Brain Power

By Pamela Ferdinand | December 5, 2004 for the Boston Globe

As scientists move closer to understanding how the brain thinks, they’re making strides toward finding what causes schizophrenia and other mental illnesses. Charles, a 55-year-old with schizophrenia, sits motionless and alone in the vaultlike chamber of a Charlestown laboratory. He leans back on a low-slung chair, and the white maw of an imaging machine swallows his head like a dryer in an old-fashioned hair salon – only this one contains more than 300 sensors bathed in liquid helium. Wires run down his neck from holes in a baby-blue cap where electrodes are pasted to his scalp and temples. He listens to a series of clicks, and, as his brain responds, red squiggles appear on a computer screen in an adjacent room. Read the entire article >