The first time I spoke with the neuroscientist Gary Lynch, the conversation went something like this:
Me: I'm interested in spending time in a laboratory like yours, where the principal focus is the study of memory. I'd like to explain how memory functions and fails, and why, and use the work in the lab as a means to illustrate how we know what we know.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Sunday, August 26, 2007 Home Edition Main News Part Page News Desk 2 inches; 81 words Type of Material: Correction
"Chasing memory": The glossary accompanying the Aug . 19 memory article in Section A defined genes as "strings of amino acids that make up an organism's genome, a sort of blueprint from which the organism is built. Individual genes are strings of amino acids; each string contains instructions for building a particular protein." The definition should have said: "Genes: strings of DNA that form a blueprint from which the organism is built. Each gene contains instructions for building a particular protein."
Lynch: You'd be welcome to come here. This would actually be a propitious time to be in the lab.
Me: Why's that?
Lynch: Because we're about to nail this mother to the door.
Lynch is a neuroscientist at UC Irvine, where he has spent 37 years trying to uncover the biochemical mechanisms of memory.
He has, for almost the length of his career, been trying to answer essentially a single pair of questions: What happens in the brain when a human being encounters a new experience so that he or she can recall it at will tonight, tomorrow, in 2025? And what goes wrong when we can't remember?
This second question has in the last several years taken on great weight.
We are on the verge of a dementia pandemic. It is estimated that by 2040, 100 million people worldwide will suffer from Alzheimer's disease, Huntington's, Parkinson's or some other form of dementia. Science has been able to do precious little to combat these diseases, in large part because the understanding of the underlying cognitive processes has been meager. Thousands of scientists have spent countless years seeking and largely failing to unearth the secrets within the human brain.
Medical advances have allowed more and more people to live longer but have been unable to relieve longevity of its principal bane -- the breakdown of mental processes, especially memory. When memory loss occurs, it seldom fails to impress upon its victims and those who know them the extent to which our memories constitute our selves.
That breakdowns occur is not surprising. Consider: You're 50 years old. What's your time in the 100-yard dash? How does that compare to the 18-year-old you? Why would your brain be exempt from declining in analogous ways? It isn't. So much goes wrong so often that many malfunctions are considered ordinary and are often referred to collectively as normal cognitive decline.
Before that first conversation with Lynch, I already knew that he had been an often polarizing figure in his field, that he had a reputation for being pugnacious, and that he had been uncannily right about a lot of things over a very long time.
