The Neurotransmitter Revolution

Extraordinary advances in neurochemistry are both transforming our understanding of human nature and creating an urgent problem. Much is now known about the ways that neurotransmitters influence normal social behavior, mental illness, and deviance. What are these discoveries about the workings of the human brain? How can they best be integrated into our legal system? These explosive issues are best understood by focusing on a single neurotransmitter like serotonin, which is associated with such diverse behaviors as dominance and leadership, seasonal depression, suicide, alcoholism, impulsive homicide, and arson. This book brings together revised papers from a conference on this theme organized by the Gruter Institute for Law and Behavioral Research, supplemented with articles by leading scholars who did not attend. Contributors include psychiatrists, neurologists, social scientists, and legal scholars. The Neurotransmitter Revolution presents a unique survey of the scientific and legal implications of research on the way serotonin combines with other factors to shape human behavior. The findings are quite different from what might have been expected even a decade ago. The neurochemistry of behavior is not the same thing as genetic determinism. On the contrary, the activity of serotonin varies from one individual to another for many reasons, including the individual’s life experience, social status, personality, and diet. And there are a number of major neurotransmitter systems, each of which interacts with the other. Behavior, culture, and the social environment can influence neurochemistry along with inheritance. Nature and nurture interact—and these interactions can be understood from a vigorously scientific point of view. The fact that our actions are heavily influenced by neurotransmitters like serotonin is bound to be disquieting. A sophisticated understanding of law and human social behavior will be needed if our society is to respond adequately to these rapid advances in our knowledge. This book is an essential step in that direction, providing the first comprehensive survey of the biochemical, social, and legal considerations arising from research on the behavioral effects of serotonin and related neurotransmitters.

Written by the leading researchers in the field, this information-rich guide to improving your mood explains how gut health drives psychological well-being, and how depression and anxiety can be relieved by adjusting your intestinal bacteria. This groundbreaking book explains the revolutionary new science of psychobiotics and the discovery that your brain health and state of mind are intimately connected to your microbiome, that four-pound population of microbes living inside your intestines. Leading medical researchers John F. Cryan and Ted Dinan, working with veteran journalist Scott C. Anderson, explain how common mental health problems, particularly depression and anxiety, can be improved by caring for the intestinal microbiome. Science is proving that a healthy gut means a healthy mind—and this book details the steps you can take to change your mood and improve your life by nurturing your microbiome.

Is a baby whose personality has been chosen from a gene supermarket still a human? If we choose what we create what happens to morality? Is this the end of human nature? The dramatic advances in DNA technology over the last few years are the stuff of science fiction. It is now not only possible to clone human beings it is happening. For the first time since the creation of the earth four billion years ago, or the emergence of mankind 10 million years ago, people will be able to choose their children's' sex, height, colour, personality traits and intelligence. It will even be possible to create 'superhumans' by mixing human genes with those of other animals for extra strength or longevity. But is this desirable? What are the moral and political consequences? Will it mean anything to talk about 'human nature' any more? Is this the end of human beings? Our Posthuman Future is a passionate analysis of the greatest political and moral problem ever to face the human race.

This volume describes (a) the present academic and institutional status of Biopolitics and (b) the wide range of research areas that have emerged within the field.

Because our chemical environment affects our physical and mental well-being, it is a matter of increasing concern and is therefore attracting much research effort. This timely collection of essays highlights current developments in the field of environmental toxicology. Chapters analyze the carcinogenic, mutagenic, genotoxic, and neurotoxic effects of both anthropogenic and natural toxins in the soil, air, and water around us, as well as in our workplace and diet. The book also examines the effects of toxins on other organisms, as well as the techniques, policies, and management strategies employed in studying and controlling environmental pollutants. It will be an essential reference to a variety of personnel in environmental studies and public health.

This book demonstrates the increasing interest of some social scientists in the theories, research and findings of life sciences in building a more interdisciplinary approach to the study of politics. It discusses the development of biopolitics as an academic perspective within political science, reviews the growing literature in the field and presents a coherent view of biopolitics as a framework for structuring inquiry across the current subfields of political science.

Edited by acclaimed science writer and physicist James Trefil, the Encyclopedia's 1000 entries combine in-depth coverage with a vivid graphic format to bring every facet of science, technology, and medicine into stunning focus. From absolute zero to the Mesozoic era to semiconductors to the twin paradox, Trefil and his co-authors have an uncanny ability to convey how the universe works and to show readers how to apply that knowledge to everyday problems.

J. Daryl Charles urges the evangelical church to better equip (in character and moral vision) its pastors, leaders and members to constructively and effectively engage the ethical debates of the twenty-first century.