I grew up to study the brain because I have a brother who has been diagnosed with a brain disorder: schizophrenia. And as a sister and later, as a scientist, I wanted to understand why is it that I can take my dreams, I can connect them to my reality, and I can make my dreams come true. What is it about my brother's brain and his schizophrenia that he cannot connect his dreams to a common and shared reality, so they instead become delusion? 我之所以选择学习脑科是因为我的一个弟弟被诊断大脑功能紊乱，用专业点的说法就是精神分裂症。作为姐姐，到后来是作为科学家，我十分想了解为什么我们会做梦，而且能够将做的梦和现实联系起来，更有可能会梦想成真。我弟弟的大脑到底是怎么了？ 他得的精神分裂症就是他不能将他做的梦和普通的现实结合起来，所以相反的就形成了幻觉。 So I dedicated my career to research into the severe mental illnesses. And I moved from my home state of Indiana to Boston, where I was working in the lab of Dr. Francine Benes, in the Harvard Department of Psychiatry. And in the lab, we were asking the question, "What are the biological differences between the brains of individuals who would be diagnosed as normal control, as compared with the brains of individuals diagnosed with schizophrenia, schizoaffective or bipolar disorder?" 因此我致力于研究这些严重的精神疾病。 而且我也从印第安纳州搬到波士顿， 在那里，我可以在哈佛精神病学， 在实验过程中，我们会一直询问： “从生物学的角度来说，个体与个体的究竟在哪里？ 那些被诊断为精神分裂症，精神压抑的混乱症状或者 大脑功能极端紊乱的病人相比， 他们和那些大脑控制功能正常的人有什么区别？” So we were essentially mapping the microcircuitry of the brain: which cells are communicating with which cells, with which chemicals, and then in what quantities of those chemicals? So there was a lot of meaning in my life because I was p...
