101 Theory Drive is the story of Dr. Gary S. Lynch's work in his quest for understanding the mechanism of memory in the brain. In his quest, he uncovers mechanisms for remembering, and for not remembering, and uncovers a mechanism leading to a theory for consciousness. The title refers to the address of his lab, in a business park across from the University of California at Irvine.

The book does a good job of describing the history of the work, the people involved, and building a character for Dr. Lynch. There is a lot of technical detail presented and the mechanisms uncovered are understandable if you can follow the physiology. There are only three (or four?) diagrams charting elements of neurons and their parts and a glossary of terms. The most difficult part of the book is understanding the details so as to understand the research. I tired of referring back to the images, and suspect the details won't be retained long.

Much of the story feels like a science book, there isn't a lot to keep the reader excited or involved. But for its 260+ pages, it was a relatively fast read.

The book does have good information, but it would help to know something about neuron details before starting. I suspect there is a better book out there somewhere. ( )

An illuminating look at one scientist's decades-long quest to find the actual physical indication of memory in the brain. It's written relatively clearly, but you have to sit down with it for extended periods of time if you want to engage the theta rhythm and activate long-term potentiation (LTP), both of which are discussed in this book, thereby retaining what you learn from its pages.

The titular neuroscientist, Gary Lynch, is a colourful character. He came to neuroscience fro...more
An illuminating look at one scientist's decades-long quest to find the actual physical indication of memory in the brain. It's written relatively clearly, but you have to sit down with it for extended periods of time if you want to engage the theta rhythm and activate long-term potentiation (LTP), both of which are discussed in this book, thereby retaining what you learn from its pages.

The titular neuroscientist, Gary Lynch, is a colourful character. He came to neuroscience from a completely different academic background and essentially taught himself biology. His lab is filled with a multidisciplinary team that I think really brings home the benefits of having a wide-ranging education. For example, one of the lab members was a computer programmer before turning to neuroscience. Later on, the team needed a computer program to sort through mounds and mounds of data on rat hippocampi, and commercially available software wasn't cutting it, so this guy wrote his own program to do the job. Very impressive, not to mention handy.

The team's successes and failures are interesting to read about, and you really appreciate just how much work goes into all of those experiments, and how gratifying it is to see one's experiments turn out successfully. Even so, the scientists of Lynch Lab are very pragmatic, usually refusing to believe what they see until they've repeated the experiment umpteen times. Because their goal is to be able to point at a spot in the brain and say, "There. That's memory," they don't want to get carried away with themselves and pin too much false hope on a result.

One of the most fascinating things I learned from this book was that the brain has a built-in forgetting process that erases most of what you experience. Makes sense, because you don't want to remember literally every single detail of every single day. If you did, and the Lynch team were able to make all of those memories physically visible in your cerebral cortex, it would look like the synapse version of the show "Hoarders". So essentially what the researchers have discovered is that aging and the memory decline associated therewith is basically the forgetting process being stronger than LTP, so they just need to find a way to block the forgetting process and/or boost the remembering process, and they'll have made great strides in the fight against Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, Huntington's, and other cognitive decline diseases. There are even diseases that don't necessarily have a cognitive component but exhibit the same problems with LTP.

I've also learned that memory research is a cruel mistress, especially for the poor rats sacrificed to the cause... the image of a headless rat twitching in a garbage can is rather horrifying. So if you're an animal lover, be warned. The description doesn't really go beyond that; it's just more thinking about the sheer number of rats that have been killed over the years for these studies.

As I stated earlier, this book is fairly accessible, and the author draws some very clever comparisons (e.g. that humans are PCs... see Chapter 13) and uses other common subjects such as baseball to illustrate the memory concepts at work. The book also includes a glossary of terms and a selected bibliography of the actual papers if you're interested. I would recommend this book to well-informed laymen and those with a specialized interest in this kind of field. ( )

The author has basically written a history of the efforts of Gary Lynch. He appears to be a free spirited and free thinking neuroscientist. The author also provides a sufficient scientific information for the reader to understand the efforts that have been conducted. The personalities and struggles of the scientists are described, which makes the story understandable and relateable. The problem with the book is that I frankly don't care about much of the information provided. It would have been sufficient from my standpoint to have read a book on the science of memory. It appears that LTP is Gary Lynch's big discovery and that he has helped move neuroscience forward. Unfortunately, the guy has sufficient personality flaws that render him unlikeable (note this is the same reason that Scripps in Florida did not continue to pursue him as a employee. Gary is evidently now aged and in poor health. He is to be lauded for his accomplishments in spite of his flawed personality. ( )

Have you ever wondered what neuroscience in action looks like? If you want to watch it happen before your eyes check out McDermott's documentary-like description. You may doubt your interest in neurophysiology but, you will come away from reading this book with a better understanding of memory and a sense of the excitement found on this new frontier. For those who have read it, this book rivals the thrill of Tracy Kidder's Soul of a New Machine. ( )