Fall 1995 Volume 4, Number 4
On becoming president of Harvard -- among the most decentralized of universities -- Neil Rudenstine announced that the university would address the fragmentation of knowledge and increasing difficulties of communication across disciplinary and departmental boundaries.
He set in motion five University-wide Interfaculty Initiatives, each centered on a significant area that could not truly be the province of any single school. These interdisciplinary initiatives were not to limit themselves to ivory tower scholarship, but would also venture into arenas that had implications for policy. Recognizing the rapidly expanding knowledge within the Neurosciences and its promise for human self-understanding, Rudenstine designated one of the five initiatives as Mind/Brain/Behavior (MBB).
MBB's founding faculty, representing nine of Harvard's Schools, conceived the mission of MBB to be a sustained and constructive dialogue between the perspectives of neuroscience and those of other natural sciences, the social sciences, and the humanities. They set three fundamental goals: to use the insights from such interdisciplinary discourse to educate both faculty and students in new paradigms by which to understand human experience and behavior; to foster collaborative research that would not be feasible within traditional disciplinary boundaries; and to contribute to better human self-understanding by taking seriously the study of the brain, in all of its ramifications.
One way the faculty approached their interdisciplinary tasks was to create working groups, each concerned with a specific content area. Each group identifies and develops strategies for exploring an important problem in human experience and behavior that no single discipline has been able to "own." Here is what some of these groups are doing:
Memory Working Group: Memory can be explored at neurobiological, psychological, and social levels. At each level, important interconnected questions may be asked: What mechanisms consolidate some memories and change others over time? Given that human memory does not function like a video recorder, but is, rather, constructed within the brain, it is subject to distortion; what do we know at the level of cells, synapses, and circuits that can illuminate this issue? At the social level, how do institutions, including the media, distort and also preserve societal memories of significant public events?
The working group, chaired by cognitive neuroscientist Daniel Schacter, held an interdisciplinary conference on Memory Distortion a year and a half ago, involving not only Harvard scientists and scholars but distinguished investigators from other universities and journalists. The memory working group is now preparing to do likewise on the issue of memory and imagination.
Drugs and Addictions Working Group: Powerful social forces contribute to the problem of drug addiction that currently tears at our society. However, it is our brains that make us vulnerable. Our brains contain the molecular targets that permit human beings to respond to cocaine or heroin, to experience these drugs as pleasurable -- in certain circumstances, as more salient than anything else in our lives -- and to become dependent upon these substances.
If we consider addiction simply an ethical issue, law enforcement issue, or symptom of poverty and hopelessness, we cannot understand it and think about remedies. An understanding of the effects of drugs on the brain, of individual psychology, and of social phenomena are all critical if we are to grapple effectively with the nature of addiction and its implications.
The drugs and addictions group currently consists of faculty from the Medical School, Law School, School of Public Health, and Kennedy School of Government. The goal of this group is to bring the voice of science to the table in the consideration of national drug policy.
Intergroup Violence Working Group: Chaired by the cognitive neuroscientist, Stephen Kosslyn, and including members from the Schools of Law and Arts & Sciences, the Divinity School, Kennedy School of Government, and the Medical School, this group is exploring the roots of violence between cohesive societal units. They are beginning by reviewing the literature and meeting with consultants to consider intergroup violence at the neural, cognitive, social and historical levels. The group plans a conference and several publications that will have policy implications and is considering possible experimental approaches to the problem. With America's nerves raw on intergroup relations, this group faces a major challenge to marshal the most rigorous scholarship and achieve unmistakable clarity in discussing it.
Experience of Illness Working Group: This working group, chaired by psychiatrist Arthur Barsky, is examining the personal experience of physical illness and the dimensions of medical suffering. They are drawing on many perspectives, among them ethics, psychology, economics, health policy, theology, history, law, sociology, anthropology. Specific topics under consideration include: terminal illness, the right to die, assisted suicide; and the boundaries between medical and non-medical suffering, including the problems of somatization (attributing every woe to the body) and the medicalization of misery.
In addition, the MBB faculty has initiated Mind/Brain/Behavior tracks for Harvard undergraduates majoring in biology (neuroscience), psychology, history of science, and computer science. The faculty believe that psychology majors, for example, should not go through Harvard without really studying the brain. Similarly, future neuroscientists should be encouraged to scrutinize their own philosophical commitments and consider the potential effects of their work on social policy. These efforts, spearheaded by neuroscientist John Dowling, cognitive neuroscientist Stephen Kosslyn, and historian of science Anne Harrington, may eventually lead to an undergraduate concentration as the program expands. Undergraduates have shown extraordinary interest in the program as it begins its first year, with more than 100 students signing up.
The MBB faculty is highly aware of potential pitfalls in such an ambitious interdisciplinary program -- especially, the strong inertial drag of disciplinary separateness and the dangers of superficiality when thinking outside of one's own home discipline. Nonetheless, the attempt is timely and important for our faculty and students alike. It is time to bring the brain to the center of our thinking about human experience and behavior.
Dr. Hyman is Director of the Mind/ Brain/Behavior Initiative at Harvard.