Abstract
Saxby Pridmore and Iqbal Pasha, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia:
The human brain: a guided tour[1] was recently reissued to coincide with a speaking tour of Australia by the author. It contains (among others) the following errors of expression, clarity and fact:
1. Cerebrospinal fluid is ‘sampled from the lower portion of the spinal cord’ [1], p.5].
2. ‘The brain has the consistency of a raw egg…’ [1], p.6].
3. Phineas Gage lived ‘the rest of his life as a fairground freak, touring with the tamping iron still lodged in his brain’ [1], p.23].
4. ‘Until the 1960s frontal leucotomies were the treatment of choice for a whole range of very intense and persistent emotional responses’ [1], p.24].
5. ‘where this nerve leaves the retina and burrows into the brain is the “blind spot”…’ [1], p.57].
6. ‘Synaethesia tends to occur more in childhood, but can often be triggered in adults with psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia or by hallucinogenic drugs’ [1], p.67].
7 ‘… it has been noted that the unconsciousness of schizophrenics is frequently very similar to the illogical but very real consciousness of our dreams’ [1], p.74].
8. ‘In many regards amphetamine users resemble schizophrenics in that they are constantly at the mercy of the outside world, with no inner resources of mind to assess appropriately what is happening’ [1], p.113].
9. ‘Ecstasy is frequently referred to as a hallucinogen because it gives feelings of disembodiment as well as an overriding feeling of elatedness’ [1], p.114].
10. Propranolol ‘does not itself gain access to the brain’ [1], p.137].
11. ‘Patients recovering from… electric shock treatment (a radical therapy for severe depression) characteristically cannot remember what happened an hour or so before the event’ [1], p.159].
12. ‘A common and conspicuous feature of schizophrenia is excessive attention to the outside world, which often appears overly bright and buzzing without the sobering perspective and exposition-basal interpretation of inner resources. Perhaps dreamers, schizophrenics, and non-humans share a similar type of consciousness, characterized by little memory for previous events, and dominated by generic facts and the immediacy of the here and now’ [1], p.168].
13. Korsakoff's syndrome patients have ‘loss of memory for everything that happened before being taken into hospital’ [1], p.169].
14. ‘… patients suffering from disorders of the basal ganglia such as Parkinson's disease and Huntington's chorea have seemingly no problem explicitly remembering facts and events’ [1], p.174].
In the past it would have been argued that this book was written for the general market and no concern of the Journal. These days, however, we are more aware of our duty to the general public. While The human brain: a guided tour[1] may be excellent in many regards and from the back cover it appears to have received rattling good reviews by the New Scientist and The Times, the clinical material is frequently wrong and pejorative. Psychiatrists should distance themselves from this publication and warn patients and their relatives that it will mislead and may distress some readers.