The Balance Within: The Science Connecting Health and Emotions

Tells of research involving the elusive mind-body connection and what it means for our health. Provides firsthand accounts of experiments revealing the physical mechanisms used by the brain and immune system to communicate with each other. Describes how stress can make us more susceptible to illness, and how the immune system can alter moods. Sternberg is director of the Molecular, Cellular, and Behavioral Integrative Neuroscience Program and Chief of the Section on Neuroendocrine Immunology and Behavior at the National Institute of Mental Health and National Institutes of Health. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

ESTHER M. STERNBERG, M. D., is Director of the Molecular, Cellular, and Behavioral Integrative Neuroscience Program and Chief of the Section on Neuroendocrine Immunology and Behavior at the National Institute of Mental Health and National Institutes of Health. She was trained in rheumatology at McGill University and practiced medicine in Montreal before returning to a research career and teaching at Washington University in St. Louis. The winner of the Public Health Service Superior Service Award and President of the International Society for Neuroimmunomodulation, Dr. Sternberg has written over one hundred scientific papers, reviews, and book chapters on the subject of brain-immune connections, including articles in Scientific American and Nature Medicine. She has also co-directed an exhibition about emotions and disease at the National Library of Medicine and lectures nationally and internationally on emotions, health and disease.