“The brain must be used according to its intended purpose”

As part of the Self-Education Online program, Den continues a good and extremely topical tradition of staying in contact with academics. Every new meeting, lecture, or debate not only broadens a reader’s or a live TV program viewer’s intellectual horizons, but also makes it quite clear (a bird’s eye view of sorts) how little Ukrainian society knows today about national science and scientists who are, incidentally, well known and quoted in the global academe. The more we come to know about our science, the more we understand that we do have something to offer and to be proud of. This really inspires optimism. Recently, as part of our project, the editorial office played host to Professor Oleh Kryshtal, biophysicist, director of the Bohomolets Institute of Physiology, full member of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. The academic, who has a number of publications in the prestigious scientific journal Nature, has cemented a friendship with many Nobel Prize winners and is one of the initiators of Ukraine’s first key laboratory. We spoke with Prof. Kryshtal about the brain – the basic, highly complex, most perfect and, at the same time, most mysterious, instrument of every human being, – as well as about when the problems of pain, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases will be solved, when there will be Nobel laureates in Ukraine, and why the US sets aside 100 million dollars for brain research.

The academician says that human destiny directly depends on the extent to which an individual will be observing “intellectual hygiene” and training their mind. Den’s guest notes that our brain has an unlimited potential and what really matters here is a strong motivation to expand it. Incidentally, Self-Education Online is also an important component of a “balanced intellectual menu.” The Day presents the most interesting fragments of the conversation with Oleh KRYSHTAL.

Larysa IVSHYNA: “We would like you to tell our readers how to ‘use their brains,’ whether there are some rules for intellectual improvement, and whether intellect helps or hinders in life. Please forgive us if there will be not only academic questions. The newspaper Den likes clever people and tries to strengthen the positions of intellect in Ukrainian society, but, naturally, it is not so easy to do this. So we expect you to give us strong support.”

Oleh KRYSHTAL: “Ms. Ivshyna, well before you invited me, I had already had the good words I am going to say to you in response. Every time I leaf through the newspaper Den I think: ‘Ukraine is not yet dead.’”

L.I.: “Thank you. This makes it incumbent upon us.”

Maria SEMENCHENKO: “An aphorism says that everybody has a brain but far from everybody has read the instruction manual. This is a joke, but there is a grain of truth in it. So we would like to know more about this ‘manual’: what should each of us know about the brain?”

O.K.: “Each of us receives, at the moment of birth, such an absolutely unique ‘device’ as brain. It is the most sophisticated structure in the entire Universe that humankind knows. There is no other more sophisticated and perfect device. Accordingly, there are no manuals that could suit everybody. The only thing one must remember about the brain is that it should be trained – as much as an athlete bulks up his muscles. At the same time, this organ has, in comparison to all the other ones, a qualitatively greater potential for self-improvement. So the only instruction is to train the brain. It is of special importance for parents, for the happiness of every individual depends on what potential and motivation he or she has to train their brain.”

L.I.: “And how can one ‘bulk up’ the brain?”

O.K.: “One must use it according to its intended purpose. And what this purpose consists in is a personal question that arises in every human, depending on the conditions in which he or she came into the world and began to develop.”

A NATION CANNOT LIVE A FULL-BLOODED LIFE UNLESS IT HAS A CERTAIN PYRAMID OF EXPERT KNOWLEDGE

L.I.: “Our meeting today [April 3, 2013. – Ed.] symbolically coincides with an event on another continent: US President Barack Obama has requested Congress to support brain research programs. We are even ahead, for we planned this interview well before (laughs). What about Ukrainian scientists: have they made any progress in studying the brain phenomenon over the past few decades?”

O.K.: “If you take, so to speak, a bird’s eye view of Ukrainian neurophysiology, the main pearl is – I dare say it – the Institute of Physiology in which I work.

“Our institute has been the leading center in electrophysiology in the past few decades. We study such an aspect of brain activity as generation of electric signals. If you look at the world’s map east of the German border, you will see that we are Eurasia’s main experts in this field. We captured this position in the mid-1970s and are making every effort to hold it on. In spite of being underfunded, we manage to do so. We spoke today about the US president’s message. It is not a simple message, for it is about 100 million dollars.”

L.I.: “In other words, it is a call to all the other sponsor organizations to attract sponsors to research programs. As there are a lot of people who like putting on shows, we seize this opportunity to request them to fund the Institute of Physiology and get down to studying the brain. This may help us in the long term.”

When a child opens his or her eyes, he or she can see a world of culture, a world with a computer. He or she may not be smarter than the kids of the past. You can object: but where is our Leonardo da Vinci? And you will be right. But it was in the good olden times, when an apple fell on the head of Newton and he understood why it did so. This may be a historical joke, but there is only one law of gravitation – no other one will be discovered.

O.K: “There is an opinion that Ukraine is a poor country – so does it really need to research such thing as brain? More often than not, these questions are put not rhetorically at all. But we cannot sit with our arms folded because the future of a nation depends on how educated it is. It would be stupid to give up our positions after so many long and painful years of waiting for independence. We must have true science as well as a professional army of our own. A nation cannot live a full-blooded life unless it has a pyramid of expert knowledge. This is why nations, even small European countries, attach great importance to science.”

L.I.: “Would you tell us more in detail about the pyramid of knowledge?”

O.K.: “This means that Ukraine ought to have international-level scientists in all the main sectors of fundamental sciences. You can see whether they reach the world level by opening the Internet and finding the citation index of every academic, that is, the number of references to his or her publications. We should have at least a small but genuine scientific community that functions on the international level.

“Why did Obama show such a bit of generosity? I would say that the strategically most important goal of the world science is to get to know how the brain works and how intellect emerges there and to learn – in the future – how the brain can become conscious. What is consciousness – the thing that distinguishes us from the surrounding world – is so far a closely-guarded secret.

“In addition to the fundamental problem, there also are strategic problems. Humankind has begun to create anthropogenic culture which considerably lengthened life expectancy. Life expectancy used to be an average 20-30 years over hundreds of thousands of years, but now it is over 70 in the developed countries and at least 65 in Ukraine. The evolution did not care much for people to live to be 100 years old, although they can potentially live longer. However, as a result of a longer life expectancy, the diseases that once were extremely rare and left intact by the evolution became socially critical. Science must overcome them to enable humankind to further develop on a full-fledged scale in the given – anthropogenic – direction. I mean such ailments as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and some other diseases. Alzheimer’s disease was just a nuisance 100 years ago, but now millions of elderly people suffer from it. Some forecasts say that from 2050 onwards a half of the Americans will be down with Alzheimer’s disease, and the other half will be tending them. This is why the US president does not stint on money, for these problems determine the future of humankind.”

L.I.: “What are the priorities of your institute, what does the research focus on?”

O.K.: “There are a few subjects in which we feel ourselves as part of the world scientific community. There are no spiritual or informational borders for scientists. Our priority is research into pain, the problems of epilepsy, strokes, and their consequences. We also deal with the fundamental problems of the mechanisms of teaching and memory.”

M.S.: “What are the new gains in studying the problem of pain, which is very topical in Ukraine now? Is there a hope that there will be new, more effective, means to relieve pain, which will ease the life of many in the next few years?”

O.K.: “Speaking of the humankind’s hope about Alzheimer’s disease, tens of billions of dollars are being spent in the world on the solution of this problem, but it still remains. Yet I am absolutely convinced that this disease will be curable.

“As for pain, it is an emotion that occurs in the brain but begins as a specific excitement of some sensory cells. They are located near each pair of vertebrae as a pair of ganglia. These ganglia contain nerve cells whose appendages pervade the entire body. An appendage also goes to the spinal cord. The information on the excitement of sensory neurons runs through special ‘cables’ to the brain’s higher parts and becomes an emotion there. But pain begins on the periphery. Why did evolution give us pain and is not going to take it away? For pain is very useful. It informs about a likely or real danger. The trouble is that pain still remains after performing its informational function. This is what we should try to eliminate.

“As for pain killers, there are two varieties of them: anti-inflammatory non-steroid medicines, the first of which was aspirin, and opioids which are used to soothe an acute pain. Opioids have a good, albeit a short-time, effect. They must not be taken for more than a month, for they will lose their effect and even intensify pain.

“We are trying to find a new generation of medicines that will preliminarily affect peripheral receptors. We are looking for them in wildlife. We cooperate in this field with Russian scientists (Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry) who have an immense collection of biological poison. Each element of this poison has its recipient, its target (usually on the membrane of nerve cells), and they take a fast effect. The year before last we discovered the first peptide which fits one of the pain receptors as a key would fit the lock. We are pondering now on what to do with it further on.”

L.I.: “Do you have any research programs with some other countries?”

O.K.: “We receive some support from the US National Institute of Health, America’s premier biology research institution. This organization has a budget larger than that of the Ukrainian state. They and we have a joint grant to research the mechanisms of opiate receptors. In general, we are in contact with a number of countries.”

THE WORLD SHAPES THE BRAIN

L.I.: “It is often said that the new informational era changes, among other things, the way people think. Can we say that the individual who constantly surfs through social networking sites and clicks ‘I like it’ becomes more primitive than the one who reads books? How can one train their brain and ‘buff up’ their intellect in these conditions?”

O.K: “On the whole, people are getting smarter and life more complicated.

“Once a child opens his or her eyes, the world begins to enter them and flashes the brain in the literal meaning of the word – as if it were a microchip that is flashed to be able to function. My acquaintance Torsten Wiesel, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1981 together with David Hubel, illustrated this with a famous experiment. It is common knowledge that a kitten is born with its eyes shut, and the eyes will open later. As part of the experiment, a kitten had one of its eyes stitched up and opened only two weeks later. It turned out that the visual cortex of this kitten’s brain could never be normal again. So it is the truth, not just nice words, that the world shapes the brain.

“What is the difference between the brain that opened its eyes in the world of today and the one that opened its eyes 100, 200, or 500 years ago? Scientist conducted an experiment again. One group of rats were allowed to live a natural life (in burrows), and another one was placed in sort of a manmade playground. In other words, this playground is a fruit of our culture or, in scientific parlance, a ‘complicated medium.’ So the brain of the rats that were shown a manmade world registered twice as many synaptic contacts. All of us, all our memory, and all our egos are recorded in these contacts. Let us get back now to the popular question: what percentage of our brain do we use? If you calculate the number of our synaptic contacts and the possible conditions of this system (I mean the number of possible combinations), you will see that there are more of them than atoms in the Universe we know. This is the percentage of our brain that we use.

“So when a child opens his or her eyes, he or she can see a world of culture, a world with a computer. He or she may not be smarter than the kids of the past. You can object: but where is our Leonardo da Vinci? And you will be right. But it was in the good olden times, when an apple fell on the head of Newton and he understood why it did so. This may be a historical joke, but there is only one law of gravitation – no other one will be discovered.”

L.I.: “All the apples have already fallen…”

O.K.: “Yes. I am an elderly person and can give you a funny example from my own life. In London, during a reception in, if I am not mistaken, the Physiological Society, a sharp-tongued English lady professor comes up to me and says: ‘You once were among the Top 10 (i.e., I was one of the world’s best-known neurophysiologists), but there were so few people like you at the time!’ In other words, it may seem that our Newtons and Leonardos da Vinci are busy now tackling trivial problems, but they are in fact not trivial… You showed a tree that symbolizes the activity of your newspaper. The ‘Tree of Knowledge,’ on which we are all perched, began to grow up from a little shrub – just three or four branches – but now it is a huge crown! And we are often perched on the adjacent boughs in this crown but can no longer hear each other. So, incidentally, the press should pay more attention to science to ward off the danger of professional idiotism. Do I have to explain what professional idiotism is, or is this common knowledge?”

L.I.: “You can. It is interesting from the viewpoint of brain physiology (laughs).”

O.K.: “There still is a wall between brain physiology and notions. I have even written a book – a nonscientific book – on this very wall.”

L.I.: “Would you tell us?”

O.K.: “This will take too much time.”

L.I.: “Is it big?”

O.K.: “It is small, but this book is a sheer metaphor.”

L.I.: “We love metaphors: they are very short but make you think a lot over them.”

O.K.: “Consciousness is a function of the brain. As a phenomenon, it remains a puzzle for science. Interestingly, many languages use the following expression: ‘A thought came to me.’ In other words, ‘I do not think a thought – it comes to me.’ It cannot be otherwise because my brain, my personal super-powerful computer, thinks in its own language that is unfathomable for me, but it is forced to speak with me in a human language which has developed between us as a means of communication. So there is a wall between the all-powerful brain and the conscious ego to which thoughts come – they come through a window in this wall.”

L.I.: “But they do not come to some...”

O.K.: “Right. I write in this book that the destiny of an individual depends to a large extent on what kind of a window system emerged in him or her.”

L.I.: “A Nobel Prize for the growing number of windows and the way this can be done.”

O.K.: “Absolutely right. I have already told you how the brain ‘fits in with’ children. The destiny of every individual depends on the accidental factors that occurred in childhood, but we do not even know them… The two or three years after birth are by far the most important period in the formation of a personality, when we do not even remember ourselves. To follow the logic, professors should bring up babies and adults need nothing but a motivation – all the more so in the era of Google, when you can ask the entire humankind about anything you want.”

L.I.: “I think it is a very wise observation. Just look at the way children come into the world. Look at all these experiments which people venture to do without knowing and thinking over things – they give birth under water, on the hill, at the foot of a hill... These risks may have some pluses, but they harbor a lot of dangers. I think this is of great importance for pedagogy as well.”

O.K.: “I totally agree with you. Of course, when I was saying that professors should educate babies, it was an irony – God forbid someone should harm a system that we do not yet know. Let things remain as they are: cautious mothers and nannies will make fewer mistakes.”

L.I.: “I think the professors you mean are the wise grandmas and grandpas whom somebody was once lucky to have.”

O.K.: “Exactly.”

L.I.: “It is the academe we need.”

O.K.: “The realities of life are in fact a reasonable compromise.”

Maryna KUCHUK: “You say the world ‘flashes’ our brain as if it were firmware…”

O.K.: “I’m sorry, let me interrupt you. What is the fundamental difference between the brain and the computer? The computer consists of hardware, i.e., the physical device itself, and software, the program we have written to teach the device to work. There is no use of hardware without software and vice versa. These are two different things. But these things – hardware and software – are inseparable in our brain. They are essentially united, which makes the fundamental difference.”

M.K.: “If we compare in this context the Soviet man and the man who lives at present, it will be obvious that their ‘software’ is different. In what way?”

O.K: “Have you seen photographs from North Korea? Are you not scared? There is a qualitative difference between the Soviet and the current ways of existence. But too little time has passed. And our present-day social problems stem to an immense extent, if not by 100 percent, from the fact that the brains of a considerable part of our people still bear the traces of ‘red paint.’ I am thoroughly convinced of this. This will take time, and it would be perhaps wrong to hurry up. There must be a change of generations, when a new outlook of people will be expressed in new-type social relationships.”

L.I.: “But can this process be still speeded up in an era of information technologies? In the Soviet era, too, there were people with a sound brain if I may say so. Besides, there are, arguably, some means to ‘wash’ the brain if it has too much waste, garbage, and God knows what else…Or, maybe, it is a process that does not entirely depend on the amount of information?”

O.K.: “We are in fact discussing extremely difficult problems. You asked me 10 minutes ago if people are smarter now. I seemed to be trying to persuade you that – it is as clear as day – they are really much smarter. But this is a moot point. The problem is more complicated in reality, and smart people can see this. The brain has received the powerful, so to speak, crutches, known as computer, for itself. Ironically called crutches, this fantastically expands our potential. But we should only use this if we have the right motivation. If there is no right motivation, these ‘intellectual crutches’ will lead to…”

L.I.: “…to worldwide primitivism.”

O.K.: “Which is perhaps happening to a considerable part of the people. As human activities are being specialized, man is required to be more responsible, on the one hand, and, on the other, there is such thing as robotization. The world community believes that there can be a scenario, when people will be more and more stratified by intellect and true broad-based intellect will concentrate in a very small group of people. This is an opinion. Whether this is true and what processes are going on is a big question.”

L.I.: “Is there a mechanism to resist degradation?”

O.K.: “I think so. What created us was biological evolution, and now it has given way to social evolution.”

OUR GOAL IS TO ENSURE THAT YOUNG UKRAINIANS STILL HAVE AN OPPORTUNITY TO ‘GO PLAY SCIENCE’

L.I.: “Are there any young scientists in your institute, who want to do brain research?”

O.K.: “The social prestige of academic profession is the answer to your question. Young people are looking for a social uplift (which science was, say, in the USSR) – otherwise, there will be no motivation. In the first years after the fall of the iron curtain, science became even a greater attraction for a very short time – two or three years – because it was perhaps the only window to the world. My pupils work in Western Europe and America, many of them are professors. Hundreds of specialists with a Ph.D. or a higher degree – absolutely ready-made brains – have left our institute. What did an academician mean in the Soviet era and what does one mean now?”

L.I.: “But there are so many new ‘academicians…’”

O.K.: “Yes, there is stiff competition for academicians, but there is no competition at all for Ph.D. studies.

“Yet we must go through this. Throughout the world, science is not a very ‘lucrative’ profession or a powerful social uplift. Even in the US scientists are not rich people. Research must be pursued by enthusiasts, people motivated by their own interest. We still have ‘toys’ for them, which cost tens of thousands of dollars apiece. The true research is a game. Before I became the institute director, I had been doing nothing that I did not like to! This is the privilege that science gives. I could say the same if I were, say, a free artist.”

L.I.: “It is the motivation of free people. Businessmen may be rich people, but they are, to quote Putin, ‘galley slaves.’ This is a proven fact. But we still have a warped frame of references. There are still no new ideas of prestige and value because everything is going through a very difficult process of transformation.”

O.K.: “Yes, and we are struggling for this. Incidentally, I am also president of the Ukrainian Scientific Club, an association of the Ukrainian researchers who are ‘visible’ in the world. This ‘visibility’ is determined by means of the citation index – how many times you were referred to in international literature: if it is one hundred or more times, the academic has the right to be a club member. Our goal is to ensure that young Ukrainians still have an opportunity to ‘go play science.’ Remaining Ukrainians, they will become citizens of the world, and borders will cease to exist.”

L.I.: “Are there any grounds for optimism?”

O.K.: “I think the very possibility of having this window into the world of clever people in your own fatherland is already ample grounds for optimism.”

L.I.: “As you mingle with other Scientific Club members, what promising fields of national science could you name in addition to IT, which has seen lately a number of interesting startups that often win at various competitions? Their authors are young people who grew up in the families of cyberneticists, physicists, and mathematicians…”

O.K.: “All that you mentioned plus chemistry. Ukraine has a very strong world-level community of chemists. Physicists, too. My community of biologists is also working on the world level, but it is relatively small. This is a major drawback, for biology is now the leading science, which is only natural because it is a science about us.”

L.I.: “However, there is too little value-related information in the Ukrainian informational space about the world of science. How can you explain this? For, in any society, science inspires some strength, optimism, and the belief that we have highly-intellectual people who can think, make discoveries, and save us from degradation. But society is often unaware of having its own scientists…”

O.K.: “This is not only our problem – it is the problem of the world as a whole. The circulation of your newspaper must be smaller than that of tabloids. It is the same thing.”

L.I.: “But if the number of intellectuals is not so large in the country, there should be some ways of communication between these communities. And are they not, after all, shaping public opinion? Why was public opinion put under complete control of the people who are, to put it mildly, insufficiently educated and have an inadequate vision of the surrounding world? For it is a competitive environment! And if our highbrows do not struggle to attract the lion’s share of societal attention, how will society know that they exist?”

O.K.: “Firstly, are you not struggling? You are. We are also struggling when we work in our Scientific Club. And now we have met each other.”