Behavior: Better Living Through Biochemistry

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Once able to locate the brain's opiate receptors, scientists can use their new strategies to draw a biochemical map of all the other neurotransmitters and to learn how chemicals plug into the brain. At Northwestern University, Aryeh Routtenberg is studying the chemical pathways of the brain's reward system, which when stimulated produces sensations of pleasure. If schizophrenics are indeed on a dopamine "high."; their internal reward systems may be constantly turned on. His University of Chicago colleague Richard J. Miller is tracing the link between dopamine and endorphins. At M.I.T., Richard Wurtman, who is studying various neurotransmitters, notably acetylcholine, has found that their production can be increased by diet. Indeed, by upping a patient's intake of foods rich in lecithin—a precursor of acetylcholine —especially egg yolks, meat and fish, such disorders as senility, manic-depression and the loss of motor control associated with the degenerative disease Huntington's chorea, or tardive dyskinesia, can be substantially alleviated.

Some neuroscientists even foresee the day when these new biochemical tools may be used analytically. Thus it would become possible to diagnose mental illness from a simple blood, urine or spinal fluid sample. Once imbalances in body chemistry are determined, doctors would be able to adjust them by administering the appropriate drugs. Harvard's Dr. Seymour Kety insists that such tactics are far from mind control: "You can't manipulate an individual's behavior in the way the popular mind would like to think." But Northwestern's Routtenberg is not so sure. Says he: "These techniques are extremely powerful. Some day we're going to have to have a mind SALT talk."