Cerebrum : the Dana forum on brain science最新文献

About 30 percent of all people suffering from depression do not respond adequately to available treatments. Our author, a leading researcher in the field of antidepressants, says that the rediscovery of a promising, yet problematic, drug called ketamine is the most significant breakthrough for treating depression in half a century. Will ketamine inspire the next generation of antidepressants?

As our author writes, "what distinguishes humans from other species is not how small or large, dense or scarce our cortical neurons are, but simply how many of them we have to do the job of navigating through life." This article is the first of two that will address the development of the human brain. Both articles examine the biological grounds of human uniqueness.

After a distinguished career as a professor at Emory University and San Diego State University, this left-handed author-whose mother was also a southpaw-examines left-handedness in the context of studies that have contested the classifications and meanings of disability, forcing researchers to re-examine their assumptions and attitudes about disability while challenging public policies aimed at them.

Our author has adapted a chapter from his forthcoming book, Chasing Men on Fire: The Story of the Search for a Pain Gene, to provide the fascinating tale of how he and his research team discovered a gene for pain. As he writes, "as exhilarating as it was to indict Nav1.7 as a major player in pain, that was just the beginning of a longer story. That story may change the way we treat pain.".

The study of subjective experience represents a significant challenge to cognitive scientists, but one that is beginning to be increasingly addressed. Subjectivity renders experience less amenable to traditional objective scientific measurements than other subject matter. Our authors believe that when seeking to understand the mind, subjectivity must ultimately be investigated and understood.

Depression is one of the world's most prevalent mental health problems, with as many as 350 million sufferers worldwide and close to 20 million sufferers in the US. While neuroimaging applications for identifying various types of depression have made enormous strides in recent years, no findings have been sufficiently replicated or considered significant enough to warrant application in clinical settings. Our authors are well equipped to tell us what the future may bring.

Buddhism shares with science the task of examining the mind empirically. But Buddhism has pursued, for two millennia, direct investigation of the mind through penetrating introspection. Neuroscience, on the other hand, relies on third-person knowledge in the form of scientific observation. In the book that is the subject of this review, two friends, one a Buddhist monk trained as a molecular biologist, and the other, a distinguished neuroscientist, offer their perspectives on the mind, the self, consciousness, the unconscious, free will, epistemology, meditation, and neuroplasticity.

New knowledge about microglia is so fresh that it's not even in the textbooks yet. Microglia are cells that help guide brain development and serve as its immune system helpers by gobbling up diseased or damaged cells and discarding cellular debris. Our authors believe that microglia might hold the key to understanding not just normal brain development, but also what causes Alzheimer's disease, Huntington's disease, autism, schizophrenia, and other intractable brain disorders.

A primary function of my role is asking top neuroscientists to write about the latest developments in their specialty areas for lay readers. If they agree to the assignment, I encourage them to use-whenever possible-conversational language, anecdotes, storytelling, and their own voice in communicating what are often complex and hard-to-explain topics. Another option might be to suggest they read Alan Alda's new book before they begin.

It wasn't until 2002 that more than 150 neuroscientists, bioethicists, doctors of psychiatry and psychology, philosophers, and professors of law and public policy came together to chart the boundaries, define the issues, and raise some of the ethical implications tied to advances in brain research. On the 15 ^th anniversary of the Neuroethics: Mapping the Field conference in San Francisco, we asked three of the original speakers to reflect on how far the neuroethics field has come in 15 years-and where the field may be going in the next 15.