Elusive Cures
Why Neuroscience Hasn’t Solved Brain Disorders—and How We Can Change That
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- $30.99
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- $30.99
Publisher Description
A neuroscientist’s bold proposal for tackling one of the greatest challenges of our time—brain and mental illnesses
Brain research has been accelerating rapidly in recent decades, but the translation of our many discoveries into treatments and cures for brain disorders has not happened as many expected. We do not have cures for the vast majority of brain illnesses, from Alzheimer’s to depression, and many medications we do have to treat the brain are derived from drugs produced in the 1950s—before we knew much about the brain at all. Tackling brain disorders is clearly one of the biggest challenges facing humanity today. What will it take to overcome it? Nicole Rust takes readers along on her personal journey to answer this question.
Drawing on her decades of experience on the front lines of neuroscience research, Rust reflects on how far we have come in our quest to unlock the secrets of the brain and what remains to be discovered. She shows us that treating a brain disorder is more like redirecting a hurricane than fixing a domino chain of cause and effect, arguing that only once we embrace the idea of the brain as a complex system do we have any hope of finding cures. Rust profiles the pioneering ideas about the brain that are driving research at the cutting edge to illuminate exactly how much we know about disorders such as Parkinson’s, epilepsy, addiction, schizophrenia, and anxiety—and what it will take to eradicate these scourges.
Elusive Cures sheds light on one of the most daunting challenges ever confronted by science while offering hope for revolutionary new treatments and cures for the brain.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Rust, a University of Pennsylvania psychology professor, debuts with an ambitious study of the search for cures to Huntington's, Parkinson's, schizophrenia, depression, Alzheimer's, and ALS. Frustrated with the lack of progress in treating these and other neurological disorders, Rust argues that modern ideas about the brain fail to recognize that it's a complex adaptive system rather than a dominolike chain of cause and effect. In her telling, finding the offending domino and removing or changing it won't result in effective treatments. Elsewhere, she notes that science's lack of progress comes despite significant advances in genetics and medical technology; in her telling, clinical trials for treatments "failed for reasons we don't understand" and the "absence of leads to chase" led pharmaceutical companies to abandon the slow-moving search. Ultimately, she calls for a new "Grand Plan" for research, in which scientists would "stop dreaming of magic bullets and embrace complexity." Rust dives deep into the complex science involved, peppers the narrative with fascinating anecdotes (Ritalin was named for the wife of the chemist who first synthesized it), and finds insight in William Styron's 1989 memoir about depression. The result is a cogent and impassioned account.
