How could I return to ordinary life after my son died? My grief was overwhelming, spilling into every task and coloring every interaction. Condolences triggered fresh crying jags. I wondered how my eyes could produce so many tears.

Over time, however, my work began to draw me in again, demanding that I return to the scientific questions that had defined my career. The discipline of research began to reassert itself, requiring that I take on the necessary but unrelenting work of writing grant proposals and papers, the data analysis, the meetings with colleagues and team members. I settled into a routine, willing myself to ignore the images and memories of Bill.

Yet underlying these tasks was a persistent internal dialogue that haunted me. Why hadn’t I been able to save him? What biological mechanisms made him so relentlessly ill? Could more effective treatments have altered the outcome? Gradually, these questions redirected the focus of my work, one that I continue to pursue. Having long studied the neurobiology of major depression, I began to concentrate on developing new treatments for bipolar disorder, the illness that had claimed my son’s life.

The broad emphasis of my research, which focused on major depression, had always been about reasons for altered brain structure, dysfunctional connections in brain circuits, and how treatment might help reshape these abnormalities. These brain features are queried using neuroimaging studies and related to patient experience with extensive inventories of symptoms and history. How does the

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