Overview

In THE MISSING MOMENT a distinguished molecular biologist explores the nature of time and argues for a radical rethinking of how time affects our sense of self, our mortality, and the future of science and medicine. Only in the past few years have we learned enough about the brain for this remarkable book to be written. We know now that our brains continually filter the present through memories and emotions of the past. In fact, strictly speaking, we live in the past: since it takes the brain a second to process perceptions, what we think is the present actually happened a second ago. We also know where and how the unconscious operates and how painful memories are repressed; repression is not a psychological defect but an evolutionary necessity for our species. All thought, even the most rational, is permeated with unconscious feelings, fears, and emotions. Scientists, like the rest of us, make choices for reasons they don't understand. Thus the direction of scientific research is driven by private demons, not public needs. We can see this in medical science, where doctors develop the tools to diagnose genetic diseases they cannot cure, bringing pain rather than comfort to patients. Today science can do more good than ever before, and it can also do more harm. The time has come for scientists and others to abandon the notion that there is any such thing as the disinterested pursuit of truth. Instead, they must strive for a therapeutic self-awareness of their unconscious agendas and work for larger goals than personal immortality.

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Marry Freud to brain circuity and use that linkage to indict modern biomedical science: this is the aim of Pollack, former Columbia College dean, now professor of biological sciences in this intense, provocative volume. <br>Pollack's assumption of a Freudian mode, complete with id, ego, superego, instincts, and childhood unconscious repressions is a surprise. Moreover, he uses neuroscience findings to shore up the connection. The missing moment of the title is the half second before a stimulus (say, an arm pinch) occurs and your perception of what happened. In that half-second, loops of neural circuity link sensation to memories, emotions, and layers of meaning, conscious and unconscious. In this way our perceptions and consciousness are grounded in synchronous excitations of neuron clusters orchestrated by a 40-cycle-per-second wave sweeping across the brain from front to back. Thus we forever live one half-second in the past. As for Freud, it's not his death instinct Pollack chooses but its opposite: the fear and denial of mortality. It's that unconscious motive that drives biomedical science today down roads Pollack sees as doomed to failure. The fear of invasion drives the quest for antibiotics to cure infectious disease: It will never work given natural selection and the abundance and mutability of microbes. The fear of death itself drives a quest for eternal life. As a result, we apply heroic measures and ultimately shun the dying, depriving them of even the most elemental palliative care. There are alternatives, he proposes, as long as we avoid the hubris of tampering with the germ line of future generations. <br>Interestingly, Pollack's often eloquently expressed thesis doesnot need or depend on Freud. What he has to say about infection, cancer, aging, and genome research carries a sufficient weight of scientific wisdom by itself to bear attending--on the art of policymakers, health professionals, and the public itself.

Marry Freud to brain circuity and use that linkage to indict modern biomedical science: this is the aim of Pollack, former Columbia College dean, now professor of biological sciences in this intense, provocative volume. <br>Pollack's assumption of a Freudian mode, complete with id, ego, superego, instincts, and childhood unconscious repressions is a surprise. Moreover, he uses neuroscience findings to shore up the connection. The missing moment of the title is the half second before a stimulus (say, an arm pinch) occurs and your perception of what happened. In that half-second, loops of neural circuity link sensation to memories, emotions, and layers of meaning, conscious and unconscious. In this way our perceptions and consciousness are grounded in synchronous excitations of neuron clusters orchestrated by a 40-cycle-per-second wave sweeping across the brain from front to back. Thus we forever live one half-second in the past. As for Freud, it's not his death instinct Pollack ch

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