Posted by Cam W. on June 10, 2001, at 9:25:37
In reply to Cures for mental disorders, posted by John k on June 10, 2001, at 5:53:34
John - An analogy to the problem of treating mental disorders of the brain is like working on the engine of your 1952 Fargo, then some wants you to fix their new F1 McLaren (only the brain is more complicated still). We still have not got a grip on the brain's subtle wiring patterns, except in a very gross manner.
We are not sure how this wiring works and we cannot pick out faulty wiring unless it is grossly abnormal. We also aren't sure how individual systems of the brain act separately, much less in unison. These things are being teased out, but the (moral, ethical, humanistic) restrictions the researchers are saddled with do hinder progress. It would be great to take a person (or animal, for that manner) and unravel their living brain in an MRI-like machine and see what happens as you separate component parts; but this is highly unethical and inhumane. Groups like PETA, while having good intentions, also cause restrictions to be placed on brain research (I am not denouncing the groups intentions, but I am against many of their methods).
Using computer models of the brain is also not appropriate because we don't have all the facts and variables to insert in a computer. Even if we did, I doubt that we have a computer powerful enough to integrate these variables into a usable whole. I liken it to predicting the weather. If we had, or even knew of, all of the variables that combine to make the weather, forecasting would probably be much more predictable; the same thing applies to the brain.
Also, in research, there are papers published with faulty premises and even more have given us seeming answers, but have arrived at them using faulty techniques. There will come a day, perhaps not in our lifetimes, when researchers will finally separate the research paper wheat from the chaff, and someone else will correlate that data into an understandable whole.
I like a quote from (I believe) Emerson Pugh, who said, "If the brain were so simple that we could understand it, we would be so simple that we couldn't."
I really believe that we are doing the best we can, with the available technologies. I am facinated on with what we do know. There are a lot of clever guys out there working on this problem, but they have to learn to walk (in itself not an easy process) before we can run.
- Cam
poster:Cam W.
thread:6384
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20010526/msgs/6386.html