Sculptor and Destroyer: Tales of Glutamatethe Brain’s Most Important Neurotransmitter

Mattson also delves deeply into the dark side of glutamate, which he calls the “destroyer” side. He shows how quite subtle aberrancies in the activity of neurons that deploy glutamate may result in behavioral disorders ranging from autism and schizophrenia to chronic anxiety and depression. More dramatically, he describes how glutamate can excite neurons to death, a process that occurs in epilepsy and stroke and, possibly even more insidiously, in Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, ALS, and Huntington’s disease. Sculptor and Destroyer concludes with a viewpoint on how knowledge of glutamate’s roles in neuroplasticity may well be applied to the optimization of brain health right through our lives.

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