Robert H. Belmaker – författare

As understanding evolves about how different brain regions are involved in carrying out everyday tasks -- and in causing brain diseases when they go awry -- this book describes a new technology that allows physicians to focally stimulate the brain in awake adults through a non-invasive procedure. Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation in Clinical Psychiatry is an accessible and authoritative review of TMS, a procedure that is showing promise as a treatment in several disorders. Its authors explain how the procedure works, then the latest findings in a wide range of situations -- notably in depression, but also in other conditions ranging from migraine to stroke recovery.

This concise overview of TMS offers practical guidance for psychiatrists and other clinicians using it as a therapy, or referring their patients to have this done, as well as updating the field for neuroscientists and neurologists. It begins with background on the physics and safety of TMS, a guide for administering the procedure, and a review of basic neurophysiological studies with TMS, showing how it can be used to measure connectivity and excitability of the cerebral cortex. The heart of book is then devoted to its clinical applications, organized by disorder: • Epilepsy, movement disorders, and pain -- describes the use of TMS in inducing and inhibiting seizures and investigating their pathophysiology; in treating Parkinson''s disease; and in relieving pain through motor cortex stimulation• Major depression -- provides a critical review of research in the most-studied clinical application of TMS in psychiatry, where it is used as a therapeutic intervention and a neurophysiological probe• Mania -- explores the effectiveness of TMS in light of its ECT-like properties through a trial of right TMS vs. sham TMS• Anxiety disorders -- reports on investigations on the uses of TMS in treating obsessive-compulsive disorder and posttraumatic stress disorder• Schizophrenia -- reviews studies utilizing single- or paired-pulse TMS to assess cortical inhibition and those that explore effects of extended trains of repetitive TMS in altering symptoms

A further chapter on TMS in brain imaging shows how integrating imaging and TMS allows one to better place the TMS coil, better understand TMS effects on the brain, and improve understanding of how the brain mediates behavior. With a concluding overview of prospects for the future of repetitive TMS, this volume offers a definitive look at this cutting-edge research and provides critical guidance on how and when clinicians might use TMS in their practice.

In the 1960''s and 1970''s, personality and mental illness were conceptualized in an intertwined psychodynamic model. Biological psychiatry for many un-weaved that model and took mental illness for psychiatry and left personality to psychology. This book brings personality back into biological psychiatry, not merely in the form of personality disorder but as part of a new intertwined molecular genetic model of personality and mental disorder. This is the beginning of a new conceptual paradigm!!

This breakthrough volume marks the beginning of a new era, an era made possible by the electrifying pace of discovery and innovation in the field of molecular genetics. In fact, several types of genome maps have already been completed, and today''s experts confidently predict that we will have a smooth version of the sequencing of the human genome -- which contains some 3 billion base pairs

Such astounding progress helped fuel the development of this remarkable volume, the first ever to discuss the brand-new -- and often controversial -- field of molecular genetics and the human personality. Questioning, critical, and strong on methodological principles, this volume reflects the point of view of its 35 distinguished contributors -- all pioneers in this burgeoning field and themselves world-class theoreticians, empiricists, clinicians, developmentalists, and statisticians.

For students of psychopathology and others bold enough to hold in abeyance their understandable misgivings about the conjunction of "molecular genetics" and "human personality," this work offers an authoritative and up-to-date introduction to the molecular genetics of human personality. The book, with its wealth of facts, conjectures, hopes, and misgivings, begins with a preface by world-renowned researcher and author Irving Gottesman. • The authors masterfully guide us through Chapter 1, principles and methods; Chapter 4, animal models for personality; and Chapter 11, human intelligence as a model for personality, laying the groundwork for our appreciation of the remaining empirical findings of human personality qua personality.• Many chapters (6, 7, 9, 11, and 13) emphasize the neurodevelopmental and ontogenetic aspects of personality, with a major emphasis on the receptors and transporters for the neurotransmitters dopamine and serotonin. Though these neurotransmitters are a rational starting point now, the future undoubtedly will bring many other candidate genes that today cannot even be imagined, given our ignorance of the genes involved in the prenatal development of the central nervous system. • Chapter 3 provides an integrative overview of the broad autism phenotype, and as such will be of special interest to child psychiatrists. Chapters 5, 8, and 10 offer enlightening information on drug and alcohol abuse. Chapter 14 discusses variations in sexuality.• Adding balance and mature perspectives on how all the chapters complement and sometimes challenge one another are Chapter 2, written by a major figure in the renaissance of the relevance to psychopathology of both genetics and personality; Chapters 15-17, informed critical appraisals citing concerns and cautions about premature applications of this information in the policy arena; and Chapter 18, a judicious contemplation by the editors themselves of this promising -- and, to some, alarming -- field.

Clear and meticulously researched, this eminently satisfying work is written to introduce the subject to postgraduate students just beginning to develop their research skills, to interested psychiatric practitioners, and to informed laypersons with some scientific background.