For decades, the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), with its universal set of standards, has been widely considered the best tool for classifying and diagnosing mental illness. But medical psychiatry may be overdue for a biological revolution. In this Aeon interview, the US-based neuroscientist Claire Gillan describes breakthroughs in brain science that suggest mental illnesses should be reclassified, and explains how brain-scanning technologies that investigate the underlying biology could lead to more effective mental health therapies. Read the paper on Gillan’s research here.
Psychiatry is due for a revolution in diagnosis and treatment through brain science
1 March 2016
videoCognition and intelligence
Leaping from firing neurons to human behaviour is tempting, but it’s a perilous gap
3 minutes
videoCognition and intelligence
How a ‘periodic table’ of animal intelligence could help to root out human bias
5 minutes
videoNeuroscience
What will we do when neuroimaging allows us to reconstruct dreams and memories?
4 minutes
videoConsciousness and altered states
Why don’t we feel pain in dreams? The answer might lie in a new frontier of neuroscience
9 minutes
videoNeuroscience
What is your dog really thinking? MRI brain scans might soon provide the answer
7 minutes
videoMental health
The pioneering psychologist who proved that being gay isn’t a mental illness
7 minutes
videoSocial psychology
Social contagions can cause genuine illness, and TikTok may be a superspreader
10 minutes
videoBioethics
From identity politics to medicine, the DNA revolution demands a new bioethics
6 minutes
videoNeuroscience
Aristotle was wrong and so are we: there are far more than five senses
6 minutes