Molecules of Emotion.

Candace B. Pert

Scribner, $25

Candace Pert is a brilliant molecular biologist who was a key figure in the discovery of the endorphin molecule, the body's natural form of morphine. She is now widely regarded as the mother of a new field of science known as psychoneuroimmunology (Smithsonian, June 1989). Her research into brain biochemistry at the National Institute of Mental Health contributed to a radically new understanding of mind and body. In the 17th century, the philosopher Rene Descartes split mind and body into two spheres, with the body belonging to science and the mind left to metaphysics. Now Pert and her peers are rejoining what Descartes put asunder, by looking deeply into the molecular level of life.

In Molecules of Emotion, Pert offers a clear and often riveting account of her research on the frontier of a new kind of science. She also writes as an insider caught up in the politics of science, offering a rare glimpse of the ruthless competition for prizes and money that sometimes obscures the pursuit of truth. And, throwing aside the caution that is customary among scientists, she applies the new facts of psychoneuroimmunology to everyday life, discussing everything from drugs and disease to dreams and the molecular biology of hugs.

There are enough new facts, metaphors and speculations in this book to astonish (and sometimes raise the hackles of) many readers, just as Pert's research has often been met with initial disbelief. The field of psychoneuroimmunology, although based on exacting research, has had a hard birth. Its core idea is that the surfaces of cells are lined with many specific "receptors" to which only specific molecules can attach themselves. These molecules, in turn, are messengers through which the body and mind, as well as our neurons, glands and immune cells, are all constantly sharing information.

The work of Pert and her colleagues showed that a variety of proteins known as peptides (including endorphins) were among the body's key "information substances" -- and each of them could affect our mind, our emotions, our immune system, our digestion and other bodily functions simultaneously. For scientists and doctors trained to focus on one system in isolation from the others -- a neuroscientist doesn't study white blood cells, for example -- this came as a shock. Their first reaction was to defend their turf, and also to deny the new evidence.

When Jesse Roth, clinical director at the National Institutes of Health, discovered in the 1980s that insulin (which was supposed to be produced only in the pancreas) was also made in the brain, as well as in one-celled organisms outside the human body, his papers were at first rejected by every reputable scientific journal. A reviewer sent back the comment: "This is preposterous, you must not be washing your test tubes well enough." When Ed Blalock at the University of Texas showed that immune cells were secreting endorphins (which Pert had discovered in the brain), he met the same kind of response. When his work was confirmed, the leading journal Nature warned scientists to beware of "radical psychoimmunologists" who would use Blalock's work to suggest that body and mind were in communication. Thereafter, Pert and her colleagues proudly called themselves radical psychoimmunologists.