Diseases of the Will: Neuroscience Founding Father Santiago Ramón y Cajal on the Six Psychological Flaws That Keep the Talented from Achieving Greatness

The most successful experts also belong to the wider world. “To him who observes them from afar,” said Spanish Nobel laureate Santiago Ramón y Cajal, the father of modern neuroscience, “it appears as though they are scattering and dissipating their energies, while in reality they are channeling and strengthening them.”

When prefrontal regions are either surgically removed or fall prey to some calamity, patients continue to see, hear, and sense. Deficits affect the higher mental faculties, resulting in apathy, a lack of curiosity about the world, and a disability in planning, introspecting, reasoning, and regulating emotions. Patients perseverate or consistently m