More Neuroscience, Not Less

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/22/opinion/more-neuroscience-not-less.html

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To the Editor:

Re “There’s Such a Thing as Too Much Neuroscience,” by John C. Markowitz (Op-Ed, Oct. 15):

People suffering from severe mental disorders need and deserve more effective treatments, and this goal requires more neuroscience, not less.

Virtually all of today’s treatments are based on serendipitous discoveries made six decades ago. With focused neuroscience investment, this is beginning to change, and successful efforts to improve treatments will require even greater basic understanding.

Simply put, the challenge is the extraordinary complexity of the brain, which is composed of hundreds of billions of cells that form trillions of contacts. We still seek basic understanding of how those contacts form during development, change over a lifetime and go awry in psychiatric disorders.

The analogy to cancer is useful: In medical school 35 years ago, we learned about molecular strategies to cure cancer, but it has taken three decades of basic research to fully understand and leverage this knowledge, which is now guiding the first definitive treatments.

Conquering mental illness will take longer because of the brain’s greater complexity. Diverting limited research dollars away from basic neuroscience will not lead to more rapid treatments; it will have the opposite effect and slow the search for cures.

ERIC J. NESTLER

STEVEN E. HYMAN

New York

Dr. Nestler is dean for academic and scientific affairs and director of the Friedman Brain Institute at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Dr. Hyman is a past director of the National Institute of Mental Health.