At the University of Michigan Behavorial Science Center (MHRI), they have been doing some really interesting work there since the 1960s.
Here's a synopsis. You might find their studies quite interesting.
http://www.med.umich.edu/mhri/ ....About MHRI
While fundamental research takes place in multiple settings in the Department of Psychiatry, the single greatest concentration of basic work takes place at the Mental Health Research Institute, which is co-directed by Drs. Huda Akil and Stanley Watson. MHRI is a nationally and internationally recognized research institute. It is also an interdisciplinary unit that has a broad-based program of basic research on the etiology and treatment of mental illness. Since its founding in 1955, the Institute has grown from three scientists to more than 20 who are active in both the basic and applied studies of the brain and behavior. The faculty of MHRI is composed of a mix of PhD's, MD's, and MD/PhD's. They hold their tenure or tenure-track appointments in a range of departments including Psychiatry, Biochemistry, Pharmacology, Psychology, Genetics, Neurology/Internal Medicine and Radiology.
Research at MHRI revolves around four central themes:
a) Basic Mechanisms of Signaling and Neurotransmission;
b) Developmental Neurobiology;
c) Basic Mechanisms of Stress and Emotion and their Relation to Mood Disorders;
and d) Cognition, Neuroimaging and Psychosis.
In addition, MHRI has recently established a Microarray Laboratory to pursue studies on gene profiling of relevance to both animal and human studies.
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Here is further information regarding Dr. James Miller that also tells the history of the MHRI:
http://projects.isss.org/James_Grier_Mi ... _A_Swanson“….Beginning in 1953, the Committee on the Behavioral Sciences planned to create an Institute of Behavioral Science and Miller, as its chairman, began to raise funds to construct a building and endow the program. Dr. Raymond W. Waggoner, chairman of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Michigan, learned of this activity and invited Miller, together with a group of his senior colleagues, to move to Ann Arbor. He obtained from the Michigan Legislature a commitment to construct the sort of building that had been envisioned for Chicago and to provide a continuing appropriation of sufficient size to operate the planned institute. Chancellor Lawrence Kimpton of the University of Chicago and President Harlan Hatcher of the University of Michigan agreed that a move to Ann Arbor was the optimal solution for the situation.
On July 1, 1955, Miller arrived as director of the new Michigan institute, accompanied by Ralph W. Gerard and Anatol Rapoport. Later, Robert I. Crane and Richard L. Meiser joined them from Chicago.
The Institute was established in the Department of Psychiatry of the University of Michigan School of Medicine. Dr. Raymond W. Waggoner, chairman of the department, had initiated all the necessary administrative and financial actions required to make this possible. President Harlan Hatcher asked that the new Michigan program be named the Mental Health Research Institute rather than the Institute of Behavioral Science because he thought that that name would make it easier to secure financing. It was always understood, however, that the Institute was to carry on behavioral science research in a systems framework like that begun at the University of Chicago.
In the Institute's basic research, special emphasis was placed on the evaluation of cross-level hypotheses, a then novel sort of investigation. Quantitative laboratory measurements of comparable phenomena were made across multiple levels of biological and social systems. The first such research ever carried out was the Information Input Overload study made by an interdisciplinary group of scientists with Miller as principal investigator. This study of comparable input-output effects and adjustment processes, at the levels of the cell, organ, organism, group, and organization, was published in 1960 [8]. In 1982 Professor Daniel Bell of Harvard University, in his book The Social Sciences Since the Second World War, listed such research as one of 62 basic innovations in social science between the years 1900 and 1965 [9].
Other cross-level experiments on different systems hypotheses were conducted by Anatol Rapoport and other investigators at the Institute in the 1950s and 1960s.
Miller was director of the Mental Health Research Institute from 1955 to 1967. Shortly after his arrival he refused the invitation of Dr. Robert Oppenheimer to join the staff of the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton because he wished to remain to lead the development of the Mental Health Research Institute. During his years there, the program advanced and expanded in many directions. It increased in size to about 100 scientists in approximately 20 disciplines of the mathematical, physical, biological, social, medical, and engineering sciences. Among the numerous areas given special attention were neuropsychopharmacology, brain biochemistry, and physiological basis of memory, schizophrenia, game theory, and conflict resolution. ....
This might help reconcile for you how mental disorders can and do cross-over into biological and physical disorders. They do some interesting work at the U of M in this area. You, especially, might find it fascinating. I know I did.
It's not "primitive" science at all.
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