Neurology & The Brain

Dr. E. Fuller Torrey is a research psychiatrist specializing in schizophrenia and manic-depressive illness. He has authored many books on the subject of mental illness and is president of the Treatment Advocacy Center, as well as associate director for laboratory research at the Stanley Medical Research Institute.

Journalist Jack El-Hai is the author of The Lobotomist: A Maverick Medical Genius and His Tragic Quest to Rid the World of Mental Illness. El-Hai is the executive vice president of the American Society of Journalists and Authors and a winner of the June Roth Memorial Award for Medical Journalism.

Carley is the executive director of GRASP, The Global and Regional Asperger Syndrome Partnership. In 2000, he and his then 4-year-old son were diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome. GRASP works to educate the public about the disorder.

Volkmar is a leading researcher in Asperger's Syndrome, generally considered to be a form of autism characterized by deficits in social interaction and non-verbal communication. In the early 1990s, Volkmar led the team that helped develop the definition of autism used by the American Psychiatric Assoc. He is the Irving B. Harris Professor of Child Psychiatry, Pediatrics and Psychology at the Yale University Child Study Center.

He's the author of the new book, Mind Wide Open: Your Brain and the Neuroscience of Everyday Life. He writes the monthly "Emerging Technology" column for Discover and is contributing editor at Wired. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Nation, The New Yorker, Harper's, and The Guardian. Johnson is also the author of Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software, which was named as a finalist for the 2002 Helen Bernstein Award for Excellence in Journalism.

Health and Science writer Carl Zimmer's new book is Soul Made Flesh: The Discovery of the Brain-and How it Changed the World. It's about Thomas Willis, the scientist whose research on the workings of the brain during the 17th century became the basis of modern neurology. Zimmer's work appears regularly in The New York Times, National Geographic, Newsweek, Discover, Natural History, and Science. He is also a John S. Guggenheim Fellow and received the Pan-American Health Organization Award for Excellence in International Health Reporting.

Andrew Newberg, M.D. and Michael Baime, M.D. discuss God and the brain: tracking transcendence. Newberg conducted brain scans while people prayed and meditated to see if he could locate the brain function that caused the feeling of oneness and the presence of God. His book on the subject is called Why God Wont Go Away: Brain Science and the Biology of Belief, by Newberg, Eugene DAqulli M.D. and Vince Rause (Ballantine).

His new book is called Altered Egos: How the Brain Creates the Self. What is the self? and what is the relationship between the brain and selfhood? Feinberg uses the stories and interesting cases of his patients to try and answer these questions from a neurological and psychological standpoint. Feinberg claims that the way patients with brain damage or disorders like alien hand syndrome talk about themselves can tell us a lot about how the brain creates itself.

Hes professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School and Director of the Massachusetts General Hospitals Genetic and Aging Unit. In the early 80s, Tanzi worked on an experiment that made disease genes identifiable. Since then, Tanzi has been on the forefront of Alzheimer research. His new book is called Decoding Darkness: The Search for the Genetic Causes of Alzheimers Disease (Perseus Books).

Pediatrician Lawrence Diller specializes in child development and behavior. He's evaluated hundreds of patients for attention deficit disorder, for which the drug Ritalin has often been prescribed. His new book "Running on Ritalin: A Physician Reflects on Children, Society, and Performance in a Pill." (Bantam Books). After seeing more and more parents come into his practice asking for Ritalin for their children, Diller became concerned, and wrote an article in 1996 that started a national debate about the use of the drug.

Biologist Robert Sapolsky. He's one of the first researchers to chart the effects of chronic stress on the brain in the animal kingdom and in humans. He adds a touch of humor to his findings, as well. His new book is called "Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers: An Updated Guide to Stress, Stress-Related Diseases, and Coping." (W.H. Freeman and Co.) It's a revised version of his 1994 publication.

President and co-founder of The Long Island Alzheimer's Foundation, Janet Walsh. As a teenager, she watched her father suffer with Alzheimer's. Later, when genetic testing became available for Alzheimer's, she took it and discovered that she is at the highest risk for genetic predisposition to Alzheimer's. Walsh will talk about how she choses her conduct her life with this knowledge, and her efforts to make the lives of Alzheimer's patients better.

Gazzaniga is a pioneer in the study of brain-mind relations His new book "The Mind's Past" (University of California Press) is about how our brain and mind construct the past. Gazzaniga is a professor and Director of the Program in cognitive Neuroscience at Dartmouth College.

With his team of neurotrauma specialists, Dr. Ghajar worked to save the life of the young piano teacher who was severely beaten in Central Park this past June. He has pioneered national guidelines in hopes of establishing national standards for the care of brain trauma patients. Ghajar is the chief neurosurgeon at Jamaica Hospital in Queens as well as the President of the Aitken Neuroscience Institute in Manhattan.

Chicago Tribune science writer Ronald Kotulak talks with Terry about his new book "Inside the Brain: Revolutionary Discoveries of How the Mind Works." It is published by Andrews and McMeel. Kotulak has interviewed more than 300 of the leading researchers and reveals the latest theories on how the brain thinks. Kotulak received the Pulitzer Prize for two related newspaper series on brain research: "Unravelling the Mysteries of the Brain" and "Roots of Violence."

Professor of Psychology at Harvard, Daniel L. Schacter has studied memory for the past twenty years, the way the mind remembers. One chapter in his new book, "Searching for Memory: the brain, the mind, the past" is about the controversial issue of "repressed" memory.

In his new book, Thayer says moods are not just psychological in origin, but the direct result of biological conditions. The book explains the nature of moods and teaches ways to control them. Thayer is a bio-psychologist and Professor of Psychology at California State University, Long Beach.

Specialist in memory and language disorders, Dr. Barry Gordon. Gordon's book "Memory: Remembering and Forgetting in Everyday Life" (Mastermedia Ltd. The book can be ordered by calling 1-800-334-8232) looks at recognition, recall, memory blocks and the effects of drugs. The book also gives tips to increasing memory recall and dispels some common myths about the brain and memory. Gordon is a behavior neurologist, cognitive neuroscientist and experimental psychologist at Johns Hopkins University. (Interview by Marty Moss-Coane)

Clinical neurology professor and doctor Oliver Sacks is the author of six books about his patients, people with autism, Parkinson's Disease, Tourette's Syndrome, and other neurological disorders. Sacks was portrayed by Robin Williams in the 1991 film version of his book "Awakenings." His other books include "A Leg to Stand On," and "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat." His newest is "An Anthropologist On Mars: Seven Paradoxical Tales," which tells the stories of the disorders of seven of his subjects.