Brain Science—Neuroscientists
are gaining the ability to determine just how brain cells and circuits
function to enable cognition, emotion, and behavior. Advances in brain
imaging technologies are enhancing the practicality of approaches that
will image brain function in real time and over periods of development.
The challenge is to apply this fundamental knowledge, along with
information about how the brain changes as it develops and ages, to
reveal the exact brain regions that function incorrectly in depression
and bipolar disorder.
Genetics—The
completion of the draft sequence of the human genome provides enormous
impetus to ongoing efforts to identify the genes responsible for
vulnerability and resilience to depression and bipolar disorder. When
combined with growing knowledge of how these disorders are inherited
within families and with information about the environmental triggers
needed to activate vulnerability, the genetics revolution permits us to
anticipate one day using the word “cure” in the context of the mood
disorders.
Behavior—The
explosion in new knowledge about genetics, structure, and function of
the brain has challenged behavioral scientists to radically expand the
traditional boundaries and methods of their discipline to determine how
specific behaviors are directed and modified by genes, how behavior can
modify the brain, how behavioral therapies for mental disorders can be
strengthened, and how behavioral strategies for preventing the onset or
recurrence of depression and bipolar disorder can be refined.