Our Genes, Our Choices: How Genotype and Gene Interactions Affect Behavior

Our Genes, Our Choices: How Genotype and Gene Interactions Affect Behavior — First Prize winner of the 2013 BMA Medical Book Award for Basic and Clinical Sciences — explains how the complexity of human behavior, including concepts of free will, derives from a relatively small number of genes, which direct neurodevelopmental sequence. Are people free to make choices, or do genes determine behavior? Paradoxically, the answer to both questions is "yes," because of neurogenetic individuality, a new theory with profound implications.

Author David Goldman uses judicial, political, medical, and ethical examples to illustrate that this lifelong process is guided by individual genotype, molecular and physiologic principles, as well as by randomness and environmental exposures, a combination of factors that we choose and do not choose.

Written in an authoritative yet accessible style, the book includes practical descriptions of the function of DNA, discusses the scientific and historical bases of genethics, and introduces topics of epigenetics and the predictive power of behavioral genetics.

First Prize winner of the 2013 BMA Medical Book Award for Basic and Clinical SciencesPoses and resolves challenges to moral responsibility raised by modern genetics and neuroscienceAnalyzes the neurogenetic origins of human behavior and free will Written by one of the world's most influential neurogeneticists, founder of the Laboratory of Neurogenetics at the National Institutes of Health

Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION Chapter 2:  The Jinn in the genome Chapter 3: 2B or not 2B? Chapter 4: Stephen Mobley and his X-chromosome Chapter 5: Dial Multifactorial for Murder: The intersection of genes and culture Chapter 6: Distorted capacity: The measure of the impaired will Chapter 7: Distorted capacity: Neuropsychiatric diseases and the impaired will Chapter 8: Inheritance of Behavior and Genes “For” Behavior Gene Wars Chapter 9:  The scientific and historic bases of genethics: Who watches the geneticists and by what principles? Chapter 10: The world is double helical DNA, RNA and proteins, in a few easy pieces Chapter 11:  The stochastic brain: From DNA blueprint to behavior Chapter 12:  Reintroducing genes and behavior Chapter 13:  Warriors and Worriers Chapter 14:  How many genes does it take to make a behavior? Chapter 15:  The genesis and genetics of sexual behavior Chapter 16:  Gene x environment interaction Chapter 17: The epigenetic revolution: Finding the imprint of the environment on the genome Chapter 18:  DNA on Trial Chapter 19:  Parents and children: Neurogenetic determinism and  Neurogenetic individuality Chapter 20: Summing up genetic predictors of behavior

Glossary Suggested readings Index