21st Century Brain

Steven Rose

Steven
Rose is  worried.
He’s worried that neuroscientists are getting above themselves, that  brain
technology will get out of control,
and that sinister forces will try to  meddle with our minds. What will happen,
he asks, if we really do get effective smart drugs, mind-reading machines
and mood manipulators? "What will become of our self conception as human
beings with the freedom to shape our own lives? What new powers will accrue to
the state,  the military, the corporations?
"

The first half of
"21st Century Brain" is a clear, thorough and up to
date account of  current brain science. The second half
, though, is perilously close to a rant. Rose is vociferous critic of
evolutionary psychology
– the idea that human behaviour is biologically determined
-  and here he tries to convince us tthat our genes and neurochemistry have
far less influence than we have been led to believe.

To this end he minimises, ignores or
pooh-poohs  practically all the evidence for
biological causation in human affairs and opponents’ views are scorned or
simply dismissed. Rose also plays shamelessly on the “yuk”
factor.  Writing about ECT, for
example (under the sub-heading "Thought Control") he first reminds
readers of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" and then describes the
treatment as  "a blast of electricity . . .
inserting a large, clumsy spanner into the brain's machinery". Actually
modern ECT uses tiny pulses of carefully localised electricity and is nothing
like the horrible treatment immortalised in "Cuckoo's Nest".  He
also "cherry-picks" his  evidence.  He claims, for example, that  an (unreferenced) study showed Prozac worked in only
about 30% of cases.  No doubt one survey did, but Prozac has been
subjected to thousands of trials, and meta-analyses of them show it  benefits at
least twice that proportion..

Having rubbished the idea that we are products of our neurochemistry Rose then,
rather confusingly, tries to scare us silly about the risks of technology based
on that idea. Brainscan lie detectors, neural
"fingerprinting" and cognitive enhancers are, he says, largely snake
oil. Yet still they should make you very, very scared. There follows his vision
of a future with "an entire population drifting through life in a drug-induced
haze of contentment . . . with the neurotechnology to
erase such tremor of dissent that may remain added to the already formidable
existing armoury of state control".

This book will delight technophobes
and conspiracy theorists and (I would guess) exasperate many of Steven Rose's
colleagues. Rose’s own contributions to neuroscience are substantial, and
his work on Alzheimers disease may well help future researchers  find
a cure for that cruel and dignity-stripping condition. Such benefits are a much
more likely result of the  21st century neuroscientific revolution than state-sponsored mind
control, and it will be very sad if their advent is delayed by sensationalist
doom-mongering.