The great mental decline

Manufacturing mass conformity through the use of neuroscience

- SERENA WYLDE

WITH the enormous advances in neuroscience and technology, the potential to misuse both these tools for nefarious ends is evident.

In an age where the institutions with power over our lives have manifestly ceased to adhere to the rules of ethics, it is crucial to understand how our brains can be altered through psychological and physiological manipulation, and how we can protect ourselves from this onslaught.

German physician and molecular geneticist, Dr Michael Nehls, recently published a book titled The Indoctrinated Brain, in which he explains some of the brain's key features and mechanisms, and how these can be rendered dysfunctional through the constant stream of government-generated and media-repeated anxiety messages, as well as through toxins which produce neuroinflammation.

The book's cover tells us: 'Throughout the world, mental capacity is declining, especially among young people, while depression rates are rising dramatically.

Meanwhile, one in forty individuals suffers from Alzheimer's, and the age of onset is falling rapidly. But the causes are not being eliminated, quite the opposite." Dr Nehls does not believe that this is accidental, but rather a targeted attack on the brain to reduce people's ability to think for themselves, and thus to challenge the rise in authoritarianism.

He explains that the brain is made up of hundreds of billions of nerve cells, each of which is part of a unique network of hundreds of thousands of connections.

The genetic make-up of each individual provides the first level of uniqueness, but the brain is plastic and malleable, and each personal experience influences its pathways and structure, so that even identical twins develop different personalities.

Individuality is created and moulded through our unique thoughts and experiences, the recording of which Dr Nehls calls 'writing our autobiographical memory'.