SERT
ddobbs | April 1, 2010
After I wrote in my Atlantic article about getting my serotonin transporter gene assayed (which revealed that I carry that gene's apparently more plastic short-short form), I started getting a lot of email â several a week â from readers asking how to have their SERT gene tested. This led to an interesting hunt.
It was a hard question to answer. I couldn't just tell people to do what I did, for a psychiatric researcher/MD I'd known for years, who specializes in depression and serotonin, had done mine as a sort of favor to science and journalism. That researcher also stood by, had I needed…
ddobbs | March 9, 2010
Jonah Lehrer's story on "Depression's Upside" has created quite a kerfuffle. The idea he explores â that depression creates an analytic, ruminative focus that generates useful insight â sits badly with quite a few people. It's not a brand-new idea, by any means; as Jonah notes, it goes back at least to Aristotle. But Jonah (who â disclosure department â is a friend; plus I write for the Times Magazine, where the piece was published) has stirred the pot with an update drawing from (among other things) a very long review paper published last year by psychiatric researchers Paul Andrews and…