What effect will deciphering the human genome have on understanding behavioral science and mental disorders?
Insel: Sidney Brenner mentioned an analogy a few months ago. He said that having the human genome sequenced is like having the white pages of the phone book; it’s really helpful if you know who you’re looking for, but if you don’t know who you’re looking for (which is the case we’re in), you need the yellow pages. So I think for us the challenge is going to be in developing the yellow pages. Once we have genes categorized into functional families we’ll have a much better sense of how the human genome operates. That’s about 25 years worth of work but that I think it is going to be the real challenge for us. But then, in the last five years there has been clear progress real progress in identifying vulnerability genes for schizophrenia. NQ: How important are early experience, maternal care, and genetics on the development of depression and other disorders that occur later in life? Insel: For the last 10 years or so, NIMH researchers have focused heavily on trying to pull out the genes fo
