Posts by Former NIMH Director Thomas Insel about Basic Research
- Something Interesting is Happening
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By Thomas Insel on
Dr. Insel discusses how the Precision Medicine Initiative will create a new kind of patient-driven research, which is similar to how innovative companies have created a new share economy based on trust.
- Training for the Future
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By Thomas Insel on
Dr. Insel talks about the importance of incorporating neuroscience in the training of psychiatric residents and a new initiative to do that. The clinician of 2025 will need to know about the science of the brain.
- BRAIN Awareness
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By Thomas Insel on
March 16-22 is Brain Awareness Week, an opportunity to celebrate neuroscience. Dr. Insel talks about some exciting areas of research underway on the brain.
- Collaborative Care
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By Thomas Insel on
Dr. Insel lauds University of Washington psychiatrist and researchers Wayne Katon and the collaborative care approach for depression he helped develop.
- Immune to Stress?
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By Thomas Insel on
We tend to assume that the secrets to understanding individual differences in resilience to stress must be sought in the brain. Now, findings in mice suggest that the peripheral immune system might play a pivotal role.
- Precision Medicine for Mental Disorders
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By Thomas Insel on
In his latest blog, Dr. Insel discusses precision medicine, which is the new hot topic in research and what it means for mental health.
- What Caused This to Happen?
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By Thomas Insel on
Dr. Insel discusses the idea that chance may have as much to do with the development of mental illness as do genetic and environmental factors.
- Best of 2014
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By Thomas Insel on
Dr. Insel offers an overview of his top ten mental health stories for 2014.
- Lost in Translation
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By Thomas Insel on
Drug testing in mice has been a poor guide to effectiveness in humans; Dr. Insel talks about the need for research approaches that can more reliably guide medication development.
- P-Hacking
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By Thomas Insel on
In his blog, Dr. Insel talks about the reasons for problems with reproducibility in research, among them flawed use of statistical analysis.
- From My Data to Mined Data
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By Thomas Insel on
Dr. Insel discusses the importance of data sharing within the scientific community and highlights how NIMH is encouraging this process.
- Manipulating Memory
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By Thomas Insel on
Neurotechnologies are making it possible to finely tune brain circuitry to manipulate memory.
- Autism Awareness: April 2014
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By Thomas Insel on
Dr. Insel describes new scientific findings on autism, including new CDC prevalence data, being reported just as Autism Awareness Month begins.
- Ten Best of 2013
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By Thomas Insel on
Dr. Insel reviews his “top ten” selections for 2013, including research advances and historic policy changes affecting mental health care.
- P4C : Time = Lives
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By Thomas Insel on
Dr. Insel recaps the annual Partners for Cure (P4C) meeting, where the theme is to speed the delivery of new cures through innovative research models.
- One Person, Many Genomes
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By Thomas Insel on
The discovery that mutations unique to an individual are common in the brain changes, and complicates, the search for genes underlying brain disorders.
- In Vitro Veritas?
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By Thomas Insel on
With more than 100 common gene variants recently implicated in schizophrenia and autism, the problem now is to pinpoint how they might change brain circuits. A promising new tool is a sort of budding brain in a dish. What’s amazing – eclipsing earlier “disease-in-a-dish” discoveries – is that, over weeks and months, differentiating cells in these “organoids” organize themselves according to the architecture that we see in a functioning human brain.
- Accessing and Assessing Science: From PLOS to DORA
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By Thomas Insel on
In his blog, Dr. Insel discusses the challenge of assessing the quality of scientific research in a new era of open access publishing.
- Infantile Amnesia
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By Thomas Insel on
Dr. Insel describes how insights from research into why we do not retain memories from the first four years of life may help shed light on many aspects of memory.
- A Sampling of Summer Science
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By Thomas Insel on
Dr. Insel reports in his blog about intriguing findings published this summer on the genes and disruptions in brain circuitry involved in schizophrenia.
- Getting Serious About Mental Illnesses
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By Thomas Insel on
Dr. Insel explains the nuances of the term, “serious mental illness.”
- Open Data
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By Thomas Insel on
Dr. Insel talks about the value of data sharing and collaboration to promote innovation and scientific discovery.
- New Views into the Brain
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By Thomas Insel on
Dr. Insel talks about how a powerful new brain imaging technique will make it possible for scientists to investigate the brain in in an entirely new way, offering a preview of what scientists hope to achieve with tools developed as a result of the new BRAIN initiative.
- Making the Connection
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By Thomas Insel on
Dr. Insel’s blog makes the link between neuroscience and the national conversation on mental illness and gun violence; neuroscience research is the key to our being able to identify psychosis risk early and preempt the development of serious mental illness.
- Brain Awareness
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By Thomas Insel on
In a blog about Brain Awareness Month, NIMH Director Thomas Insel talks about the mysteries that remain to be solved about how the brain works.
- Roads Not Taken
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By Thomas Insel on
NIMH’s director talks about the need for research that explores the frontiers of science and funding efforts to encourage innovative research.
- A Decade of Perspective
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By Thomas Insel on
In looking back at ten years as NIMH director, Dr. Insel talks about the importance of rigorous science as the source of new, sometimes surprising, knowledge and ultimately, more effective means of prevention and treatment for mental illness.
- Summer Science
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By Thomas Insel on
Numerous provocative advances in neuroscience were reported during the summer of 2012.
- Time Matters – Why We Care So Much About Data Sharing
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By Thomas Insel on
Dr. Insel discusses the dynamics of data sharing in research.
- Research Domain Criteria -- RDoC
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By Thomas Insel on
The RDoC project is an experimental approach to classification of mental disorders that will serve as a framework for ongoing research.
- An Emerging Era of Big Data
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By Thomas Insel on
Dr. Insel discusses the emergence of “big data” and how open sharing of data could impact mental health research.
- The Long Paths to Breakthroughs
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By Thomas Insel on
Dr. Insel talks about how basic research can lead to potential treatments.
- Balancing Immediate Needs with Future Innovation
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By Thomas Insel on
Dr. Insel responds to discussion from the National Advisory Mental Health Council concerning the need to balance research funding for basic science and mental health services.
- NIMH’s Top 10 Research Advances of 2011
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By Thomas Insel on
Dr. Insel shares NIMH’s Top 10 Research Advances for 2011.
- Treatment Development: The Past 50 Years
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By Thomas Insel on
Dr. Insel discusses the state of psychiatric research and development (R&D) in the public and private sectors
- Neuroscience Advances Showcased in Washington
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By Thomas Insel on
Dr. Insel reflects on an exciting neuroscience conference where an increasing interest in neuropsychiatric disorders was evident.
- Travels Abroad Reveal Impressive Investment in Science
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By Thomas Insel on
Dr. Insel’s tour to Australia, Singapore, China and Japan reveal heavy investments in science and science education, indicating the time is ripe for collaboration.
- Mental Illness Defined as Disruption in Neural Circuits
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By Thomas Insel on
Research on neural circuits is changing how mental illnesses are understood and may ultimately lead to new ways to treat brain disorders early enough to prevent symptoms.
- Skin cells to neurons: Disease-in-a-dish promises shortcut to discovery
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By Thomas Insel on
An emerging research technology using Induced pluripotent stem cells holds promise as a window into the developing brain in mental illness.
- New Findings Reveal New Worlds In Neuroscience
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By Thomas Insel on
Windows to completely new areas of research have been opened recently by research efforts in basic science. These reports force us to consider factors that have not previously been thought to have any role in mental health or illness.
- NIMH’s Top 10 Research Events and Advances of 2010
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By Thomas Insel on
10 breakthroughs and events of 2010 which are changing the way we approach mental disorders.
- From Cognition to Genomics: Progress in Schizophrenia Research
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By Thomas Insel on
This blog outlines recent progress in schizophrenia research, citing a special issue of the journal Nature focusing on schizophrenia.
- Microbes and Mental Illness
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By Thomas Insel on
Increasing evidence linking strep infection to OCD in children suggests that microbiomics may prove an important research area for understanding and treating mental disorders.
- NIMH’s BRAINS Awards—In Support of Creativity
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By Thomas Insel on
NIMH recognizes the first seven recipients of its BRAINS awards.
- NIMH Basic Science Support: Busting Myths
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By Thomas Insel on
NIMH has always and will continue to support cutting edge basic science research. Understanding normal functioning of brain-behavior relationships is critical to providing insight into abnormal brain-behavior relationships. To build a translational bridge we will need a very strong foundation in basic science. This foundation will need to be multidisciplinary and cut across species and levels of analysis.