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Cerebrum 2001

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Ah, Sweet Skunk! Why We Like or Dislike What We Smell

A Brown University psychology professor who became enchanted with the smell of skunk as a little girl mounts a compelling argument that nothing smells great, and nothing stinks, but experience makes it so.

By: Rachel S. Herz, Ph.D.

Cerebrum

Tantalizing Clues to Preventing Schizophrenia

Never cured, but treated with growing success, schizophrenia is gradually yielding its secrets—genetic, physiological, and social—to scientists.

By: Richard J. Wyatt, M.D., Ioline Henter, Elizabeth Sherman-Elvy, Ph.D.

Cerebrum

The Ancient Art of Acupuncture Meets Modern Cardiology

Acupuncture has been evolving within Chinese traditional medicine for 4,000 years, but science is only beginning to pin down when, how, and why it works.

By: John C. Longhurst, M.D., Ph.D.

Cerebrum

A Revolution in Brain Literacy

By the end of the Decade of the Brain, Americans had new insights, attitudes, and expectations about the brain. How did we achieve a near revolution in brain literacy and will it prepare us to cope with the tough questions that brain research is raising?

By: Norbert R. Myslinski, Ph.D.

Cerebrum

Dying to Kill: The Mind of the Terrorist

What does it take to transform the human brain into a biological weapon of mass murder?

By: Silvia H. Cardoso, Ph.D., Paul B. Davis, Norbert Herschkowitz, M.D., Elinore Chapman Herschkowitz, M.A., Debra Niehoff, Ph.D., Richard Restak, M.D., Carl Goldberg, Ph.D.

Cerebrum

A Neurologist Looks Ahead to 2025

Pioneering neurologist Guy McKhann looks at how our understanding of the brain, and the capabilities of neurology, have changed over a quarter of a century.

By: Guy McKhann, M.D.

Cartoon of pills and razor blades
Cerebrum

Suicide in the Young: An Essay

Although suicide is at last being viewed as a public health issue, says psychiatrist and best-selling author Kay Redfield Jamison, we are still doing far less than we could to stop this “preventable tragedy.”

By: Kay Redfield Jamison, Ph.D.

Cerebrum

Is Impulsive Aggression the Critical Ingredient?

Our understanding of suicide is changing for the better, but this alone may not be enough to save many young lives. If we equate the treatment of depression and other psychological disorders with prevention of suicide, we may leave out the essential (and likely genetic) aspect of suicide that turns psychopathology and social problems into the terrible act of self-murder. The first lesson of David Brent’s article is that self-destructive behavior that seems as complex as life itself, and as beyond our coping, may become intelligible when viewed as a specific brain disorder. So it may be with suicide by children, adolescents, and young adults, where a swirling constellation of familial, societal, and psychological factors begin to point in a common direction: toward the impulsively aggressive personality. The second lesson is that the role of genetic inheritance in most brain disorders will prove to be complex. Brent traces how the genetic roots of impulsive aggressiveness interact with those of psychiatric illness. In the end, it is more hopeful to think that youth suicide continues at an appalling rate not because we are helpless, but because we only think we understand it.

By: David A. Brent, M.D.

Cerebrum

Mastering Our Brain’s Electrical Rhythms

Today the biochemical approach to brain function is in ascendancy, leaving a tiny group of researchers to continue exploring how we can harness the brain’s electrical rhythms and what neurofeedback can mean for our health and for peak performance of the normal brain.

By: Lester G. Fehmi, Ph.D., Jim Robbins

Cerebrum

A Plague of Pain

Migraine’s Long Road to Respect

Patients and healers have long sought ways to cope with the pain of migraine headaches. Only recently have they turned for an answer to the brain itself. The results are promising.

By: David W. Dodick, M.D.

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