Reacción a "A global consortium analyzes neuropsychiatric diseases cell by cell"

Attempting to map the labyrinth of genetic regulation in the brain is a commendable task that deserves both recognition and caution regarding the expectations it may generate. While it can bring us closer to the biological correlation of those disorders of a more organic or neurological nature, it can contribute little to explaining the nature of mental disorders, where contextual factors such as upbringing, social determinants, biographical experiences, and interpersonal relationships are crucial. Neuroscientist and Nobel laureate in Medicine Eric Kandel said that science lacks rules to explain how subjective experience, consciousness, arises from interconnected nerve cells.

Basic research on cellular study and its genetic regulation cannot account for the complexity of the human being in its incessant interrelation with the cultural and social environment. Mental problems cannot be reduced to underlying molecular causes, although, of course, the brain is the biological substrate of our ideas, emotions, and behaviors. This absence of linear causality makes it impossible for possible advances in brain molecular genetics to have a clinical translation in the care of people's psychological suffering.