TEN years ago I spent six weeks in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology at the laboratory of Ann Graybiel. I had written to her on the off chance that I could spend some time there.
I was initially surprised that she was so keen to have me – she is a world famous neuroscientist and has a very busy schedule. However, she told me that her mother was from Dungiven and that was the reason for the connection.
She works on the part of the brain that is responsible for habit formation and I had an interest in obsessions. I had a really enjoyable time walking each morning across the Charles Bridge to her laboratory in Cambridge.
The first morning I arrived I was surprised to see my name on the door of the small office I shared. This is something that has never happened in 30 years of working in the health service. This had the effect of making me feel important, even thought I knew that I was not, and feeling extremely positive before I even had spoken to anyone.
I was also lucky to spend a weekend in Rhode Island with her institute that included a couple of Nobel prize winners. There was series of presentations from all the labs in the group. I was immediately struck by how modest they all were and how meticulous they were in their work, taking one small step at a time.
There was no real hype or spin and the debate was at a very civil level. They all shared a view that we need to be humble in the light of the complexity of brain function and that progress was likely to be slow and painstaking.
It made me think about the research I was doing and the way I thought about problems in mental health. If these experts were humble and in awe of complexity, why had I been so confident in my assumption that there would be simple solutions to the questions I was asking?
I also thought about all the other people I meet who have equally simple solutions for complex problems. In reality, in the face of complexity the best we can do is to try and ask the right question and have the humility to accept that we are just scratching at the surface.
Too often in mental health groups we spend time in futile arguments about simple solutions rather than taking a shared view of complexity and working together. So we need to develop more truly interdisciplinary groups for treatment and research. There is no room for single-discipline approaches.
The next year Ann Graybiel came over to Belfast to get an honorary degree at Queen's and we spent some time retracing her family in Dungiven. In the following years it has been difficult to build on our collaboration. There is not the same support for mental health research here and I have struggled to articulate a question with the same elegance as the presenters in Rhode Island. So, no Nobel Prize then.
I do, however, keep in contact with Ann and her team, and have fond memories of walking across the Charles Bridge. I have also resolved today to take the plunge and put my own name on my office door.
:: Dr Francis O’Neill is a consultant psychiatrist and senior lecturer at Queen’s University Belfast.
