The Dalai Lama, revered spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhists, is at the center of a scientific controversy. The exiled leader is an enthusiastic collaborator in brain research on the intense meditation practices of Buddhist monks. He is scheduled to speak about the research at this month’s Annual Meeting of the Society for Neuroscience. But 544 brain researchers have signed a petition urging the society to cancel the lecture. According to the petition, “it will highlight a subject with largely unsubstantiated claims and compromise scientific rigor and objectivity,” which translates into their thinking it makes them look silly in academic circles.


We need to talk about the rigorous standards of scientific certainty. Remember Dr. Benjamin Spock, the childcare guru of 20th-century? He told us to start infants on bland, mild foods (no peanut butter or seafood until after their first birthday, it’s too potentially allergenic). He frowned on ethnic and highly spiced foods; he taught that if you offered fruits before vegetables, it would breed a sweet tooth. These were scientific certainties of the time, but they are all myths.

Today’s pediatric researchers say starting kids on rice and highly processed grain cereals could actually be the worst food for infants, leading to later obesity problems. They say bring on the spices. If the mother likes oregano the baby might like it too; start them on hardier, more flavorful foods. If you live in Africa eat meats, fish and radishes in Japan, and artichokes in France

So much scientific certainty about diagnoses, diseases and drugs are not certainties at all. Most of what we’re sure about, is either going to be wrong or outdated in a decade. Drugs once touted as cure-alls, (Vioxx, calcium-channel blockers, hypnotics, anxiolytics) all have deadly side-effects that we didn’t know about. For the last several years, my psychiatric colleagues have suggested that we are dramatically under-diagnosing childhood depression and that we need to be medicating kids earlier. Now we find out that those drugs actually increase suicidal risk in children. So when 554 neuroscientists believe their credibility is threatened because the spirit is not easily subject to the rigors of scientific examination, it makes me want to gag.

We need to be doing more brain research into spiritual matters. Wouldn’t you like to know if, as a species we are wired for mystical experience? If we are, can we train the brain to generate compassion and positive thoughts? The Dalai Lama thinks so, and my colleague at the University of Arizona, Dr. Carol Barnes, who is the President of the Society for Neuroscience, says there is no way she’s going to cancel his talk. Bravo!

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After watching my granddaughter play volleyball at a tournament, I concluded that girls compete differently than boys (Schlagbyte, May 23, 2005). When girls play competitive sports, I get the sense of more joyful, expressive and supportive camaraderie. When I watch my grandsons compete, I sense they play on a team but compete individually— they all want to be the MVP.


Are boys and girls wired differently? There is a growing sentiment among neuroscientists that girls’ and boys’ brains are, indeed, wired differently. Using sophisticated imaging techniques (MRI and PET scans), brain researchers found that female brains have more active frontal lobes, stronger connections between brain hemispheres, and language centers that mature earlier than their male counterparts.

These findings have led to a recent movement in some schools to separate boys and girls in the classroom. Part of this is driven by the push toward standardized competitive exams. School budgets are now supported on the basis of these performance indicators. When school administrators looked at test results, they saw that boys are more likely to score lower than girls are. They also discovered that 70% of the children diagnosed with learning disabilities are boys. The theory is that separating boys and girls and teaching to their strengths differently will maximize their potential and close the educational gender gap.

Separating boys and girls during childhood, however, may make it more difficult for us to live together later on. Sooner or later, we have to discover how to learn and grow together anyway, so let’s start earlier not later.

As a rule, I get queasy whenever we put people in categories that reinforce stereotypes. But if such neurological, hormonal and cognitive differences are real — if boys don’t see or hear as well as girls do — maybe we can find innovative ways to present visual and auditory material that best promote learning for both sexes.

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Columbus Day is not a big holiday in Indian country. Native people celebrating Columbus Day is like rejoicing that someone discovered the keys to your car in the ignition and drove it off saying he discovered it. This year on Columbus Day, I was in Salt Lake City, the headquarters of the Church of Jesus Christ, Latter-day Saints (the Mormons). This extraordinary, American-born, visionary sect, was founded less than 200 years ago. It was featured on the cover of this week’s Newsweek magazine, described as one of the fastest-growing Christian denominations in the United States.


On the same day, some Navajo relatives of mine, members of the Native American Church (NAC), were on their way to West Texas. It is the only place in the United States where Peyote grows. Peyote is the divine sacrament, the holy medicine, that is the heart of the Native American Church. Its use is legally guaranteed only to Native people for traditional ceremonial purposes. But it’s getting harder and harder to find.

In the old days (which is only 25 years ago), my Navajo brother would go with his father to walk in the sacred gardens to harvest the sacred medicine by themselves. Nowadays, access to the gardens is restricted; the land is leased to peyoteros who harvest the cactus and sell it by the sack-full, to card-carrying members of the NAC. His son has never seen the holy plant in its natural setting. Ranch owners have stopped leasing land to peyoteros, offering their property to deer hunters or oil and gas companies for considerably higher profits. Some ranchers have plowed under the peyote grounds for development, and others have never opened up their land at all.

As the Native American population grows, membership in the Native American Church is also growing, and so is the demand for the holy sacrament, peyote. The supply of the sacramental cactus is dwindling, so the remaining peyoteros are over-harvesting immature plants, and conservationists are concerned that it will wipe out the cactus.

200 years ago, a new American religion was founded; at about the same time, old American religions began disappearing. Soon the peyote plant may disappear just like so many tribes and native languages. It’s estimated that half of the plant and animal species on the planet will become extinct within the next hundred years. But who cares . . . natives are really insignificant in terms of numbers and influence. Columbus Day is not a big holiday in Indian country.

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I get nostalgic for baseball this time of year, when the playoffs begin the march to the World Series. I was hoping the Boston Red Sox would repeat as World Champions, but, alas, they lost to the Chicago White Sox who, interestingly, now have a chance to repeat the Boston miracle. The Red Sox hadn’t won a World Series since 1917; the White Sox haven’t since 1918. Chicago may experience the magic of such an epoch event that brings a whole city together in joy.


Both these teams have played in their hometowns since baseball began, and I love communities where sports break down the boundaries that separate people. Over the years, the pursuit of profitability has taken precedence over loyalty to community. I’m thinking about it because it was 50 years ago this week that the Brooklyn Dodgers won their first World Series. They beat their hated crosstown rivals, the New York Yankees, in seven games. I’m not from Brooklyn, nor was I ever a Dodger fan, but I always loved their fanaticism. My Brooklyn friends, to this day, have nothing but disdain for Walter O’Malley’s larceny for moving their beloved team (affectionately known to all as “Da Bums”) to Los Angeles three years later, for the money.

The Dodgers just celebrated the 50th anniversary of that achievement in Los Angeles, but you know it was just a revenue-raising gimmick. Carl Erskine (Brooklyn pitcher ’48-59) performed the national anthem on his harmonica, and Johnny Podres, the hero of the 1955 World Series, threw out the ceremonial first pitch. It may have been great, but the spirit of that Dodger victory was not felt in that stadium.

When the Brooklyn Dodgers won, it was a victory for everyone in Brooklyn, and felt by every resident across the borough. This accomplishment permeated every social strata and racial barrier: Hasidic Jews danced in the street with dreadlocked Rastafarians. Every Brooklynite who was alive on that day remembers that event as an indelible mark in history.

You can sell a city’s team, but you cannot steal its enduring spirit. I’m hoping Chicago goes all the way and brings to the Windy City what Boston brought to Beantown. We need to be coming together in community in ways other than responding to disasters, terror and fear.

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If you’d asked me when I was a teenager if I knew what it meant to have two brains, I’d have said the one in my head and the one zippered in my fly. As I got older, I learned to pay more attention to another brain . . . the one in my gut.


The body actually does have more than one brain: there is the central nervous system and another called the enteric nervous system. When I got to medical school, I learned the biological explanations for the butterflies in my stomach when I looked down from the railings of high bridges. Research in the new field of neural gastroenterology is further clarifying the power of this hidden brain. The nervous system in your gut and the central nervous system both use the same hardware to run their programs: the neurotransmitter, serotonin. It turns out that 95% of the body’s serotonin is housed in the gut.

Having two brains makes literal and evolutionary sense. What two brains do is weave their neural networks to control your behavioral programs. The brain in your gut is a library of information that tells you what foods don’t mix in your intestine, if it’s rotten, or if you’re eating too fast. What you feel in your gut is an accurate assessment of what you need to be paying attention to, and it doesn’t get much help from the central nervous system. The gut knows things the brain hasn’t even considered.

Pay attention to what your belly is telling you; this is ancient wisdom for which we have new explanations. Trust your gut feeling. It is the voice of your intuitive soul, and it will teach you at least as much as your brain (or, perhaps, penis) once did.

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