Ms. Giffords's immediate responsiveness to commands, such as squeezing a doctor's hand, suggests that she wasn't in a coma and that her brain stem and the brain's core structures had relatively little damage.
Behaviors that we have assumed were learned through nurturing and social interaction may have at their core something that is programmed into the brain.
Africa shouldn't just focus on local problems but needs to aspire to be at the core of global science to stop the brain drain and make the best of its talent.
One alternative is a proposal that the NIMH has been developing for three years, called the Research Domain Criteria, which will move toward funding research that examines core biological features of illness shared by several disorders, such as problems in brain circuitry, rather than the current practice of focusing on symptoms specific to one disorder, according to Dr. Insel.