general perspective in the politician Al Gore’s recently published The Assault on Reason (now a Penguin soft-cover). I recommend this book for its perspective about the relationship between “reason” and “marketing” — as “truth” hangs in the balance — in contemporary American culture. Be forewarned that the book takes a political stance, and if you’re a Rightie, might lead to apoplexy.

At the same time, there are many aspects of the neurology of persuasion — and the obvious ways that it is being used to manipulate human individuals and societies — that Mr. Gore compellingly discusses. “Gee whiz”, you may be saying. “There’s nothing new about manipulating individuals or your tribe by propagandizing or scaring or haranguing them. That’s called ‘leadership’. That’s as old as human civilization!”

In fact, there are at least five things about this contemporary form of the age-old exploitation of these very human neurological weaknesses that are new, and that, collectively, slowly feed my own concern about application of recent advances in the neuroscience of persuasion.

First, we now UNDERSTAND the processes by which the brain arrives at a conclusion, or identifies that conclusion as “truth”, in increasingly complete neurological terms.

Second, contemporary science HAS INFORMED US about how emotion trumps reason almost every time, and explains with increasing clarity how we can deliver the emotional messages in the appropriately powerful and repetitive forms in ways that virtually ASSURE their dominance over reason.

Third, we have an increasingly clear understanding of how to OPTIMIZE these neurological process of persuasion, to get people to believe (or do) pretty much what we want them to believe (or do), even when all sense and reason should be loudly telling them NOT to believe (or do).

Fourth, we now have vastly MORE EFFICIENT ways to dump biasing (belief-training) information into human brains. Our main strategy is called “television”. Television is not new, but the WAYS that it is being used is evolving, because the main goal of its purveyors are to tie you TO it like a slave, and they are getting better and better at it. Because their ability to glue you to their programs on your set is improving, viewer times continue to rise, and are at alarming levels. For Americans, more than 75% of all free time is now spent feeding at the TV trough. Astounding.

What “sells” on television? What keeps you glued to it for hours every day? What IS worthy of thousands of all of those thousands and thousands of hours of air time? “Very little that really matters for the average viewer, from the perspective of having a reasoned understanding or perspective about the great issues that impact your life, or our societies”, is the sad, real answer.

Fifth, changes IN THE WAYS THAT INFORMATION IS ACQUIRED by humans are resulting in less reliable and less consistent content acquisition relevant to operating as an informed member of society for the average American citizen. It is rather paradoxical that we’re in the “Information Age”, but by all indices, are less informed about things that matter re our governance than ever.

How can you explain the fact that the majority of American citizens question the validity or authority of science (by definition, our primary objective basis of reasoned conclusion), and willingly allow unsupported opinion or myth to trump it?

How else can you explain our passivity about governance that just flatly denies the fact of scientific conclusions – e.g., on global warming – supported by the best scientific authorities, of the highest integrity, in every advanced nation on earth including our own?

How else can you explain (to illustrate another painful example raised by Mr. Gore) the fact that at the time of invasion of Iraq, 70% of Americans believed that the Iraqis aided and abetted Al Quaeda (nearly half of Americans STILL do), even while you hardly had to be a reader at all to know that the secular Baathist Iraqis in Hussein’s camp, and the religious fundamentalist Osama bin Laden and his ilk in his camp were bitter enemies?

And (to cite one example among many) how can you explain why almost every American IS educated about the details of the husband, parents, diagnosis, treatment, brain images, court actions, threats to the American judiciary, and ultimate death of a brain-dead woman in the state of Florida?

The average citizen knows a great deal about a lot of things that have little import for American society, and knows very little about a great many things that are absolutely crucial for their individual and our societal health, advance, and survival.

It is not nice – and it is certainly not healthy for us — for the forces of commerce and politics to use contemporary neuroscience so crassly and effectively, to achieve these kinds of practical objectives. I noted in an earlier blog that our branch of neuroscience holds a key for strengthening and enriching us — but that it also has a dark side. History, and this science are informing us about our individual and societal vulnerabilities. As the scientific understanding of the manipulation of human thought and response grows, we have to define ways to CONTROL this powerful genie – who is already, alas, almost completely out of the bottle.

No blogs for a few days, because I have been attending a scientific meeting in Crete, and have now moved on to attend a second meeting in Jerusalem. The focus of the meeting in Crete was on the neurological processes contributing to normal and abnormal brain development. I am struck at meetings like this by how far science can drift into esoterica, and how effectively it can remove itself from any obvious practical sense or utility. The average citizen at a meeting like this – or even a scientist in this same discipline 30 years ago — would find the descriptions of this science to be utterly un-interpretable, because it operates on a plane of explanation and jargon and accumulated phenomology that floats about a mile above the physical, functional, blood-nourished, feeling, living brain. The average citizen paying the laboratory bills might also find it just a little bit alarming, as I did, that no one at this meeting of several hundred world experts really seemed very interested in practical extensions of their science that would HELP babies or children or adults in often-desperate need of it. In abstract after abstract and in talk after talk, I waited patiently for someone to say something like “We’re working very hard to try to figure out how to stop this bad shit from happening.” Or “With this understanding, we now see how we can use this approach to help treat this other problem that can ruin the lives of those other young children.” Or some such. I’ve personally found that individuals who study science almost entirely for its own (and their own) sake are not a particularly attractive social subclass of humankind. The jungle of developmental neurobiology (neuro-embryology) seems to be populated by more than its share of this kind of bird.

Speaking of science on Crete, many of you may not know that one of the first successful genetic engineering experiments was conducted at Knossos, a large palace and city in central Crete a few miles inland from the northern coast of the island. As I remember the scientific report, the angry queen of King Minos sought revenge on her husband because he rejected her by having her attendants produce a beeeeeauutiful garment made out of cowhide, to allure the Sacred Bull to mate with her. Which, being the temptress she was in this particularly cunning attire, He DID! One can only imagine.

In any event, you might have heard that the result of this genetic combination was a monster – a half man-half bull Minotaur who feasted on human flesh. Talk about genetic engineering going badly!! The more scientific meetings that I attend, the more convinced that I am that this is just one very early example of the many ways that genetic manipulation over the next millennium or two or three can have very undesirable outcomes! In future blogs, I’ll write about some of the ethical issues that are coming down on us from this scientific sub-discipline like a freight train, that relate to the brain and humanity, and that are going to plague us from this cultural era forward to the end of humans as we now know them.

I was at Scientific Learning yesterday, participating in the filming of a Canadian Broadcasting System-produced documentary, and during one break, had a brief discussion with Bob Bowen (the Scientific Learning President/CEO) about state achievement test scores in one Louisiana school district in which we’ve been tracking kid performance over time. Two years ago, the average kid in this district was about standard deviation below the state average, on their overall state achievement test ealuation. Not too good. Near the bottom, in the state. Two years later, after Fast ForWord training, the average kid has passed the normal median and children are still moving upward in performance, against the distribution of kids from all across the state. Gains weren’t limited to language and reading skills; ALL indices (including math scores) move up, sharply.

Think of these children, one at a time, breaking out from a life of limited prospect and achievement, increasingly full of it! It literally sends a chill down my spine. My only disappointment: We’ve only manage to engage about 1.2 million kids in these forms of brain plasticity-based training, up to this date. 30 or 40 or 50 times that many could benefit substantially from its use, in the U.S. alone. Let’s get going, America!