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NEUROSCIENTIST WRITES NOVEL ABOUT MUSIC AND THE MIND
Why I wrote 'Una Vida'
By Nicolas Bazan, M.D.
Unless you happen to be a neuroscientist like myself, I doubt you'd get too excited about my recent article, "A role for docosahexaenoic acid-derived neuroprotectin D1 in neural cell survival and Alzheimer disease." Scientific articles, especially in my field, are aimed at specialists and are based on painstaking micro-precision. Each step we take toward understanding the human brain must be tested and re-tested, proved and reproved if we are to truly make a lasting impact on creating healthier lives for the human beings we serve. Is the work emotionless? That's a good question, to which my answer is that we must remove emotion from our research and retain full objectivity.
The battle to conquer these diseases and conditions of the brain - such as Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, macular degeneration and so many others - is not a story of continual everyday successes. It is a slow journey through a complicated maze that is often fraught with setbacks and unexpected twists and turns. Experiments do not always yield the results anticipated, and scientists like me and my colleagues often find that we do not have the means available to solve the riddles of the mind and sight we so desperately seek to unravel.
But don't think for a moment that a neuroscientist's objectivity means he doesn't have personal thoughts and emotions about the lives that have been affected, and that have been lost by the diseases we study. The most poignant irony of all is that we can only study brain tissue when it is no longer part of a living, breathing human being with aspirations and dreams, failures and successes and hope and despair not unlike our own.
After years of those thoughts and emotions building up inside of me, I searched for a way to express what our work is really like in a way anyone could relate to. I decided to write a novel that gave me the greater liberty of expressing my own worries, motivations, doubts, aspirations, joys and reflections about the work we do on the always-expanding frontiers of neuroscience. My forthcoming novel, "Una Vida," mirrors many facets of my own personal and professional life, including why I strive to understand and combat the ravaging diseases and disorders that afflict the eyes and the brain.
Using jazz and the fascinating chaos of the city I love most, pre-Katrina New Orleans, as metaphors for the workings of the brain and the human mind, the novel reveals the joys and frustrations that seem to go hand in hand with neuroscience research. Yet, despite the many trials we face, despite the many uncertainties we encounter, each day that passes brings us closer to understanding, preventing and curing these debilitating diseases.
I realize how extraordinarily important this research is, not only to scientists, but to each and every individual in the global community. Every new bit of information we uncover adds one more piece to the puzzle, bringing the bigger picture into focus a little more and providing us not only with new knowledge, but also with renewed hope.
It is this hope that I wish to share with others through "Una Vida". It has allowed me to express my thoughts and emotions surrounding neuroscience research and the exploration of cellular elements and molecular switches that underlie the components of the mind and the eyes. To be able to impart these views to others and to provide them with the hope and optimism that the story of "Una Vida" ultimately presents, that task itself is equally as important and rewarding as the pursuit to understand, prevent and cure. Writing "Una Vida" created a channel, an outlet that, unlike technical journals, allows me to freely express my emotions and opinions to the people who have the greatest interest in our work.
One more thing the novel reveals is my ongoing belief that there is a greater force in the universe that is leading us to the final frontiers of self-knowledge, a force which makes itself known in coincidences, serendipity, dreams and the miracles we encounter all around us every day.
If you're not a fan of novels but are still interested in the labyrinth of the mind, you can always read my "Cell survival matters: docosahexaenoic acid signaling, neuroprotection and photoreceptors."
Dr. Bazan is head of Louisiana State University's Neuroscience Center of Excellence in New Orleans, where he is professor and director. Una Vida: A Fable of Music and the Mind will be published and launched by Five Star Publications in November 2008.
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