The 1950s are now often remembered as a halcyon almost mythic time a time of growing material plenty when according to some the American Dream reached its apex But the halcyon Fifties were also a decade of intense social churn and equally strong anxiety about the consequences of that churn The scientific era was peculiarly inflected by the hopes and professional opportunities but also the profound unease even panic that accompanied the first decade of the Cold War – a decade in which the intense ideological and other pressures brought to bear on individuals and societies converged in remarkable ways with landmark developments in the sciences of brain and behavior In 1953 an international group of neuroscientists met at the Laurentian Symposium to discuss recent research that had forced reconsideration of the mystery of the relation between brain and mind Like Alice going down the rabbit hole or through the looking glass experiments with electrical stimulation of the brain flicker sensory deprivation mescal hypnosis and word association opened portals to strange realms and seemed to point to evidence of decoupling or dissociation of different brain systems - a failure of the integrative action that was a hallmark of consciousness They were experimenting in a decade marked not simply by revolutionary developments in brain science but also by an obsessive concern with the altered states of consciousness experienced by POWs undergoing interrogation or of individuals subjected to the bombardment of the mass media A recent account of developments in brain science during the 1950s calls it the most revolutionary decade in the history of the field one in which the essential foundations for the emergence of neuroscience in the late 20th century were laid But did the participants in this symposium see themselves as revolutionaries as participants in a great drama whose historical arc could already be glimpsed? It seems unlikely Yet as participants went on to demonstrate a new boldness marked the investigations of that era and those mid-century scientists opened up pathways to the future even while that future remained veiled in uncertainty – an uncertainty heightened by the ominous developments playing themselves out on the world political stage THE COLD WAR BRAIN follows this opening and explores the fraught political and social context in which mid-century sciences of the brain and behavior took shape