The Next Wave

Is it All in the Mind?

- UCLA Magazine, Fall 2004
by Ajay Singh

“When you recognize your interdependence and changing nature, you no longer see yourself as separate from another person, and this is the foundation for building stronger communities.”
—Susan Smalley

TWO YEARS AGO, Susan Smalley was a self-described “left-brain, cynical scientist” who saw the world through the materialistic lens of cold reason. One day, Smalley, a professor at the Neuropsychiatric Institute (NPI), had an epiphany that radically changed the way she viewed her life and her work, which revolves around genetic research on attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).