Molecules of the Mind

If you could inhibit the expression of Syt4 pharmacologically, would you make people resistant to the obesogenic effects of a high-fat diet?

This column has always been about the world of molecular mental health research. I revisit the technology in this column, now aimed at one of molecular neuropsychiatry’s most intractable, frustrating lines of research: the molecular/cellular basis of schizophrenia.

Gene therapy (sometimes called gene replacement therapy) attempts to ameliorate genetic-based disorders by introducing corrected genes into affected patients.

In this column, we explore how the judicious use of neural stem cells (NSCs) has led to a research Holy Grail: the creation of research-ready, patient-specific neurons.

One of the most remarkable discoveries in the field of life span alteration occurred in the past century and has to do with caloric restriction.

The neuroanatomical linkage that emerges from a normal part of business experience—the reaction to success and also to failure (especially if that failure happens to someone else)—is the focus of this column.

When I was a grad student—back in the Jurassic Era of molecular manipulations—my lab mates and I were all transfixed by the notion of a new technology: knockout animals (KOAs). This was because of its promise to solve a vexing problem.

I can almost hear Albert Ellis saying “Amen” to the data I am about to share. To explain his reaction, I have to talk about war.

Overly sensitive, aversive reactions to stress seem to run in families. The literature abounds with reports of relatives in these populations predisposed to depression, anxiety, and even suicide. Some family members present with glucocorticoid levels notched abnormally high, and in curiously deregulated concentrations. Behaviorally, they seem to exist at a permanent state of high alert.

There are a lot of temperamental Jerome Kagan moments in my friend’s household—an observation that will require this entire column to explain. What exactly is a temperamental moment? And who exactly is Jerome Kagan?