Mood Genes: Hunting For Origins of Mania And Depression (Penguin Press Science S.) - Softcover

Barondes, S.H.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140279504 ISBN 13: 9780140279504

Publisher: Penguin, 1999

Synopsis

We know that many physical characteristics are determined by genes. But do genes also affect mental characteristics, such as the way we feel? In this pioneering book, Samuel Barondes answers the question by focusing on two families with long histories of manic depressive illness. By tracing the path of this illness back through several generations, we learn ways to physically isolate the genes that influence human behaviour -- and to decipher their secrets. 'Barondes has a talent for making the complex comprehensible and allowing readers access to a medical detective story that is taking leaps forward in our own time' - Peter D. Kramer, author of Listening to Prozac

About this title

Review

About one in 100 people suffer from full-blown manic depressive illness. Many more of us experience milder versions of this condition. One of these mild forms, called hypomania, may even confer adaptive advantages on the lucky sufferer, bestowing optimism, charisma and creative thinking, tempered by bouts of mild depression which keep manias in check and serve as signals to others to offer compassion and help.

The search for the genetic basis of mania and depression is at once a major medical priority (one in five people with manic depression commit suicide), and merely the latest step in an age-old quest to understand what purpose emotions serve.

Each major paradigm of mind has its own anatomy of melancholy. Samuel Barondes traces these rival models of despond, from the earliest writings of psychotherapy, through modern psychiatry's progressive integration into hospital medicine, to the gathering of evidence to suggest that there is a genetic component to the disease. This possibility in particular is complicating--if not revolutionising--our ideas of human nature, nurture and identity.

Barondes' own story of how he came to be involved in the hunt for "mood genes" is a pacy, no-punches-pulled memoir offering insights into genetics both as an exercise in pure science and as a job of work with all its attendant political, professional and ethical dilemmas. Long after the findings discussed here have been superseded, Mood Genes deserves to be treasured as a fascinating account of a life in science. --Simon Ings

Review

"Himself a scientist of the highest caliber, Barondes has a talent for making the complex comprehensible and allowing readers access to a medical detective story that is taking leaps forward in our time."--Peter D. Kramer, author of Listening to Prozac and Should You Leave?
"Presented so clearly as to make the reader feel almost like an expert in the subject."--Scientific American
"An exciting gene hunt, written in comfortable and in parts racy prose by an authority in the field. "--Nature
"'Unputdownable' is a word one associates with thrillers rather than science books, but I found it hard to stop reading Mood Genes."--The New York Times Book Review
"Himself a scientist of the highest caliber, Barondes has a talent for making the complex comprehensible and allowing readers access to a medical detective story that is taking leaps forward in our time."--Peter D. Kramer, author of Listening to Prozac and Should You Leave?
"Presented so clearly as to make the reader feel almost like an expert in the subject."--Scientific American
"An exciting gene hunt, written in comfortable and in parts racy prose by an authority in the field. "--Nature
"'Unputdownable' is a word one associates with thrillers rather than science books, but I found it hard to stop reading Mood Genes."--The New York Times Book Review
"Himself a scientist of the highest caliber, Barondes has a talent for making the complex comprehensible and allowing readers access to a medical detective story that is taking leaps forward in our time."--Peter D. Kramer, author of Listening to Prozac and Should You Leave?
"Presented so clearly as to make the reader feel almost like an expert in the subject."--Scientific American
"An exciting gene hunt, written in comfortable and in parts racy prose by an authority in the field. "--Nature
"'Unputdownable' is a word one associates with thrillers rather than science books, but I found it hard to stop reading Mood Genes."--The New York Times Book Review
"Himself a scientist of the highest caliber, Barondes has a talent for making the complex comprehensible and allowing readers access to a medical detective story that is taking leaps forward in our time."--Peter D. Kramer, author of Listening to Prozac and Should You Leave?

"Presented so clearly as to make the reader feel almost like an expert in the subject."--Scientific American

"An exciting gene hunt, written in comfortable and in parts racy prose by an authority in the field. "--Nature

"'Unputdownable' is a word one associates with thrillers rather than science books, but I found it hard to stop reading Mood Genes."--The New York Times Book Review

Edition details

• Publisher: Penguin
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0140279504
• ISBN 13: 9780140279504
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256