Moser got together with his spouse May-Britt Moser and the British American scientist John O’Keefe Nobel Prize in medicine and physiology in 2014 for his research on memory and “brain embedded GPS.”
Understand more and more
2015 Brain years and Moser was one of the speakers during the conclusion of this in Oslo. Where he spoke among other things about that psychiatry may be heading into a new era.
– I think there will be a revolution in psychiatry over the coming decades. We understand how higher brain functions occur, we may be well on the way to deal with cognitive and emotional disorders, said Moser Dagens Medicine.
With higher brain functions, he believes including thinking, planning, decision making, encoding, and retrieval of memories and communication of thoughts.
– What do you mean by revolution in psychiatry?
– By that I have a new understanding of how psychiatric disorders become, an understanding that is based in the biological basis of suffering, that is how the cooperation between nerve cells goes wrong, he said to TV 2.
Must understand normal functions first
He explains that if we understand how thinking is to the brain, we can better understand what goes wrong when someone gets a disorder. Many psychiatric disorders implies that the affected are thought disorder.
– A better understanding of normal functions of the brain will have a positive impact on how we understand and can manage both cognitive and emotional disorders, says Moser.
– Do you think in the future we will look at mental illness in a different way than today?
– Yes, we are talking about the underlying chemical and electrical changes in the brain. But particularly concerns you about cooperation between thousands of nerve cells. It is in these neural networks (many cells) that thoughts become, and that’s where things can go wrong too, he says to TV2.
Anne Kristine Bergem is chairman of the Norwegian Psychiatric Association. (Photo: Magnus Nøkland)
He will not predict anything more about where and when the first breakthrough in the research going, but says that there is much exciting research right now.
– Yes it does, but we have just begun to take the first steps toward understanding the normal functions of the brain, so it will not happen tomorrow, says the professor.
– Do not forget mental health
Anne Kristine Bergem is the leader in Norwegian psychiatric association. She told TV 2 that nothing could please her more than such a positive revolution, but she is a bit more skeptical than Moser.
– The word revolution is perhaps not the word I would use even though advances in psychiatry. But increasing knowledge about brain functions will undoubtedly be an important contribution to creating a better mental health services, with better treatment for those who want it and need it, says Bergem.
She believes that we must remember that there are also other things that influence whether people suffering from mental disorders.
– We must not believe that the understanding of the brain will solve all problems. That children grow up in poverty are exposed to trauma and abuse is not something that can be “fixed”, but which must be prevented. We must therefore combine increased investment in brain research with an equal emphasis on social factors such as upbringing, various life stresses and livelihoods, says Bergem to TV 2.
She explains that the understanding of mental disorders has increased over recent decades, but we still well too little.
– The increase of anxiety and depression among young people in recent years are still unaccounted for. A positive change in the understanding of mental illness in recent years, is that people with personal experience, researchers and clinicians increasingly are working together to find good measures. This contrasts with the more paternalistic attitude that prevailed earlier, where doctors were experts and patients passive recipients, she says.
Diseases of the brain affects many
According to the Norwegian Brain Council (Norwegian Brain Council) we know very much more about the brain today than just a few years ago, and brain research is a vast and important field both in Norway and internationally.
This research is not just about creating new medicines but to understand more about how the brain and nervous system basically works. With such knowledge is way shorter to both prevent, treat and train in a diseased brain.
The World Health Organization has estimated that brain diseases are the single most important cause of morbidity in the western world. A European study concludes that brain diseases cost society nearly 800 billion euros annually in Europe alone. It is as much as cardiovascular disease, cancer and diabetes costs combined.
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