Vol. 2, Special Issue
Second, we would like to tell you a little bit about how information already in hand has improved diagnoses, facilitated new treatments, and in some cases is leading to a hope of cures, in situations that were previously hopeless, of major diseases that affect the nervous system.
Third, we hope to send you away with a renewed energy and desire to participate in neuroscience. Either spread the word, increase your interest in the brain or actually lend your own energies, minds and thoughts to our effort.
Our effort in public outreach, communicating with you, really has been stimulated by David Mahoney and Hillie Mahoney, and it has become an important part of the Institute and of Harvard Medical School. There is an obligation in these days of increasing complexity of biomedical science to talk to the public and try to help them understand difficult life-important subjects.
This is a dark time in neuroscience. There is a funding shortage. There are certainly public misconceptions of the goals and the practice of medicine. So, we really need to reach out and communicate with people on a much better level than we have in the past. That is our main goal.
Today we have three dialogues. Each dialogue will be presented by an individual focused on a clinical or social aspect of a disorder and then another individual focused on the basic science aspect.
When I say basic science, I use that advisedly. It's basic only in the sense that it is done in a laboratory. But it is very close, closer than ever before, to clinical applicability; the two approaches are blending. The laboratory bench is closer to the hospital bed than it ever has been in the past. Certainly that is true in neuroscience.
It is a truism but I hope you all leave here with a sense of the spectacular rate of increase of knowledge that clinicians can now bring to bear on psychiatric and neurologic disorders. I am not going to take much time, but I do want to introduce the object of our study to you. That is the human brain.
It is a small organ sitting in the cranium, weighing about three pounds. But is has almost an uncountable number of cells--more cells than there are stars in our galaxy. It is this complexity that modern neuroscience has addressed. It is our faith that by understanding the components of this organ, we will understand the secrets of sensation, of movement and everything in-between--mood, thought, creativity, loves, fears and anger. And we are close to new insights regarding neurologic diseases.
Our belief is that many psychiatric and neurologic diseases represent disorders in the way these nerve cells communicate with one another--either because they are degenerating or because there is some abnormality in the way they send impulses from one cell to another.
How do they communicate? Branches extending from each one of these cells reach out and contact other nerve cells at special junctions called synapses, which in Greek means "to clasp." There are thousands of synapses for each nerve cell. They are specialized; they make very powerful chemicals and they store them at high concentration within the synapses. When released from one cell, the chemicals either excite or inhibit the next cell in line. When the proper signal comes, either from the outside world of from a thought or emotion, spheres within the nerve cell near the synapse open on the surface and release the chemicals into the space between the nerve cells. The chemical transmitters affect other cells in line, by binding to molecules called receptors. And these cells, sooner or later, via other cells in the circuit, lead to an output or behavior.
(above right) Nerve cells make powerful transmitter chemicals and store them at high concentration within the synapses.
Cocaine. Probably one of the most addicting drugs in our armamentarium, affects the metabolism of a chemical transmitter called dopamine.
Prozac. One of the most important new drugs in treating depression, affects another chemical transmitter called serotonin.
Many people believe that one of the early signs of memory loss and neuron degeneration with aging and in Alzheimer's disease is due to the deficit of another chemical neurotransmitter, called acetylcholine.
We are going to focus on this basic level in today's symposium. *