Terminus Brain: The Environmental Threats to Human Intelligence

The human brain is now at risk from itself. Like a terminus, it is an end-point of our environmental mistakes but it is also a starting point both for those mistakes and for correcting them. It is victim, perpetrator and healer of the adverse environmental change that impairs intelligence. Logically, protecting the brain should be an environmental priority -- but it is not. Millions of people are suffering a decline in intelligence due to pollution, the absence of vital environmental micro-nutrients and a degraded psycho-social environment. This decline can range from severe intellectual disability to a spectrum of mid 'sub-clinical' dysfunctions that most of a population may experience in some way. In response, the US Congress declared the 1990s the 'Decade of the Brain' but this reflects only narrow, rich-nation priorities. Terminus Brain offers, for the first time, a comprehensive global picture. It is a major interdisciplinary work, ranging across the medical, social and environmental sciences, evolutionary theory, disability studies, education, law and ethics.