Colapinto, John (b. 1958)

Lighting the Brain: Karl Deisseroth and the Optogenetics Breakthrough [from The New Yorker]

May 18, 2015

"He told me that, while many people find that walking or jogging shakes ideas loose from the subconscious, he needs to quell all physical activity."

Deisseroth seems never to be on tilt. He attributes this partly to his psychiatric training: "Those nights on call where there are five emergencies, you've got a patient in restraints in the E.R., where they need you immediately, patients up on the psychiatry floor, where someone punched a nurse--you develop a little bit of a 'just get through it one thing at a time.' " His unusual calm has allowed him to compartmentalize competing demands (fatherhood, marriage, neuroscience, literary endeavors, clinical psychiatry, speaking appearances at dozens of conferences a year), so that he can think through complex problems. He told me that, while many people find that walking or jogging shakes ideas loose from the subconscious, he needs to quell all physical activity. "Otherwise, I get this disruption from the motor cortex," he said. "I have to be totally still." Ideas come floating up "like a bubble in liquid." At that point, he goes into an excitable motor state, pacing or scribbling down ideas.
(p. 78)

Motion::Shaking

Reading

John Colapinto, "Lighting the Brain: Karl Deisseroth and the Optogenetics Breakthrough," The New Yorker (May 18, 2015). <Link to www.newyorker.com>

06/13/2015