Word: mental
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...series of mental lapses at the close of the third quarter afforded UMass ample scoring opportunities, and the team netted four goals in just under three minutes of play. At that point, the powerful Minutemen commanded a 9-3 lead and cruised comfortably through the final eight minutes to emerge victorious...
Feeling the mental boost resulting from these two victories, the Crimson believes that it found the magic-and spirit-needed to conquer its Ivy League foes this weekend...
...small subset of these brain chemicals, especially serotonin, evidently serves an entirely different purpose. As Steven Hyman, director of the National Institute of Mental Health, describes it, "These neurotransmitters modulate raw information and give it its emotional tone." Northwestern University psychiatrist James Stockard puts it more poetically: "A person's mood is like a symphony, and serotonin is like the conductor's baton." Other neurotransmitters help us know our stomachs are full; serotonin tells us whether we feel satisfied. Other chemicals help us perceive the water level in a glass; serotonin helps us decide whether we will think...
With such a broad neurological portfolio, it is no wonder these mood-changing brain chemicals have been implicated in so many mental disorders. And it is not surprising that serotonin appears to be especially important--the first among equals, in a sense. The nerve cells that specialize in serotonin production originate in the raphe nuclei, in a region right atop the spine that nimh's Hyman calls "the deep basement of the brain." From there, these neurons extend vinelike projections called axons up through the brain and down into the spinal column. The axons form a sort of neurological interstate...
...course, the sensitive issue of intelligence. Many people think of the SAT as a genetic marker every bit as clinical as that contained in a syringe of blood. The folks who believe this are mistaken. But even the politically correct position--that "intelligence" is actually a bundle of different mental capabilities that people have in varying amounts, and that these capabilities can be strongly affected by environmental factors--leaves room for a large genetic component. Few Ashkenazi Jews, I suspect, would trade their genes for a random draw from the gene pool, whatever their fear of colon cancer and whatever...