I write a lot about studies on the roots of anxiety, depression, and other kinds of psychiatric disorders. This research, though fascinating and worthwhile, typically can’t offer much to patients in the short term. Some scientists have engineered mice that are naturally resilient to stress, for example, while others have zapped the animals’ brains with a beam of light to snuff out anxiety. Others are studying the long-term effects of stress, showing that stress in childhood affects brain connectivity in adolescence. None of this work points to a treatment that a doctor could offer a patient today, or even in the next year or two.

So it was refreshing, at the Cognitive Neuroscience Society meeting last weekend, to