(5,000 words)
This online EDGE edition is available at:
http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge266.html
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THE THIRD CULTURE
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THE IMPRINTED BRAIN THEORY
By Christopher Badcock
According to a recent New York Times Science Times article ("In a Novel Theory of Mental Disorders, Parents' Genes Are in Competition" by Benedict Carey, November 10, 2008) Christopher Badcock and Bernard Crespi have presented a new theory that purports to resolve some long-standing contradictions in explaining mental illness.
Edge wrote to Badcock, an early member of the Edge community, to ask him for a summary of his new theory for our readers.
"At first sight," he wrote back in an email, "it would seem that no single theory could explain these seemingly contradictory facts-and certainly not an evolutionary or genetic one-but an attempt is underway to do exactly that which has just passed its first major test. In 2006 Bernard Crespi (Killam Research Professor in the Department of Biosciences, Simon Fraser University) and I published a paper in The Journal of Evolutionary Biology setting out the theory in relation to autism. Earlier this year Behavioral and Brain Sciences published a second paper along with 23 expert commentaries and the authors' replies which extends the idea to psychoses like schizophrenia. More recently still, Nature has published our essay on the theory ("Battle of Sexes May Set The Brain", 28 August 2008)."
Read on.
- John Brockman
CHRISTOPHER BADCOCK is a Reader in Sociology at the London School of Economics and the author of PsychoDarwinism and Evolutionary Psychology: A Clinical Introduction.
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THE REALITY CLUB
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Arnold Trehub on Alva Noë's "The Problem With Consciousness"
What Alva Noe and others with similar views about consciousness seemingly fail to understand is that the very world with which we are dynamically interacting is both a real and a phenomenal world. It is the real world in which our actions must be adaptive and creative, but-and this is the key point-our consciously initiated actions can only be governed by the features of our phenomenal world. It is the phenomenal world that poses the essential problem of conscious experience. ...
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ARTICLES OF NOTE
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ARTS & LETTERS DAILY
Essays and Opinion
Witch hunters in Africa lynch "thieves" who rob men of their masculinity. Many people's grasp of economics is at the same level. The Edge economics course is an curative... more» ... Class no. 1 ...
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THE NEW YORK TIMES
SCIENCE TIMES
In a Novel Theory of Mental Disorders, Parents' Genes Are in Competition"
By Benedict Carey
Two scientists, drawing on their own powers of observation and a creative reading of recent genetic findings, have published a sweeping theory of brain development that would change the way mental disorders like autism and schizophrenia are understood.
The theory emerged in part from thinking about events other than mutations that can change gene behavior. And it suggests entirely new avenues of research, which, even if they prove the theory to be flawed, are likely to provide new insights into the biology of mental disease.
At a time when the search for the genetic glitches behind brain disorders has become mired in uncertain and complex findings, the new idea provides psychiatry with perhaps its grandest working theory since Freud, and one that is grounded in work at the forefront of science. The two researchers - Bernard Crespi, a biologist at Simon Fraser University in Canada, and Christopher Badcock, a sociologist at the London School of Economics, who are both outsiders to the field of behavior genetics - have spelled out their theory in a series of recent journal articles. ...
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NATURE
ESSAY
Battle of the sexes may set the brain
A tug-of-war between the mother's and father's genes in the developing brain could explain a spectrum of mental disorders from autism to schizophrenia, suggest Christopher Badcock and Bernard Crespi. ...
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SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN
(COVER STORY)
ENCELADUS: SECRETS OF SATURN'S STRANGEST MOON
Wrinkled landscapes and spouting jets on Saturn's sixth-largest moon hint at underground waters
By Carolyn Porco
On the Saturnian moon Enceladus, jets of powdery snow and water vapor, laden with organic compounds, vent from the "tiger stripes," warm gashes in the surface. How can a body just over 500 kilometers across sustain such vigorous activity?
The answer may be the presence of underground fluids, perhaps a sea, which would increase the efficiency of heating by tidal effects. Support for this idea has come from recent flybys.
If Enceladus has liquid water, it joins Mars and Jupiter's moon Europa as one of the prime places in the solar system to look for extraterrestrial life. ...
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TODAY'S LEADING MINDS RETHINK EVERYTHING
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Forthcoming, Harper Perennial, January 6, 2009
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This online EDGE edition is available at:
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EDGE
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Copyright (c) 2008 by EDGE Foundation, Inc.
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