Richard Bergland

"Physicians and scientists will measure brain hormones—in ventricular fluid and elsewhere—will link these to specific diseases, and will devise space-age techniques to restock the mind's hormonal pantries. The only question is, When?'"

"As a surgeon and scientist, my father was always a visionary and a renegade. Being mentored by legends of neuroscience gave my father both the credibility and desire to push new boundaries."

"Richard Bergland, a neurosurgeon, asked what role the CSF and the brain's ventricular system could play in the brain's physiology. Using paper chromatography, a method that separates substances dissolved in a fluid, he observed more than 300 different peptides and amino acids in the CSF. He induced seizures in sheep, extracted CSF from the ventricles, and found these substances to substantially increase in variety and amount after seizures."

"There are debates in neuroscience about what the basic "stuff of thought" is, even within a materialist framework. Neurosurgeon Richard Bergland... argues that the stuff of thought is not electricity at all, but hormones. He rejects the view that the brain is an electronic computer; the brain is "wet"—bathed in "wet" molecules such as endocrine hormones. "Thinking," for Bergland, can occur in the ovaries and testicles. He believes that the "brain as a gland" hypothesis will revolutionize the study of mental illness. Computational models of mind contribute little to this study."