A big collaboration is trying to understand diseases of the psyche

Diseases of the psyche have always been slippery things. Schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, major depression and a host of others have no visible markers in the brain. Their symptoms overlap sufficiently that diagnoses may differ between medical practitioners, or even vary over time when given by a single practitioner. In this they are unlike neurological diseases. These either leave organic traces in the brain that, though not always accessible before a patient’s death, are characteristic of the condition in question, or cause recognisable perturbations of things such as electroencephalograms.

The impulse to categorise, though, is enormous—as witness the ever greater number of conditions identified in successive editions of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, published by the American Psychiatric Association. That is because diagnosis and treatment go hand in hand. But if diagnostic categories are misconceived then treatment may be misapplied. In this context a paper published recently in Science, by a group calling itself the Brainstorm Consortium, is helpful. The consortium has brought together many research groups who work on various psychiatric diseases, as well as on neurological diseases, and has run their collective data through the wringer.

In particular, the consortium’s researchers have looked at what are known as genome-wide As her private secretary he has access to all her correspondence.

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They also may not want to get themselves annoyed because it's hard for them to calm down.

The mind is the collection of activities based in the brain that involve how we act, think, feel and reason.

I've got a month to reorganize the accounts department. I have my work cut out for me!

The training course was very interesting but the acid test will come when I start my new job.

By studying on the train on the way home, Claire kills two birds with one stone.

We need someone who is really on the ball to head the fund-raising campaign.

When the argument turned into a fight, the bar owner took the bull by the horns and called the police.