The Biology of Mental Disorders: Progress at Last - Steven E. Hyman

The heterogeneity of human brains reflects the variability of human genomes, which contain tens of millions of differences in their nucleotide sequences, the diversity of environ- mental exposures, and the many stochastic events that affect brain development, maturation, and adaptation.16 The resulting heterogeneity of brain structure and function underlies much of the rich temperamental, cognitiv. [...] The refinement of synaptic networks begins in the first years of life in occipital regions of the cere- bral cortex, where it results in binocular vision, the process through which the brain combines the complex mix of input signals from both eyes to create one im- age of the world. [...] Hyman, a Fellow of the American Academy since 2014, is Harvard Uni- versity Distinguished Service Professor and the Harald McPike Professor of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology at Harvard University; Director of the Stanley Cen- ter for Psychiatric Research; and a Core Institute Member at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. [...] National Institute of Mental Health, Provost of Harvard University, President of the Society for Neuro- science, President of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology, Found- ing President of the International Neuroethics Society, and Editor of the Annual Re- view of Neuroscience. [...] Such large numbers are needed to yield statistically signif- icant associations both because of the typically small effects of each of the common SNPs examined–and because of the need to correct for the multiple independent tests conducted in a GWAS reflecting the large number of loci on the microarray.