The Tell-Tale Brain: A Neuroscientist's Quest for What Makes Us Human

When I say I prefer Q-tips and mirrors to brain scanners and gene sequencers, I don’t mean to give you the impression that I eschew technology entirely. (Just think of doing biology without a microscope!) I may be a technophobe, but I’m no Luddite. My point is that science should be question driven, not methodology driven. When your department has spent millions of dollars on a state-of-the-art liquid-helium-cooled brain-imaging machine, you come under pressure to use it all the time. As the old saying goes, “When the only tool you have is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail.” But I have nothing against high-tech brain scanners (nor against hammers). Indeed, there is so much brain imaging going on these days that some significant discoveries are bound to be made, if only by accident. One could justifiably argue that the modern toolbox of state-of-the-art gizmos has a vital and indispensable place in research. And indeed, my low-tech-leaning colleagues and I often do take advantage of brain imaging, but only to test specific hypotheses. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, but we are always grateful to have the high technology available—if we feel the need.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

ALTHOUGH IT IS LARGELY A PERSONAL ODYSSEY, THIS BOOK RELIES heavily on the work of many of my colleagues who have revolutionized the field in ways we could not have even imagined even just a few years ago. I cannot overstate the extent to which I have benefited from reading their books. I will mention just a few of them here: Joe LeDoux, Oliver Sacks, Francis Crick, Richard Dawkins, Stephen Jay Gould, Dan Dennett, Pat Churchland, Gerry Edelman, Eric Kandel, Nick Humphrey, Tony Damasio, Marvin Minsky, Stanislas Dehaene. If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of these giants. Some of these books resulted from the foresight of two enlightened agents—John Brockman and Katinka Matson—who have created a new scientific literacy in America and the world beyond. They have successfully reignited the magic and awe of science in the age of Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, sound-bite news, and reality TV—an age when the hard-won values of the Enlightenment are sadly in decline.

Angela von der Lippe, my editor, suggested major reorganization of chapters and provided valuable feedback throughout every stage of revision. Her suggestions improved the clarity of presentation enormously.

Special thanks to four people who have had a direct influence on my scientific career: Richard Gregory, Francis Crick, John D. Pettigrew, and Oliver Sacks.

I would also like to thank the many people who either goaded me on to pursue medicine and science as a career or influenced my thinking over the years. As I intimated earlier, I would not be where I am were it not for my mother and father. When my father was convincing me to go into medicine, I received similar advice from Drs. Rama Mani and M. K. Mani. I have never once regretted letting them talk me into it. As I often tell my students, medicine gives you a certain breadth of vision while at the same time imparting an intensely pragmatic attitude. If your theory is right, your patient gets better. If your theory is wrong—no matter how elegant or convincing it may be—she gets worse or dies. There is no better test of whether you are on the right track or not. And this no-nonsense attitude then spills over into your research as well.

I also owe an intellectual debt to my brother V. S. Ravi, whose vast knowledge of English and Telugu literature (especially Shakespeare and Thyagaraja) is unsurpassed. When I had just entered medical school (premed), he would often read me passages from Shakespeare and Omar Khayyam’s Rubaiyat, which had a deep impact on my mental development. I remember hearing him quote Macbeth’s famous “sound and fury” soliloquy and thinking, “Wow, that pretty much says it all.” It impressed on me the importance of economy of expression, whether in literature or in science.

I thank Matthew Blakeslee, who did a superb job in helping edit the book. Over fifteen years ago, as my student, he also assisted me in constructing the very first crude but effective prototype of the “mirror box” which inspired the subsequent construction of elegant, ivory-inlaid mahogany ones at Oxford (and which are now available commercially, although I have no personal financial stake in them). Various drug companies and philanthropic organizations have distributed thousands of such boxes to war veterans from Iraq and amputees in Haiti.