Miami, Sept. 15 – Chronic loneliness is more dangerous than alcoholism or obesity and can even kill, says Argentine neuroscientist Facundo Manes, author of “Usar el cerebro” (Using the Brain), a book discussing getting to know one’s mind to be able to live better.

“Feeling alone is a biological mechanism like being hungry or thirsty, but the difference is that a person can eat or drink and their problems go away, but you cannot go out on the street and shout ‘I want to have friends,'” to fill the emptiness, he told EFE in Miami.

Manes, a graduate of the College of Medicine at the University of Buenos Aires and the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom, is president of the World Federation of Neurology Research Group on Aphasia, Dementia and Cognitive Disorders and the founder of the Cognitive Neurological Institute, or INECO, and the Neurosciences Institute of the Favaloro Foundation, both in Argentina.

In the book, published by Paidos, released on Thursday in Miami and written in conjunction with Argentine journalist Mateo Niro, Manes explains in simple language the human body’s “most complex organ,” and such things as consciousness, intelligence, memory, decision-making and emotions.

In another book, “El Cerebro Argentino” (The Argentine Brain), Manes says that although the brains of Argentines, Russians, Chinese and Spaniards are similar, but paradoxically science has also shown that there is such a thing as a brain that is unique to a given country, region, city or even a certain neighborhood.

“Today, we know that culture, shared histories, collective memories and the people who surround us create mental blueprints,” he said in explaining the basics of “Un Cerebro Argentino.”

Science has advanced more in understanding the brain in recent years than in all of mankind’s previous history combined, but even so there is still much to learn about the “only organ that tries to understand itself.”

Manes said that one cannot quantify how much we don’t know about our brains and he laughs at the “myth” that human beings have only developed 10 percent of our brain capacity. “Whoever invented that phrase had certainly only developed that 10 percent,” he said.

Although we know about the mechanisms of memory, decision-making, steps in the creative process, how language works and how emotions can influence behavior, we still cannot answer the “most difficult questions.”

“We have no idea how neuron circuits give rise to intimate, personal and subjective thinking at any given time and we don’t have a general theory about the brain,” he said.

One of the most interesting discoveries, in his judgment, is that the brain is an organ that “cannot be understood in isolation but rather (must be understood) in a social context.”

Although technology is “marvelous,” he warned that it must be used with “caution,” especially because science still doesn’t know what effects it can have on a developing brain – and up to age 20 our brains are not fully developed.

Too much use of technology exhausts our cognitive resources, which are limited, and can generate stress or addiction, concluded Manes.  / Ana Mengotti, EFEUSA