Thomas R. Insel
Thomas R. Insel
Thomas Roland Inselis an American neuroscientist and psychiatrist who led the National Institute of Mental Healthfrom 2002 until November 2015. Prior to becoming Director of NIMH, he was Director of the Center for Behavioral Neuroscience at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. He is best known for research on oxytocin and vasopressin, two peptide hormones implicated in complex social behaviors, such as parental care and attachment. He announced on Sept. 15, 2015, that he was resigning as the director of the...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionScientist
Date of Birth19 October 1951
CountryUnited States of America
My philosophy is really based on humility. I don't think we know enough to fix either diagnostics or therapeutics. The future of psychiatry is clinical neuroscience, based on a much deeper understanding of the brain.
After a century of studying schizophrenia, the cause of the disorder remains unknown.
For bipolar in adults, I think there's pretty good agreement about what this looks like. For bipolar in children, there is some considerable debate about where are the boundaries. At the mild end, are these just kids who are active? Is this the class clown at the very severe - is this something other than a mood disorder?
Neuroscientists talk a lot about brain circuits. In fact, the word 'circuit' is probably misleading. We do not know where most circuits begin and end. And unlike an electrical circuit, brain connections are heavily reciprocal and recursive, so that a direction of information flow can be inferred but sometimes not proven.
The Holy Grail of neuroscience has been to understand how and where information is encoded in the brain.
With the implementation of the Affordable Care Act and the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act, more people will have insurance coverage and, in principle, be eligible for more care.
As a scientist leading a funding agency for autism research, I think of autism as a neurodevelopmental disorder.
The good-news stories in medicine are early detection, early intervention.
From wearable sensors to video game treatments, everyone seems to be looking to technology as the next wave of innovation for mental health care.