Thomas R. Insel Quotations

When we talk about the brain, it is anything but unidimensional or simplistic or reductionistic.

I was sure I was going to be a doctor of global health or tropical medicine in some underdeveloped country.

Reports that online cognitive behavioral treatment can be as effective as in-person psychotherapy suggest that technology will expand access, extend the impact of a therapist, and expedite treatment for people who might not find 'seeing' a therapist acceptable.

I trained in psychiatry in the 1970s, and much of our training was about what was then psychoanalytic theory, with a little bit of theory from Jungian psychology and a few other places.

Sometimes, patients with serious mental illness, just as with other serious medical illnesses, require hospitalization. In the absence of available public or private hospital beds, there are few options.

We need to ask whether, in the long term, some individuals with a history of psychosis may do better off medication.

Unlike the heart or kidney, which have a small, defined set of cell types, we still do not have a taxonomy of neurons, and neuroscientists still argue whether specific types of neurons are unique to humans. But there is no disputing that neurons are only about 10 percent of the cells in the human brain.

What do we know about autism in 2013? Autism symptoms generally emerge before age three and usually much earlier, often as language delays or lack of social engagement. Recent research suggests that autism can be detected during the first year of life, even before classic symptoms emerge. Indeed, the symptoms may be a late stage of autism.

What causes autism? As far as we know in 2013, there is no single gene or single environmental factor that accounts for the more than 1 million Americans with ASDs.

A National Database on Autism Research is fostering sharing of data and collaborations. Scientists are also making great strides at the interface of biology and engineering with new technologies that are laying the groundwork for future advances.