Top 15 Richard Bergland Quotes

Physicians and scientists will measure brain hormones—in ventricular fluid and elsewhere—will link these to specific diseases, and will devise space-age techniques to restock the mind's hormonal pantries. The only question is, 'When?'

The hormonal genies that have lived unnoticed in the brain since humankind began have escaped; there is no way that they can be put back.

Somehow the same nurses, physicians, administrators and legal ombudsmen who prevented the study of the ventricular fluid of a patient with senile dementia, or obesity, or depression, or schizophrenia, because of the risks, will encourage diagnostic tests and therapy for patients with epilepsy that are far more destructive and immutable than the measurement and manipulation of hormones in the ventricle.

Patients with uncontrolled epilepsy have an evaluation that usually begins with electrical studies of the surface of the brain. …A hole is drilled in the skull, and electrical measurements made from within the depths of the brain. A large flap of the skull is then lifted up, electrodes placed on the surface of the brain, and the flap sewn back into place so that more electrical studies can be done. The risks... are far greater than those associated with the ventricular taps needed for hormone studies. …If the team of doctors.. can help... areas of the brain that are sending 'bad' signals would be identified and removed... large portions of the brain might be taken away.

Despite the effectiveness of electroconvulsive therapy... it may cause long-lasting problems with short-term memory. …Yet despite the protests, the ability of cortisol studies to identify patients who will benefit from ECT guarantees that more patients will receive it.

During electroconvulsive therapy the blood-brain barrier is opened and during the time that it remains open there are heroically high levels of circulating pituitary hormones. Thus there is every reason to believe that... it delivers hormones to the brain...

Electroconvulsive therapy, or ECT, is the best therapy for unipolar depression that exists. ...they have found that the smile will return to the face of the patient on the very same day that cortisol dynamics return to normal.

Many endocrine diseases of the body entail the production of 'crooked molecules'—molecules that are made in the wrong way by the cell. It is fairly common for a cancer cell to begin the production of a 'crooked' hormone that evokes dramatic changes in other body functions.

Despite the evidence that ventricular hormones do not make their way out of the ventricle, the presence of large ventricles in many schizophrenic patients, and the ability of two-dimensional gels to provide a profile of peptides in the ventricle, not a single catheter has been placed into the ventricle of a schizophrenic patient to measure the peptides in the ventricle. ...There is no animal model for this disease, the answer can only come from human studies.

As it is possible that the memory loss of senile dementia may stem from a deficiency of 'memory peptide', obesity may result from a deficiency of either bombesin, somatostatin, cholecystokinen, gastrin, or insulin.

By placing… cell-containing soup in bullet-shaped cell cages formed out of permeable plastics, a single population of cells can be introduced into the brain. ...the hormones that are produced by the cells make their way... into the brain. ...'artificial glands' …with no fear of cell migration.

Already in animals, some gland-like cells have been transplanted from the adrenal gland into the brain, where they not only survive but continue their secretions.

Genetic engineers are powerless in all of this without some cooperative effort from people working in allied fields.

Animal experiments have confirmed the necessity of delivering hormones into the ventricle: the powerful hormone endorphin does not change behaviour if it is given intravenously; vasopressin will improve memory in animals only if it given into the ventricles; insulin given through the bloodstream does not control appetite but it is the best hormone for such control if given into the brain; and bombesin... only stops stomach ulceration if given into the brain.

Scientists have mastered the techniques of hormone analysis, measurement and manufacture. What is lacking is the correlation between a specific brain disease and a specific brain hormone. …these correlations can only come from a medical team of co-operating physicians.