"Making brain waves"

Date:
1985
Reference:
PP/CRI/I/2/20
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: "Making brain waves". Source: Wellcome Collection.

    1/2
    HE TIMES HIGHER EDUCATION SUPPLEMENT 26.7.8S lr ¿Xid h ge le Salk Institute in Southern id decided to think prop- few would be given the opportunity. But Francis Crick's solution to the ended a^30-ye- — «- California, fJow nearly 70, Crick still gives impression that being active in^sde he is well paid, has no specific duties, difficult to convey how nice it is working there. It sounds a far cry from working for the Medical Re search Council, whose reward for the classic solution of the structure of DNA which Crick achieved with James Watson in 1953 was the offer of But perhaps tlliere are other motives besides financial security and fun. It JonTurney meets Francis Crick of DNA and double helix fame who, now approaching 70, is alive and well and having lots of fun in California. the subject he helped found just after the war^- molecular^biolo^y;^not knows the t For a deeper motivation, go back to Crick's reentry into research after war service designing mines for the Admir alty. Although t rain ed as a physicist, him to two new areas - how genes worked, and the problem of conscious ness. Both seemed to offer a chance of removing the mystery from biology. He plumped for genes, then, but the other interest remained. And the Crick now wortcinglöh tftè15iSíñ is thè ward without reference to other belief systems; the Crick who resigned his founding fellowship of Churchill Col- Makin g brain waves .... :d by his de knowledge of molecular biology, has high standards on what c genuine contribution. A striking suc cess has to be something which the challenge. It would be nice to report i has really got things movir ~ L lately the key. A^htfwrote in Life Itself, a popular book about the origin of life: Thirty years of experience in molecular biology has taugnt one that plausibility is not enough. It will not do lust to put the nail on end and give it a little tap. It is essential to drive it To give a theory the degree of meaning. ^Bg this _ arriment,^ the what Crick regards as a properly scientific spirit which makes one be lieve the feeling he describes in Life ago you could go to a party in Cam bridge and talk to a perfectly intelli gent person who didn^ even know the sun was a star. That happens less across the thinking behind work in progress, especially work on the brain where we have many problems and few 'We just don't have detailed answers' On a more philosophical level, he establish that fualism is wrong, for example, it's not going to be done in a short time - there will be many tens of years of work. Even in molecular biology, the reductionist approach is not completely secure, though there is see^ow powerful it is to have genes producing proteins and proteins in- someone who was extremely sceptical solving problems of brain function., Arfificral intelligence research has been helpful, but chiefly in showing how complex faculties like vision are. And even if there are hints about how • to solve problems of vision for machines, tney do not look to Crick as though they are going to be the same ai the solutions which have evolved in nous opening: I have never seen Francis Crick in a modest mood. Nor is the reminiscent Crick the histor ical figure, who fills page after page of Judson's book with incisive quotes about the way it was - in the days òf the DNA discovery, or unravelling the genetic code, or piecing together the mechanism of protein synthesis. It is a Crick still deep in the business of Md which now 8 fiUs°his thoughts.' 6 And a remarkably complex field it is. The few pounds weight of grey system. And each neuron is linked to as many as ten thousand others, and tion of chemical and electrical signals. Although the system's speed of opera tion at the level of cellular messages is slow compared \ puters, its richm still makes a myriad of ta system is like. They know in principle but they don't know what sort of things you tend to get in biological systems. devices, and bits of gadgetry which are put together and all interact together in fancy ways. If this sounds akin to the picture of the cell built up in the 1960s, it could as well describe the Mdde^ces^^ooUh^de^ec^r^wSch Crick dreamed up in the^ war years. also coloured by the spectacular pro^- much^TOurobiotogy™' 1 pr °' inS ' — ining within the brain itself. This trick, christened the searchlight bjMhe psychologist ^Anne paper published last year: The sear chlight is not supposed to light up part of a completely dark landscape but, like a searchlight at dusk, it intensifies part of a scene that is already visible to Characteristically, Crick argues that this could be going on in the brain, e has suggested that what is of the properties of groups of is in the thalamus fits them to the searchlight - amplifying the And n small region; eurobiology, especially stu- levise tests S fS™an d d C lot equipped to do exp< 5alk by his own choice with Mitchison was ._ther mystery of the dreaming. A widely , paper in Nature two ago proposed that the function of uicam sleep is to rem™* — undesirable modes of in networks ofœlls in^the cereorai cor- This paper, which Crick now seems to regard as a bit of a sideline, his scientific style: there is a carefully constructed theoretical argument - there needs to be a way of activating spurious links between neurons, and less liicely to recur; the argument is works; it is elegantly expressed - we dream in order to forget, the authors write at one point. All it lacks is any way of testing the proposal rigorously j5£ shows why his style is often obsessed Miil Hill ^schoolboy who began work as a^physicist before the the intimate workings of the celf Along the way, he acquired a Nobel Eelix with which his name will always be linked, and a kind of celebrity. (He relates with a grin how he did not have ~ ibridge publi- frame in his garden i him the helical plant He has taught little, and nev< any large-seal u » himself aller* msuaHy^stable' couple of Cambridge has been an indulgent life, u reading and writing - and Cri< talk on a sparkling variety of sul But the indulgence has always underpinned by a fecundity of id n -i_ >, i illectual zest rarely matched in d. No doubt the luminosity of ems of biological gadgetry. But tEat seem reason to stop work altogether. As«»,» to describe nis role in neurobiology today, he laughs and recommends —'---ig others how they see him. My . s . .i... having a good >oint of vit