Before the middle of the 20^th century with the discovery of the structure of DNA, and then the beginning of this present century with the conclusion of the genome project, it seemed that biology had reached its goal.

The mystery of life was fully revealed, and what remained was just the discovery of details and the range of practical applications possible in the realm of medicine.

The reference model was clear and moreover it was simple: the dogma of genetics.

The genes, the holy of holies of life, are built from DNA.

DNA is transcribed into RNA and having passed through the nuclear membrane into the cytoplasm is translated into protein.

Corresponding to each gene is a protein, and these are the fundamental constituents of life.

Each organic function is strictly linked to the proteins and every disease has an underlying altered protein and thus an altered gene.

A gene is altered when the DNA that makes it up has undergone a mutation.

In a vision of this kind, the mutation from which the loss of the protein's integrity depends can be inherited or brought about by chance when the DNA encounters a mutagen factor in the environment.

This is the classic view, but in the 21st century it has been strongly challenged.

The ideal implications of this vision - which is based on the dogma of genetics - inevitably involve not only all living beings, but also man in his most noble expression, totally denying him any possibility of freedom.

In this extreme view, arising out of Newtonian physics, only external relationships exist between entities: inevitably, with such a mechanistic view as a starting point, knowledge will be analytical and reductionist, and activity regarding nature and one's own kind will be manipulatory.

In such a world, ethics exists only as the outcome of a chance genetic event at encephalic level that can undergo some weak, superficial modification by the environment.

Let us now consider the most recent scientific discoveries that have strongly challenged this vision:

1) one protein can derive from different genes, and one gene can produce different proteins;

2) at gene level a continuous regulation takes place that allows different genes to be activated or deactivated.

The transmission of this regulation is inherited. Regulation is a non-random process. Regulation of the cell is an active process whose goal is to respond to stimuli arriving from the environment, making adjustments in an optimal way.

Points 1 and 2 paint a view of life that - using the structures available including the genetic memory - succeeds not just in survival and reproduction through adaptation to the present environment, but also in manifestation with individual characteristics.

Regulation of gene expression as a function of a given environment and transmission through inheritance is the major new finding of biology of the 21st century, and has been named epigenetics.

A mechanistic approach fails to give a clear definition of how epigenetic regulation works: here we are no longer dealing with a gene that produces a protein, but a cell that regulates its gene expression to express itself in an environment.

It is noted that diseases that can be correlated with specific genetic mutations are very rare (cystic fibrosis and thalassaemia are the best known).

In addition, studies of the correlation between the most common diseases (diabetes, cardiovascular disease and tumours) and inherited genetic mutations (that is, genetic polymorphism or mutations frequently present in populations, which in themselves do not cause a disease but do increase risk) have shown that only a minimum percentage of these pathologies can be explained in this way.

This means that the genome project (identification of all the genes in the human genome) has to some extent been disappointing, in that it has provided very little understanding of the most common diseases and thence their prevention and treatment. The role of epigenetics is instead emerging, to provide explanation of the etiopathogenesis of the most common and most frequently occurring diseases. The most important element in predisposition could be a particular inherited epigenetic regulation or one that has arisen very early on (including at embryo stage).

Placing epigenetics rather than genetics in the central role has far reaching implications.

While the genetic code can change only through chance mutations or genetic manipulation, the epigenetic code can change through modifications by the environment (food, lifestyle, internal activity).

Thanks to epigenetics, man is freed from a blind destiny in which he has no choice and is repositioned at the centre of his life.

In making these statements, we should also be aware that reference to the environment includes both internal and external.

The neuron

The neuron is a cell that can be seen as a building block of the nervous system.

Very briefly, the neuron can be said to be made up of a central part (the cell body); protrusions that collect information (dendrites); and a protrusion that sends information (the axon).

The neuron has a morphology that makes it suitable for receiving and transmitting information. The area where the neurons are put into contact with each other (and in fact the neurons in contact with the muscle cells) is known as the synapse. This is a particular structure that makes use of special chemical substances, the neuromodulators, to function.

The function that underlies a living organism's capacity to become part of an environment, manage to survive, reproduce and express itself is memory.

All living organisms have memory. This allows fast activation of successful strategies for managing an already known environment (flee predators, move towards food...).

In fact, both genetic memory and epigenetic memory have this function. But while genetic memory cannot be altered during an individual's lifetime (apart from mutations, though these are always chance and never designed for dealing with a specific problem), epigenetic memory responds to a specific adaptation to the environment.

The neurons, the communication cells, have developed this capacity to conserve memory in a particular way.

Let us first consider short-term memory, then long-term memory.

When a situation, i.e. a stimulus, is repeated often over time, there is first a depotentiation of the synapses, leading to considerable weakening of the response of the synapses to the same stimulus. After hearing a noise for a certain length of time we no longer notice it. This phenomenon is known as “habituation”.

Similarly there is potentiation: in cases where a weak signal is followed by a strong signal, the weak signal is also followed by a strong response after a certain time.

This is why we go into action to protect ourselves from a blow we believe imminent when someone raises their hand in a threatening way if we have been hit at some earlier time in our life.

Simple potentiation of the synapses belongs to the short-term memory; so, if the stimuli are no longer repeated, nothing remains of what happened, or rather, from the neuron's point of view it is as though nothing had ever happened.

Short-term memory refers to biochemical phenomena that remain at neuron cytoplasm level; they do not reach the nucleus and consequently fall off in the short term.

Things change completely when a series of stimuli is repeated many times.

Here something truly extraordinary happens: at cytoplasm level a protein is formed (CREB, for the record) that enters the nucleus and goes to regulate the gene expression at DNA level.

This is precisely an epigenetic action, which leads to the formation of new proteins that in turn will form new synapses.

It should be underlined here that this memory in the long term leads to the formation of new matter and new encephalic structures.

We are therefore talking about plasticity of the encephalon: if the environment changes, the experiences change and the encephalon changes, adapting to the new situations.

These processes occur continuously, although in certain phases of life they are more intense: in the embryonic phase, in the early years of life, in adolescence.

Even when we are studying our own encephalon is restructuring.

What encourages the plasticity of the encephalon, therefore, are the various phases of development, repetition, and even the emotive involvement of experience.

This allows us to understand that events with strong emotive involvement - which repeat during the early phases of life (violence, but also acts of kindness) - will structure the encephalon for the rest of a person's life.

Events can structure the encephalon.

We need to learn to observe nature in its true expression and complexity.

What we have set out above has been fully confirmed scientifically, and derives from studies on very primitive organisms or isolated neurons by the Austrian neurologist, psychiatrist and neuroscientist Eric Richard Kandel. Moving to higher animals or man himself one has to deal with the conscience or self-conscience: the awareness of the existence of a conscience.

When a person remembers or experiences an emotion, cerebral areas are activated that correspond to the limbic brain.

Use of imaging techniques such as PET (to reveal metabolic activation) or fRM (to reveal an increase in blood circulation) has shown that the limbic area is activated when we remember. The memories we are conscious of are categorised as explicit memories. These studies have thus led to a correlation of the limbic brain with explicit memory.

Implicit memory is completely unconscious, and passes into our actions when we write, drive a car, or carry out the thousands of day-to-day activities without remembering when or how we learnt them (poetic remembering). The explicit memory instead arises within our conscience through a specific internal act or is evoked by a situation, an image, a word.

That perfume evokes an emotion, a memory, and so here the limbic brain is activated.

This situation alarms us, since evoking a memory or emotion in turn activates the limbic system - here the amygdala in particular.

In common with the higher animals (especially mammals) we possess the limbic brain.

Correlating with the limbic brain there is an interior life full of emotions, which activate in relation to the situations we are experiencing.

The limbic brain can be characterised in different ways, depending on the genetic and epigenetic inheritance and on the long-term memories present.

Of course, as well as the positive and negative events, external conditioning can also  establish new long-term memories which - within certain limits - can make the limbic brain function in another way.

This unquestionably concerns the training of animals, but also all situations that - without our knowledge - condition our interior lives, and that can also be brought about by others, intentionally or unintentionally.

Even intended thought can structure the encephalon.

A particular situation evokes a memory, an emotion, and therefore a behaviour.

A word, an attitude, a glance, can set off fear or anger in us.

Thus far we have talked about limbic brain, but we human beings can also observe emotion without launching into action such as screaming, escaping or attacking.

We can accept the emotion, observe it, and at that precise moment we begin to process it.

When the emotion is simply seen for what it is without judgement, it no longer moves our limbs - or worse, our thoughts - automatically and unconsciously, but instead the strengths of the Io enter the astrality.

From the physical point of view, new synaptic connections are formed, which put the prefrontal lobe into contact with the limbic system, and this begins to change.

Passive thought - that which characterises our immediate and unconscious judgements - is rooted in unseen emotions that can be observed through a specific interior act.

This interior act, which leads to the presence and awareness of our interior life, aims at reaching contemplation of our thoughts and thus leads to a change in our encephalon through the construction of a New Man who can penetrate into his animal part, transforming it.

But here in fact we are already entering the realms of meditation.