Description
An obsessive scientist and his eclectic team of researchers race to discover one of the hidden treasures of neuroscience-the physical makeup of memory-and in the process pursue a pharmaceutical wonder drug.
It’s not fiction: Gary Lynch is the real thing, the epitome of the rebel scientist-malnourished, contentious, inspiring, explosive, remarkably ambitious, consistently brilliant. He is one of the foremost figures of contemporary neuroscience, and his decades-long quest to understand the inner workings of the brain’s memory machine has begun to pay off.
Award-winning journalist Terry McDermott spent nearly two years observing Lynch at work and now gives us a fascinating and dramatic account of daily life in his lab-the highs and lows, the drudgery and eureka moments, the agonizing failures. He provides detailed, lucid explanations of the cutting-edge science that enabled Lynch to reveal the inner workings of the molecular machine that manufactures memory. And he explains where Lynch’s sights are now set: on drugs that could fix that machine when it breaks, drugs that would enhance brain function during the memory process and that hold out the possibility of cures for a wide range of neurological conditions, including Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. Here is an essential story of science, scientists, and scientific achievement-galvanizing in the telling and thrilling in its far-reaching implications.
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