Elusive Cures

Why Neuroscience Hasn’t Solved Brain Disorders—and How We Can Change That

De: Nicole C. Rust

Narrado por: Nicole C. Rust

Brain research has been accelerating rapidly in recent decades, but the translation of our many discoveries into treatments and cures for brain disorders has not happened as many expected. We do not have cures for the vast majority of brain illnesses, and many medications we have to treat the brain are derived from drugs produced in the 1950s—before we knew much about the brain at all. Tackling brain disorders is one of the biggest challenges facing humanity today. What will it take to overcome it? Nicole Rust takes listeners along on her journey to answer this question.

Drawing on decades of experience, Rust reflects on how far we have come in our quest to unlock the secrets of the brain and what remains to be discovered. She shows us that treating a brain disorder is more like redirecting a hurricane than fixing a domino chain of cause and effect, arguing that only once we embrace the idea of the brain as a complex system do we have any hope of finding cures. Rust profiles the pioneering ideas about the brain that are driving research at the cutting edge to illuminate exactly how much we know about disorders—and what it will take to eradicate these scourges.

Elusive Cures sheds light on one of the most daunting challenges confronted by science while offering hope for revolutionary new treatments and cures for the brain.

©2025 Princeton University Press (P)2025 Tantor Media

Well written and thoughtful

I’m a brain researcher. I expected to be in the audience of people who’d gain insight from this book and I did so but in a much more limited way than I expected. I got the most personally from the author’s reflections on her evolving thinking during the writing of the book and in considering at a meta-level what ideas the author chose to communicate to the audience for such a book. For example, I got a kick out of the fact that my own experience with the SfN conference was strikingly similar to the author’s. Who’d I recommend this book to? Not my colleagues running research labs (if they’ve not already pondered the ideas on the brain as a complex dynamic system then they should retire). I would recommend it to undergraduate and graduate students, and non-scientists who work in other fields. However, I would absolutely only recommend reading/listening to Elusive Cures after listening to A Brief History of Intelligence by Max Bennett. Unfortunately both books almost entirely ignore literally half the cells that make up our brains. It is baffling to me that Dr. Rust does this. Astrocytes are a type of cell that are as numerous as neurons in our cerebral cortex and are critical for information processing and memory storage in our brains, more relevant for the huge near-complete omission of these cells from consideration in Elusive Cures is that they are a central component of brain homeostasis (or allostasis) and seem to be key (or causative in some cases) to all brain diseases of aging and degeneration. One book (audio book) on astrocytes and other glial cells is The Other Brain by Dr. Doug Fields. Unfortunately that book is over 15 years old and I’ve had trouble finding it on Audible recently. Anyway, I’d recommend Elusive Cures to people who’ve read History of Intelligence and who are interested in how neuroscience might better find preventions and treatment for brain conditions.

Factual and inspiring!

This book is a remarkable wellspring of ideas, providing numerous inspirations for future research grounded in robust neuroscientific principles. It's an essential read for anyone looking to genuinely boost their creativity.