After his first book, “Your Brain on Food: How Chemicals Control Your Thoughts and Feelings,” came out in August, I sat down with psychology Professor Gary L. Wenk to discuss his writing process, experiences and hopes for the book. But I had to ask about what I consider to be a misleading title. And I couldn’t leave without determining whether his research on drugs involved experimentation or whether he believes religion and science are mutually exclusive.

The book explores some complex processes that occur within the brain, but I thought you explained them in a way that is relatively easy to follow, even for someone with little background knowledge on the subject. You also intersperse humorous anecdotes with academic text. Why did you decide to write this type of book?

“I’ve been teaching the course that is this book (Psychology 305: Drugs and Behavior) for a long time, and it has always been to large groups of undergraduates who feel immortal. Because most of my students are well below the point where their frontal lobes are working, I get lots of great stories. People will frequently bring a vial into class and say, ‘I took this last night.’ But my approach to the class is to never be judgmental. I’m not their father. I’m just there to talk about drugs and the brain. So I get a lot of testimonials. (Students) are just curious, and it’s hard to get unbiased and reliable information. That is why I wrote the book.”

So would you say the book’s target audience is college students?

“It’s definitely targeted to students, seniors in high school, parents certainly, and believe it or not, physicians. When I trained physicians, one thing that I discovered is that when docs are out for 10, 15, 20 years, they feel as though they don’t understand what the drugs they’re giving are doing. Since they have been out, a lot of drugs have been introduced. Drug reps don’t tell them what’s going on, so I wrote it for them, too.”

The book is about 200 pages. How long did it take you to write it?

“I researched it for 30 years, really, because I know my lectures and I would always update them when things would come up. It was a lot of detail that if I were to have just sat down and tried to do this, it would have been awfully hard to do. The stories took time to collect. The actual writing took about two-and-a-half years, which still seems like a long time. It ended up being at least twice the length, and then we just trimmed out stories. There was also a lot of detail that made it ‘textbooky’ that we took out to try to make it more user-friendly.”

While you researched the drugs mentioned in the book, did you ever experiment?

“I’m very embarrassed to say, ‘No.’ Wait a minute, I’m proud to say, ‘No.’ That can go either way. People always assume I have. Certainly a lot of people I knew did. A lot of my colleagues would tell me stories of ex-roommates who are now lawyers or professors who were deeply into some of these things back in the ‘70s. But no, I never did, which is a shame because it would have been neat to have some insight.”

Was it a struggle to get it published?

“I knew two people who could vouch for me. That was a big part of it. The second thing, far more important, I discovered, is when they write back to you, they will say, ‘What have you done so far? Show us the outline.’ And when I wrote back to them, I already had like 90 percent of it written. That got their attention because it meant, ‘Wow, this could actually happen.’ So no, it wasn’t that hard. I thought it would be a lot harder. I think I got lucky because I happened to have people say, ‘This person might be someone useful.’ You need to know someone who can vouch for your writing.”

So does that make you want to write another book – now that you know you have those connections?

“No! It was a challenge. It was fun. Now there are other things to do.”

The book has only been out for about a month, but what has the reaction been so far?

“Publishers Weekly” reviewed it, liked it, gave it a good review. There are a couple reviews online from obviously ex-students who liked it. “Scientific American” gave it a good review. “Seed Magazine” is coming out with a review that is really positive. So far so good. I have gotten some excerpts online, though, that are frightening and bizarre. One guy said, ‘You old fart, I’m looking forward to when you die.'”

Have you had any comments on the religious aspect? At one point in the book, you ask, “What if our cherished thoughts, such as of God, and our deepest emotions, such as love, are simply the result of biochemical reaction.” Then you go on to explain, “The number of type 5HT-1A serotonin receptors in the brain is inversely correlated with self-ratings of religiosity and spirituality.”

“Actually, I was browsing the book’s title on Google and found that someone had taken an excerpt from the book, and people were responding to it. And they were very unhappy about it. They said I was taking away from the spirituality. But what is interesting is that for a number of years, I talked about that in class, expecting that somebody might say something, but that never happened.”

You did leave some room for spirituality, though. Near the end of that section, you said, “Perhaps these changes in the brain activity that neuroscientists are observing with their modern scanners are simply the brain’s response to an actual communication from God!”

“A student who worked in my lab wrote to me and said, ‘I liked that section. I thought it was very thought-provoking.’ But she didn’t like the ending. She said, ‘You know, it sounded to me like you copped out.’ I didn’t feel like it was a cop-out. I felt like it was balanced.”

Do you believe that religion and science are mutually exclusive?

“No, I don’t. I think they need to exist together and can easily do so. I don’t go to the Bible and find out how a neuron works just as I don’t go to a biology text to find out what people think about after they die. They provide vastly different types of feedback to us.”

One thing I liked about the book is the way you incorporated references to history and literature.

“The perspective it offers is helpful. It’s nice to know that your grandparents at the turn of the century were addicted to cocaine. It kind of means that there is something characteristic about our brains.”

Tell me about the title. It seemed misleading, as the book focuses on different types of drugs and the way they affect the brain.

“I discovered that I, as the author, do not have the right to choose the cover or the title. I brought that up a number of times to the editors. I actually had a dozen titles over the years as I was writing it. My favorite was ‘Brain Café.’ I thought that would be fun. But you’re right, it’s not food – it’s barely food. I sent them a bunch of alternatives, and they let me put the subtitle in. But if they let me do a second edition, I want to put in more illustrations, more food references and a glossary.”

Now that you have this book under your belt, what are your goals for the future?

“I’m back to research. I do research right now on coffee and marijuana. I study animal models of Alzheimer’s disease. We know that people who drink a lot of coffee every day tend not to get Parkinson’s. Now we’re thinking it might be good for Alzheimer’s. People who smoked marijuana in the 1960s or ‘70s are now becoming 60 and 70 years old, and they’re not getting Alzheimer’s. But I’m not advocating it. We work at the level of a puff a day, which you could imagine as a patch. So this isn’t trying to get you high. But the impact is amazing. So that’s what we’re doing. We’re trying to find a way to slow the aging of your brain.”

“Your Brain on Food: How C
hemicals Control Your Thoughts and Feelings,” published in hardcover by Oxford University Press, retails for $29.95.