Rust N. Elusive Cures: Why Neuroscience Hasn’t Solved Brain Disorders-and How We Can Change That

Princeton University Press, 2025. — 297 p.Neuroscience has made massive progress in the last thirty years-we've seen multiple forms of technology revolutionize the field, and we've invested tremendous resources to pursue brain research globally. Though we've learned much about the brain through these efforts, we have struggled to translate what we are learning to treatments for mental illness. Tragically, we cannot cure-or in some cases reliably treat-most brain disorders, including Alzheimer's, Huntington's, Parkinson's, multiple sclerosis, epilepsy, depression, schizophrenia, and so many more. Why have we struggled so much to translate the exploding number of discoveries that are happening at the research bench to the bedside? How can we better understand and treat brain and mental illness? In this book, Nicole Rust tackles these difficult questions, making a bold argument for how the field of neuroscience needs to change in order to make meaningful progress on understanding and treating brain dysfunction. In short, her argument is that neuroscientists must adapt to thinking about the brain as a complex system. To date, we have collectively thought about the brain more as a domino chain of cause-and-effect - for instance, if we assume that a chemical imbalance causes depression, we assume that once we fix that imbalance, we will fix depression. But as Rust shows, the brain is much more complex than a domino chain, operating via feedback loops that are more difficult to understand and predict. In Part I, Rust examines the people and the science behind the brain drugs that are prescribed today, setting up her argument that the field must change in order to progress; she shows that most of our current treatments - for depression, psychosis, and other disorders -- were developed serendipitously. In fact, most of the drugs that we use today were created in the 50s, before we understood anything at all about how the brain works. In Parts 2 and 3, Rust presents her argument for how the field can advance: by treating the brain as a complex system. In highly accessible language and drawing on the history of complex systems in other scientific fields, as well as cutting edge work in translational neuroscience today, she shows how some researchers are already pushing towards the idea of the brain as a complex system - and argues that only once we fully embrace this idea do we have any hope of curing the brain in dysfunction. The book is a fascinating window into the immense challenge of understanding the brain - the most complex thing humankind has ever encountered - and how we can change course to make more and better progress towards mental healthFrontmatter
Author’s note
The Grand Plan
How did we get here?
From bench to bedside
The most complex thing humankind has encountered
What type of thing is the brain?
Is your brain a computer?
Embracing complexity
A new era
Measuring brain and mental health
What causes what?
From understanding to treatments and cures
A new era in brain research
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index